The Meeting

He was looking at a flower,

Not with love, but looking at it;

His plough was stopped in the top corner

Of a field he had just roofed.

There was nothing to say that the wind,

Repeating in a tree the unrecorded

Facts of history, had reached further

Than the cold porches of his ear.

He was looking at a flower,

As an animal looks, wondering nothing

About the mystery of its growth.

And why should he? He had grown, too.

With less beauty? Who is to say?

There was a likeness in his eyes,

In both their tenancies of the air’s

Quietness. You could have passed

On the hill road, unsuspecting

That blank encounter in space-time

Of two creatures, each with its load

Of meaning not to be set down.

--R. S. Thomas (1913-2000), Welsh poet and Anglican priest

Forgetfulness

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

--Billy Collins (1941- ), US poet laureate 2001-2003

Another Reason Why I Don't Keep a Gun in the House

The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
He is barking the same high, rhythmic bark
that he barks every time they leave the house.
They must switch him on on their way out.

The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
I close all the windows in the house
and put on a Beethoven symphony full blast
but I can still hear him muffled under the music,
barking, barking, barking,

and now I can see him sitting in the orchestra,
his head raised confidently as if Beethoven
had included a part for barking dog.

When the record finally ends he is still barking,
sitting there in the oboe section barking,
his eyes fixed on the conductor who is
entreating him with his baton

while the other musicians listen in respectful
silence to the famous barking dog solo,
that endless coda that first established
Beethoven as an innovative genius.

--Billy Collins (1941- ), poet laureate of the US 2001-2003

Prayer for Christ's Peace

We are at peace with God and one another

through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Let us pray that the world may have peace--

not any peace, at any price,

not unjust and compassionless peace,

but this peace of the Lord Jesus Christ,

which the world cannot give to itself

but must learn to receive from him.

--from Contemporary Prayers for Church and School, 1975, from SCM Press Ltd., p. 25

The Laws of Motion

(for Harlem Magic)

The laws of science teach us a pound of gold weighs as much as
a pound of flour though if dropped from any
undetermined height in their natural state one would
reach bottom and one would fly away

Laws of motion tell us an inert object is more difficult to
propel than an object heading in the wrong direction is to
turn around. Motion being energy—inertia—apathy.
Apathy equals hostility. Hostility—violence. Violence
being energy is its own virtue. Laws of motion teach us

Black people are no less confused because of our
Blackness than we are diffused because of our
powerlessness. Man we are told is the only animal who
smiles with his lips. The eyes however are the mirror of
the soul

The problem with love is not what we feel but what we
wish we felt when we began to feel we should feel
something. Just as publicity is not production: seduction
is not seductive

If I could make a wish I’d wish for all the knowledge of all
the world. Black may be beautiful Professor Micheau
says but knowledge is power. Any desirable object is
bought and sold—any neglected object declines in value.
It is against man’s nature to be in either category

If white defines Black and good defines evil then men
define women or women scientifically speaking describe
men. If sweet is the opposite of sour and heat the
absence of cold then love is the contradiction of pain and
beauty is in the eye of the beheld

Sometimes I want to touch you and be touched in
return. But you think I’m grabbing and I think you’re
shirking and Mama always said to look out for men like
you

So I go to the streets with my lips painted red and my
eyes carefully shielded to seduce the world my reluctant
lover

And you go to your men slapping fives feeling good
posing as a man because you know as long as you sit
very very still the laws of motion will be in effect

--Nikki Giovanni (1943- ), African American poet and essayist, from The Women and The Men, 1970

Prayer Before Work

Great one, austere,
By whose intent the distant star
Holds its course clear,
Now make this spirit soar—
Give it that ease.
Out of the absolute
Abstracted grief, comfortless, mute,
Sound the clear note,
Pure, piercing as the flute:
Give it precision.
Austere, great one,
By whose grace the unalterable song
May still be wrested from
The corrupt lung:
Give it strict form.

--May Sarton (1912-1995), American poet, memoir writer, and novelist

Paradise

I bless thee, Lord, because I GROW
Among thy trees, which in a ROW
The thee both fruit and order OWE.

What open force, what hidden CHARM
Can blast my fruit, or bring me HARM
While the inclosure is thine ARM?

