Be Still

Esa Riippa

Be Still

Be still until the waters clear.

Do nothing until the darkness ends.

Rest until the storm clouds pass. 

Wait for winter's breath to die.

Nature does not fight against itself

Nor does it dance when the music ends.

from "War Cry On a Prayer Feather: Prose and Poetry of the Ute Indians", Nancy Wood

Sometimes I need a hand on my shoulder, a word in my ear - "Be still." It's something beyond merely waiting or resting. Being attentive, letting things work but not working myself. Allowing things to come and go, observing the changes, but resting in the sense of the whole. Action where none avails is wasted, wrestling the elements will not change them. Be still. Wait until the waters clear. 

 

Cloudburst

Unknown

Cloudburst

Earth (meadows and rock
gardens, perforating cities,
crepe sea-skin, people, slag mounds,
highway access ramps)

Earth (i.e. all within the 
circle of sky)

suffers, today, the rain.

   Plip   plip   then
   (crack!) it's boiling everywhere.

   It singles itself into
   slow droplets on car windows.
   The forehead feels its skywarm touch.

   Rainworms emerge, deep waters
   under the earth are nurtured
   and, gradually, the roving clouds again.

Earth suffers the first large splats, the rush, the pelting,
   the beautiful withdrawing,

variously receiving, mirroring, waiting
for the long wind, for evening sun.

Margaret Avison

A beautiful poem, but also because the earth is suffering from far too much rain for far too long here. Can't wait for the "beautiful withdrawing".




 

What's Broken

Christian Schloe

What’s Broken

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The slate black sky. The middle step

of the back porch. And long ago

my mother’s necklace, the beads

rolling north and south. Broken

the rose stem, water into drops, glass

knobs on the bedroom door. Last summer’s

pot of parsley and mint, white roots

shooting like streamers through the cracks.

Years ago the cat’s tail, the bird bath,

the car hood’s rusted latch. Broken

little finger on my right hand at birth—

I was pulled out too fast. What hasn’t 

been rent, divided, split? Broken

the days into nights, the night sky

into stars, the stars into patterns

I make up as I trace them

with a broken-off blade

of grass. Possible, unthinkable,

the cricket’s tiny back as I lie

on the lawn in the dark, my heart

a blue cup fallen from someone’s hands.

Dorianne Laux 

This cataloguing of broken things is mysteriously moving. Is it the way little broken things are described, and seem to intimate much more (different kinds of brokenness - by over-use, accident, or growth, to name a few)? And broken things that are beautiful - the sky and patterns of the stars. I love that image of the woman lying on her back tracing the stars.  And then that remarkable moment at the end, where she describes her heart as " a blue cup fallen from someone's hands".  I think about that over and over, what that means. Fragility. Disregard. A very significant thing described as something small. The fact that she is lying down and that the cup has fallen - all these echo each other and amaze me.


 

 

So If You Love Me

Richard Adams

So If You Love Me

So if you love me you will tolerant
Be of the nature that is with me sent.
I cannot be a different thing although
For your sake, to win you, I would grow
Wings and shed thorns,
Be weed, or newly born,
Anything so to please you,
But I'm myself and cannot ease you.

Come kindly to me then, forgiveness use,
Do not heap on my patent-wrongs abuse,
For your sake I'd be different but am not,
For your sake I'd have other needs forgot,
But I am one
And they are of the sum
Of me, and will not set me free
From my desires, which still follow me.

Oh choose, and choose me wholly, so we be
All of imperfectness, but summary.
Be sum, no fraction, though a fraction may
Marvelous wonder easily convey,
Yet it's but part
And may not be the heart,
The whole is all of us, if we use not
All strata, love's geology's forgot. 

Ruth Herschberger


"All strata" - that last bit sticks out to me. So, is that the layers like you might see in canyon walls? I can picture a relationship like that, day after day, layer on layer, rough, smooth, porous, clayey. We have this idea that love should look smooth and put-together, but I've never experienced that. Mandy Len Catron talks about how the language we use to describe love is misleading - "falling in love" (as if it were involuntary, or a trap), "smitten" (past tense for smite), etc. Is love really like that? We need a new rhetoric, new metaphors. After long thought, she came up with the idea of love as a collaborative work of art. I certainly like that better than being hit, falling down or going mad. 


 

Begin

Bożena Truchanowska

Begin

Begin again to the summoning birds
to the sight of the light at the window,
begin to the roar of morning traffic
all along Pembroke Road.
Every beginning is a promise
born in light and dying in dark
determination and exaltation of springtime
flowering the way to work.
Begin to the pageant of queuing girls
the arrogant loneliness of swans in the canal
bridges linking the past and future
old friends passing though with us still.
Begin to the loneliness that cannot end
since it perhaps is what makes us begin,
begin to wonder at unknown faces
at crying birds in the sudden rain
at branches stark in the willing sunlight
at seagulls foraging for bread
at couples sharing a sunny secret
alone together while making good.
Though we live in a world that dreams of ending
that always seems about to give in
something that will not acknowledge conclusion
insists that we forever begin.