Inclose me still for fear I START.
Be to me rather sharp and TART,
Than let me want thy hand and ART.

When thou dost greater judgments SPARE,
And with thy knife but prune and PARE,
Ev'n fruitful trees more fruitful ARE.

Such sharpness shows the sweetest FRIEND:
Such cuttings rather heal than REND:
And such beginnings touch their END.

--George Herbert (1593-1633), from Garden Poems, 1996

Prayer for Hope and Good Cheer

O God, who has given us the gift of courage so that we may endure hardness and meet danger with a resolute will, grant us Your spiritual benediction that we may have hope to carry us through frustration with good cheer and through defeats with an unrelenting faith in the ultimate victory of Your purpose.

--Wallace W. Robbins (1910-1988), Unitarian Universalist minister, found at Harvard Square Library



Image: Lu Hongnian, Jesus Calming the Storm

Prayer for Reality

O God, who hates illusion and loves reality: grant us a strong grasp of facts and a fair vision of truth; that neither the frights of pain nor the baits of false hopes may misdirect us, nor may we be kept from seeking You with a brave heart.

--Wallace W. Robbins (1910-1988), Unitarian Universalist minister, found at Harvard Square Library

Morning Prayer 2

Once more a new day lies before us, our Father. As we go out among humanity to do our work, touching the hands and lives of our fellow human beings, make us, we pray thee, friends of all in the world. Save us from blighting the fresh flower of any heart by the flare of sudden anger or secret hate. May we not bruise the rightful self-respect of any by contempt or malice. Help us to cheer the suffering by our sympathy, to freshen the drooping by our hopefulness, and to strengthen in all the wholesome sense of worth and the joy of life. Save us fro the deadly poison of class pride. Grant that we look all persons in the face with the eyes of a brother or a sister. If anyone needs us, make us ready to yield our help ingrudgingly, unless higher duties claim us, and may we rejoice that we have it in us to be helpful to our fellow human beings.

--The Rev. Walter Rauschenbusch (1861-1918), Baptist minister, theologian, teacher, and social reformer, one of the founders of the Social Gospel Movement, adapted from Prayers of the Social Awakening, 1909

There is No Frigate Like a Book (1263)

There is no Frigate like a Book
To take us Lands away,
Nor any Coursers like a Page
Of prancing Poetry –
This Traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of Toll –
How frugal is the Chariot
That bears a Human soul.

--Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), American poet

We Adore You

We adore You, Framer of the Universe;
Governor, Disposer, Keeper;
You on whom all things depend;
Mind of the world;
You from whom all things spring;
You by whose spirit we live;
the Divine Spirit diffused through all;
God supremely powerful,
always present,
above all other powers:
we adore you.

-- Seneca (4 BCE-65 CE), Roman Stoic philosopher, political leader, and playwright

The Burning of Yellowstone

Squaring their papers--tap, tap-- the news team finds
one last feature to catch St. Louis ears
following days of rage and roar on the screen
as feather, fur, nest, cave, hide disappears.
"Don't miss the sunset tonight or tomorrow night!"
For two thousand miles, it appears, wind bore to the eye
smoke from unseen deaths and wounds to remind us
how beautiful, at the end, is the earth, the sky.
Driving west from the towers that block our view
we find a hillside pull-off. Every sense
confounded by the vision that wraps us round,
we feel to the bone its burning radiance.
Orange daylily uncurls its lips and presses
them urgently on the blue-veined brow of space.
Rose at its ripest spreads wide its fervent petals
to welcome the other hues. An intense trace
of crushed violet scent lies on the air.
Petunia tongues a pink both sweet and clear.
Fallout of deep red peony litters the treeline.
We take each other's hand, eyes wet, and hear
how gently the wind informs its witnesses,
as jonquil yellow trumpets a floral boom,
of its debt to the artistry of their beholding,
of their culpability for its final bloom.

--Mona Van Duyn (1921-2004), US poet laureate 1992, in Poetry magazine, February 1990

In 1988, over 200 fires broke out in Yellowstone due to extremely dry conditions. A narrative of that years' fires can be found here: https://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/yellowstone-ablaze-fires-1988.
Photo by Steve Henry of the National Park Service.

Intercessory Prayers at Morning

One: That this day may be holy, good and joyful:
All: we pray to you, O Lord. 