Brendan Kennelly

This poem has an interesting back and forth between statements and images. It's as if the poet with this idea of beginning again, lists the things he sees throughout the day. All day he begins again, every moment marks a new beginning. It's interesting, that line about loneliness - is it loneliness that makes us begin again? I have to think about that. I agree that beginning again is the way to live out the Long view, though. Every day, start again, every time I have a chance to remind myself, begin again. "Every beginning is a promise."

I Have a Bird in Spring

 

Holly Meade

I Have a Bird in Spring   I have a Bird in spring Which for myself doth sing -- The spring decoys. And as the summer nears -- And as the Rose appears, Robin is gone. Yet do I not repine Knowing that Bird of mine Though flown -- Learneth beyond the sea Melody new for me And will return. Fast in a safer hand Held in a truer Land Are mine -- And though they now depart, Tell I my doubting heart They're thine. In a serener Bright, In a more golden light I see Each little doubt and fear, Each little discord here Removed. Then will I not repine, Knowing that Bird of mine Though flown Shall in a distant tree Bright melody for me Return.   Emily Dickinson   I don't know when I first began associating little birds with my children(maybe everyone does with theirs too). It may have started with that poem "little birds" by e.e.cummings (first blog post) - I've loved it for so long, and when my kids came along I saw them in the words. However it developed, the fact is, a picture of a little  sparrow or wren, or any small bird, brings them immediately to mind. So that print by Holly Meade, to me, is my daughter, who would have been 13 years old today. I think of her in that "truer Land" every day.

Seed Leaves

Seed Leaves

I

Here something stubborn comes,
Dislodging the earth crumbs
And making crusty rubble.
It comes up bending double
And looks like a green staple.
It could be seedling maple,
Or artichoke, or bean;
That remains to be seen.

II

Forced to make choice of ends,
The stalk in time unbends,
Shakes off the seedcase, heaves
Aloft, and spreads two leaves
Which still display no sure
And special signature.
Toothless and fat, they keep
The oval form of sleep.

III

This plant would like to grow
And yet be embryo;
Increase, and yet escape
The doom of taking shape;
Be vaguely vast, and climb
To the tip end of time
With all of space to fill,
Like boundless Yggdrasill
That has the stars for fruit.
But something at the root
More urgent than that urge
Bids two true leaves emerge,
And now the plant, resigned
To being self-defined
Before it can commerce
With the great universe,
Takes aim at all the sky
And starts to ramify.



Richard Wilbur 

That first line makes me smile - of course it reminds me of "something wicked this way comes" from Macbeth, or Ray Bradbury. But, "Here something stubborn comes", I like that. I like how poems call back and forth to each other, sometimes on purpose and sometimes without intending to. When a poem reminds me of another one, or is written in response to another, I see the communication happening. Thoughts shared between people who have never met, often from different times and places and languages, this heartens me. Long may it continue! Let the layers of poetry accumulate like sediment, like types of soil - out of which more stubborn living things (and poems) may come.

 

When March Blows

Charles Courtney Curran

When March Blows

When March blows, and Monday's linen is shown

On the goose berry bushes, and the worried washer alone

Fights at the soaked stuff, meres and the rutted pools

Mirror the wool-pack clouds, and shine clearer than jewels

And the children throw stones in them, spoil mirrors and clouds

The worry of washing over; the worry of foods,

Brings tea-time; March quietens as the trouble dies.

The washing is brought in under wind-swept clear skies.

Ivor Gurney


I like this poem for several reasons; 1. It's talking about the days when dirty laundry was washed in a stream (mere, or pool), pounded against a rock, and then spread out on the bushes and grass to dry in the sun, 2. I like that word "mere", and that phrase "wool-pack clouds", a modern poem with old words like this has flavour and texture where it would otherwise be flat, and 3. I like how the unsettling March wind is a metaphor for the pressures and worries of a woman (I know it doesn't say it's a woman, but come on, we all know it's a woman doing the laundry and making supper) trying to accomplish the tasks of the day "alone" (an important point). The word "worry" is used three times. Wind worries the linen on the bushes, and the woman is worried by work; but then, "the trouble dies", "the washing is brought in", and the sky is clear. I love that. It's another way of saying "hold on, keep going, this will pass" and as a woman alone with a lot of my work, I need to hear that.


 

The Moon and the Yew Tree

John Atkinson Grimshaw

The Moon and the Yew Tree

This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary
The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue.
The grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were God
Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility
Fumy, spiritous mists inhabit this place.
Separated from my house by a row of headstones.
I simply cannot see where there is to get to.

The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right,
White as a knuckle and terribly upset.
It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet
With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here.
Twice on Sunday, the bells startle the sky ----
Eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection
At the end, they soberly bong out their names.