One: That we may offer to you our worship and our work:
All:  we pray to you, O Lord.

One: That we may strive for the well-being of all creation:
All:  we pray to you, O Lord.

One: That in the pleasures and pains of life, we may know the love of Christ and be thankful:
All:  we pray to you, O Lord.

One: That we may be bound together by your Holy Spirit, in communion with [N and with] all your saints, entrusting one another and all our life to Christ:
All:  we pray to you, O Lord.

One: Let us commend ourselves, and all for whom we pray, to the mercy and protection of God.

(petitions offered silently or aloud)


--from the Church of England

Mysteries, Yes

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous
to be understood.

How grass can be nourishing in the
mouths of lambs.
How rivers and stones are forever
in allegiance with gravity
while we ourselves dream of rising.
How two hands touch and the bonds
will never be broken.
How people come, from delight or the
scars of damage,
to the comfort of a poem.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those
who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say
"Look!" and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their heads.

--Mary Oliver (1935- ), from Evidence: Poems, 2009

Vesper Prayer (Lent)

Holy God, in love you created us and called our being “good.” With open hearts, we praise you for your unfailing love. With open hands, we offer you our labors. Bless and guide us now as our day turns toward evening; through your grace, may we share with others the love we receive from you. In the name of God our Creator, Jesus our brother, and the Spirit who lights our way. Amen.

--from Daily Prayer for All Seasons, authorized by the General Convention of the Episcopal Church, 2014, p. 74

Faith

When I cannot believe,
The brown herds still move across green fields
Into the tufty hills, and I was born
Higher, where I could watch them as a bird might.
When even memory seems imagined, what
Can I bring to prayer? A pair of knees.
The great faith that built a stair to heaven
As now my memory tries to climb a hill,
Becomes an old stone building, a deaf priest
Whose hand is in the pockets of his parish,
Who longs to buy a bell he'll never hear.
The water in the font is cold, I trace
A circle on my brow and not a cross.

-- Michael Schmidt, from New and Collected Poems, 2010

The Beautiful Changes

One wading a Fall meadow finds on all sides
The Queen Anne’s Lace lying like lilies
On water; it glides
So from the walker, it turns
Dry grass to a lake, as the slightest shade of you
Valleys my mind in fabulous blue Lucernes.

The beautiful changes as a forest is changed
By a chameleon’s tuning his skin to it;
As a mantis, arranged
On a green leaf, grows
Into it, makes the leaf leafier, and proves
Any greenness is deeper than anyone knows.

Your hands hold roses always in a way that says
They are not only yours; the beautiful changes
In such kind ways,
Wishing ever to sunder
Things and things’ selves for a second finding, to lose
For a moment all that it touches back to wonder.

--Richard Wilbur (1921-2017), US poet laureate 1987-1988, from Collected Poems 1943-2004

Evening Prayer

O God, we praise You for the night and for sleep. Release our limbs of toil. Smooth our brow of care. Grant us a refreshing draught of forgetfulness. Comfort those who toss on a bed of pain, or whose nerves crave sleep and find it not. Save them from despondent thoughts in the darkness. May they learn to lean on Your all-pervading life and love so, their souls may grow tranquil and their bodies may rest.

-- Walter Rauschenbusch (1861-1918), American Baptist minister and social reformer, one of the founders of the Social Gospel Movement

Hymn in Contemplation of Sudden Death

God, if this day my journey end,
I thank You first for many a friend,
The sturdy and unquestioned piers
That run beneath my bridge of years.
Next, for the power You’ve given me
To view the whole world mirthfully,
For laughter, paraclete of pain,
Like April suns across the rain.
Also that, being not too wise
To do things foolish in folks’ eyes,
I gained experience by this,
And saw life somewhat as it is.
Next for the joy of labor done
And burdens shouldered in the sun;
Not less, for shame of labor lost,
And meekness born of a barren boast.
For every fair and useless thing
That bids us pause from laboring
To look and find the larkspur blue
And marigolds of a different hue;
For eyes to see and ears to hear,
For tongue to speak and thews to bear,
For hands to handle, feet to go,
For life, I give You thanks also.
For all things merry, quaint and strange,
For sound and silence, strength, and change,
At last, for death, which only gives
Value to everything that lives;
For these, good God, who still makes me,
I praise Your name; since, verily,
I of my joy have had no dearth,
Though this day were my last on earth.

-- Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957), English author

Windchime

She goes out to hang the windchime
in her nightie and her work boots.
It’s six-thirty in the morning
and she’s standing on the plastic ice chest
tiptoe to reach the crossbeam of the porch,

windchime in her left hand,
hammer in her right, the nail
gripped tight between her teeth
but nothing happens next because
she’s trying to figure out
how to switch #1 with #3.

She must have been standing in the kitchen,
coffee in her hand, asleep,
when she heard it—the wind blowing
through the sound the windchime
wasn’t making
because it wasn’t there.

No one, including me, especially anymore believes
till death do us part,
but I can see what I would miss in leaving—
the way her ankles go into the work boots
as she stands upon the ice chest;
the problem scrunched into her forehead;
the little kissable mouth
with the nail in it.

-- Tony Hoagland (1953- ), from What Narcissism Means to Me (2003)

The Sirens

I never knew the road
From which the whole earth didn't call away,
With wild birds rounding the hill crowns,
Haling out of the heart an old dismay,
Or the shore somewhere pounding out its slow code,
Or low-lighted towns
Seeming to tell me, stay.

Lands I have never seen
And shall not see, loves I will not forget,
And I have missed, or slighted, or foregone
Call to me now. And weaken me. And yet
I would not walk a road without a scene.
I listen going on,
The richer for regret.

-- Richard Wilbur (1921-1917), US poet laureate 1987-1988

The Edge

The edge?     The edge is:
lie by the breath you cannot
do without; while
the breather sleeps.

Precious, subtle, that air
comes, goes, comes.
The heart propels it.     It has
its thousands of hours, but

it will not last as long
as the sun, the moon's subservient
tides. It will stop, go back
to the great air's surround.

But now, subtle, precious,
regular as tide and sun
it moves in the warm body, lifts
the chest, says yes.

Listen to it, through the night.
If you wish to know the extent
to which you are vulnerable,
only listen.

This is called the breath
of life.     But it continues
saving your life
through the dark,

since this engine that drives your joy
is unrenounceable.
Listen, listen.     Say, Love, love
breathe so, breathe so.

--Josephine Jacobsen (1908-2003), US poet laureate 1971-1973


Photo: my three children when they were small, February 2000.

This Life

It's a pickle, this life.
Even shut down to a trickle
it carries every kind of particle
that causes strife on a grander scale:
to be miniature is to be swallowed
by a miniature whale. Zeno knew
the law that we know: no matter
how carefully diminished, a race
can only be half finished with success;
then comes the endless halving of the rest--
the ribbon's stalled approach, the helpless
red-faced urgings of the coach.

-- Kay Ryan (1945- ), US poet laureate 2007-2010

Right for Sky

Know this house that I called home
Her gentle milk was happy just to flow
Know that her tomcats took their licks in turn
Some branches fall to open arms
Some paradises are a prayer too far
God's in the treetop making mockingbirds

If I could choose I would do things right
Teach my dreams to look me in the eye
Sing my heart out into my hand
Shine where light demands

When I lose my feet in my father's shoes
When I take your flesh with my false tooth
When I bend until I break in two
Call me a fool being green
In the leaves of the world, the leaves of the world

The wind blows all the wild away
This house was kind as every hiding place
Bones are the hardest offering to burn
That dog will bark though no one's there
This man went mad breaking his easy chair
Sing me the softest heart I've ever heard

It's only right how this trail goes cold
Moonlight gliding through our empty clothes
Know I'm warm when a cloud rolls by
Rolling right for sky

When I lose my feet in my father's shoes
When I take your flesh with my false tooth
When I bend until I break in two
Call me a fool being green
In the leaves of the world, the leaves of the world

--Sam Beam (Iron and Wine), from Beast Epic (2017)

Sleeping in the Forest

I thought the earth

remembered me, she

took me back so tenderly, arranging

her dark skirts, her pockets

full of lichens and seeds. I slept

as never before, a stone

on the riverbed, nothing

between me and the white fire of the stars

but my thoughts, and they floated

light as moths among the branches

of the perfect trees. All night

I heard the small kingdoms breathing

around me, the insects, and the birds

who do their work in the darkness. All night

I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling

with a luminous doom. By morning

I had vanished at least a dozen times

into something better.