The yew tree points up, it has a Gothic shape.
The eyes lift after it and find the moon.
The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary.
Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls.
How I would like to believe in tenderness ----
The face of the effigy, gentled by candles,
Bending, on me in particular, its mild eyes.

I have fallen a long way. Clouds are flowering
Blue and mystical over the face of the stars
Inside the church, the saints will all be blue,
Floating on their delicate feet over the cold pews,
Their hands and faces stiff with holiness.
The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild.
And the message of the yew tree is blackness -- blackness and silence.

Sylvia Plath

Full moon last night. Moon poems are plentiful, but not many are as memorable as Plath's. 

That first line sits in my brain and jumps out at me once in a while. I love the way she mixes flat factual

 statements with deeply subjective ones, speaking from an inner mythology. What astounds me is 

that her darkness and despair is so beautiful. It's wild but controlled, careful and yet full of abandon.

 So striking. That one line, "I have fallen a long way." reminds me of Rilke's poem "Fall" 

(from my second post on this blog), "We are all falling now." That phrase is so evocative. And her repetition 

of the colours blue and black - coldness and silence. It's uncomfortable to find someone so brilliant in their 

anguish. Part of me is all admiration, while the other part is chilled. 

The Kitchen

Margaret Olley, "Proteas in the Kitchen"

The Kitchen

I love the sunshine in the kitchen,

The glory of the light awakens

All the familiar textures of pot and china.

This is the home of the house,

The centre of its warmth,

The articulation of its love,

In the rise of bread, the crust of pie,

And the richness of gravy.

It is the place of your caring,

Fleshed out in the daily details,

Too small to be noted one by one,

But each constructing the heart of the house.

Your delight in us is incarnated here,

And this is the place of our true receiving.

Here we come hungry, thirsty, and in our need,

To meet the kindness of your hands.

And your friends came,

Finding a warmth they sought and a love they craved.

Not a pretentious place,

A good cause or a moral crusade.

If you will, another Nazareth,

Hidden in the wilderness of the world,

Where kindness feeds a poor Christ and his friends,

And bids them come in from the dark.

Tim Marks

This poem calls up all sorts of things for me - the sound of pots and pans moving on the stove in the kitchen as my mother made supper, the warmth and scent of food, the comfort of knowing someone who loved me was preparing a meal. Even as a young child I remember thinking that the work my mother did in our kitchen was the core to the apple, the center of our lives. "The kindness of your hands..." I love that. The daily details, these are the things on which love is built. The essence of sharing and recieving flows from this place, and from these hands. And to be sitting in my own kitchen, myself a mother, typing with these hands - what a privilege. The place at the heart of the world and life is mine now - how strange. 


 

The View from the Window

Karl Ludwig Kaaz, "View from Grassis Villa"

The View from the Window

Like a painting it is set before one,

But less brittle, ageless; these colours

Are renewed daily with variations

Of light and distance that no painter

Achieves or suggests.  Then there is movement,

Change, as slowly the cloud bruises

Are healed by sunlight, or snow caps

A black mood; but gold at evening

To cheer the heart.  All through history

The great brush has not rested,

Nor the paint dried; yet what eye,

Looking coolly, or, as we now,

Through the tears' lenses, ever saw

This work and it was not finished?

R. S. Thomas



I've been thinking a lot about art recently, where are the borders between art and - non-art? And this poem, so interesting how its frame is a window. Maybe that's the border? In which case, it's wherever you put a frame. But then the poem adds another level, one that is so commonplace and yet of a wonderful strangeness - the view through the window-frame is always moving and changing, and yet is always a complete work. How marvelous! I confess I had never thought of this before reading this poem. Perhaps this is why excellent paintings seem to change, or we see different things in them at different times - perhaps a very gifted artist is able to convey a tiny glimpse of that ever-changing wholeness. Lovely. This is a poem to chew on.

A Hard Frost

Claude Monet

A Hard Frost

A frost came in the night and stole my world

And left this changeling for it - a precocious

Image of spring, too brilliant to be true:

White lilac on the window-pane, each grass-blade

Furred like a catkin, maydrift loading the hedge.

The elms behind the house are elms no longer

But blossomers in crystal, stems of the mist

That hangs yet in the valley below, amorphous

As the blind tissue whence creation formed.

The sun looks out and the fields blaze with diamonds

Mockery spring, to lend this bridal gear

For a few hours to a raw country maid,

Then leave her all disconsolate with old fairings

Of aconite and snowdrop! No, not here

Amid this flounce and filigree of death

Is the real transformation scene in progress,

But deep below where frost

Worrying the stiff clods unclenches their

Grip on the seed and lets

the future breathe.

C. Day Lewis

 "But deep below..." How wonderful, the description of frost, the crust of iridescence like a cruelly beautiful shell, "but deep below", in the dark and cold, life is beginning again, in spite of all appearances and obstacles.