-- Mary Oliver (1935-), American poet, from Twelve Moons, 1979



Photo: The top of a tree viewed from above in the Cloud Forest in Monteverde, Costa Rica, April 2018.

The Gardener to His God

I pray that the great world's flowering stay as it is,
that larkspur and snapdragon keep to their ordinary size,
and bleedingheart hang in its old way, and Judas tree
stand well below oak, and old oaks color the fall sky.
For the myrtle to keep underfoot, and no rose
to send up a swollen face, I pray simply.

There is no disorder but the heart's. But if love goes leaking
outward, if shrubs take up its monstrous stalking,
all greenery is spurred, the snapping lips are overgrown,
and over oaks red hearts hang like the sun.
Deliver us from its grand gardening, from walking
all over the earth with no rest from its disproportion.

Let all flowers turn to stone before ever they begin to share
love's spaciousness, and faster, stronger, larger
grow from a sweet thought, before any daisy
turns, under love's gibberellic wish to the day's eye.
Let all blooms take shape from cold laws,
     down from a cold air,
let come their small grace or measurable majesty.

For in every place but love the imagination lies
in its limits. Even poems draw back from images
of that one country, on top of whose lunatic stemming
whoever finds himself there must sway and cling
until the high cold God takes pity, and it all dies
down, down into the great world's flowering.

--Mona Van Duyn (1921-2004), US poet laureate 1992-1993

Separation

Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.

--W. S. Merwin (1927- ), US poet laureate 2010-2011

Photo and needlework by Carrie Barth, 2018.

Sonnet LXV: Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea
But sad mortality o’er-sways their power,
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
O, how shall summer’s honey breath hold out
Against the wrackful siege of batt’ring days,
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong, but time decays?
O fearful meditation! where, alack,
Shall time’s best jewel from time’s chest lie hid?
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?
Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
     O, none, unless this miracle have might,
     That in black ink my love may still shine bright.

-- William Shapespeare (1564-1616) English poet and playwright

Canticle: A Song of Our True Nature

Christ revealed our frailty and our falling,
our trespasses and our humiliations.
Christ also revealed his blessed power,
his blessed wisdom and love.
He protects us as tenderly and as sweetly when we are in greatest need; 
he raises us in spirit
and turns everything to glory and joy without ending.
God is the ground and the substance, the very essence of nature;
God is the true father and mother of natures.
We are all bound to God by nature,
and we are all bound to God by grace.
And this grace is for all the world,
because it is our precious mother, Christ.
For this fair nature was prepared by Christ for the honor and nobility of all,
and for the joy and bliss of salvation.

-- Dame Julian of Norwich (1342-1416), English anchoress, mystic, and spiritual writer

Ascension

Stretching Himself as if again,
          through downpress of dust
                    upward, soil giving way
to thread of white, that reaches
          for daylight, to open as green
                    leaf that it is...
Can Ascension
          not have been
                    arduous, almost
as the return
          from Sheol, and
                    back through the tomb
into breath?
          Matter reanimate
                    now must relinquish
itself, its
          human cells,
                    molecules, five
senses, linear
          vision endured
                    as Man--
the sole
          all-encompassing gaze
                    resumed now,
Eye of Eternity.
          Relinquished, earth's
                    broken Eden.
Expulsion,
          liberation,
                    last
self-enjoined task
          of Incarnation.
                    He again
Fathering Himself.
          Seed-case
                    splitting,
He again
          Mothering His birth:
                    torture and bliss.

-- Denise Levertov (1923-1997), English/American poet, from Evening Train, 1992, in The Collected Poems of Denise Levertov, 2013


Image: Rembrandt van Rijn, Ascension of Christ, 1636

The Best of It

However carved up
or pared down we get
we keep on making
the best of it as though
it doesn't matter that
our acre's down to a square foot. As
though our garden
could be one bean
and we'd rejoice if
it flourishes, as
though one bean
could nourish us.

--Kay Ryan (1945- ), US poet laureate 2008-2009



Photo: Detail of Walter Ufer's Hunger.