A Path of Stars

There are many things
I would like to tell you,
my darling

My darling,
I would like to tell you
in this life
everything will be okay

I would like to tell you
that you will walk upon a path of stars
that you will travel through the forest
and never lose your way

I would like to tell you
to look only at the stars
and not the gaps between them
to look at the sun
and not the clouds.

My darling, I would like to tell you all these things
for the same reason we read fairy stories to children
and weave their years with mythologies
because there is comfort is such lies
because I want the world you live in
to carry more magic
and less sharp edges.

But, on this dark night
I have run out of comforting lies.
My darling,
I cannot promise you a path of stars.
some days you will walk upon
unforgiving concrete or sharp-edged gravel
some days you will wade through quicksand.
Tonight, I cannot conjure stars
without the black between them.

My darling, I can only wish
when you walk through the dark and tangled forest
and lose your way a thousand times
that one day
you come across a clearing

where you can sit
and where the sun will find you
and warm your face
and where you can rest.

My darling
you can rest.


--Rose Peoples, New Zealand poet, lawyer, and student from Te Awakairangi/Lower Hutt

Image: "Enchanted Forest" by Madeline McGovern

Fox

I heard a cough
as if a thief was there
outside my sleep
a sharp intake of air

a fox in her fox-fur
stepping across
the grass in her black gloves
barked at my house

just so abrupt and odd
the way she went
hungrily asking
in the heart's thick accent

in such serious sleepless
trespass she came
a woman with a man's voice
but no name

as if to say: it's midnight
and my life
is laid beneath my children
like gold leaf

-- Alice Oswald (1966- ), award winning English poet and editor, from her book Falling Awake, 2016

To You Before the Close of Day

To you before the close of day, 

Creator of all things, we pray
that, in your constant clemency,
our guard and keeper you would be.

Save us from troubled, restless sleep;
from all ill dreams your children keep.
So calm our minds that fears may cease
and rested bodies wake in peace.

A healthy life we ask of you:
the fire of love in us renew,
and when the dawn new light will bring,
your praise and glory we shall sing.

Almighty Father, hear our cry
through Jesus Christ, our Lord, most high,
Whom with the Spirit we adore
forever and for evermore. Amen.

-- 6th century compline hymn

Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour

Light the first light of evening, as in a room
In which we rest and, for small reason, think
The world imagined is the ultimate good.

This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous.
It is in that thought that we collect ourselves,
Out of all the indifferences, into one thing:

Within a single thing, a single shawl
Wrapped tightly round us, since we are poor, a warmth,
A light, a power, the miraculous influence.

Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves.
We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole,
A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous.

Within its vital boundary, in the mind.
We say God and the imagination are one...
How high that highest candle lights the dark.

Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.

--Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), American poet and business executive

The Starlight Night

Look at the stars! look, look up at the skies!
O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air!
The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there!
Down in dim woods the diamond delves! the elves’-eyes!
The grey lawns cold where gold, where quickgold lies!
Wind-beat whitebeam! airy abeles set on a flare!
Flake-doves sent floating forth at a farmyard scare!
Ah well! it is all a purchase, all is a prize.

Buy then! bid then! — What? — Prayer, patience, alms, vows.
Look, look: a May-mess, like on orchard boughs!
Look! March-bloom, like on mealed-with-yellow sallows!
These are indeed the barn; withindoors house
The shocks. This piece-bright paling shuts the spouse
Christ home, Christ and his mother and all his hallows.

--Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), English Victorian poet and Jesuit priest

He Said

“Your garden at dusk
Is the soul of love
Blurred in its beauty
And softly caressing;
I, gently daring
This sweetest confessing,
Say your garden at dusk
Is your soul. My Love.”

-- Anne Spencer (1882-1975), African American poet, civil rights leader, librarian, and gardener.

Sleeping Prayer

I am placing my soul and my body 
On Thy sanctuary this night, O God, 
On Thy sanctuary, O Jesus Christ, 
On Thy sanctuary, O Spirit of perfect truth, 
The Three who would defend my cause, 
Nor turn their backs upon me. 

Thou, Father, who art kind and just, 
Thou, Son, who didst overcome death,
Thou, Holy Spirit of power,
Be keeping me this night from harm;
The Three who would justify me
Keeping me this night and always.

--from the Carmina Gadelica, collected by Alexander Carmichael (1832-1912) from the Outer Hebrides in Scotland

I Lie Down This Night

I lie down this night with God,

And God will lie down with me;

I lie down this night with Christ,

And Christ will lie down with me;

I lie down this night with Spirit,

And the Spirit will lie down with me;

God and Christ and the Spirit

Be lying down with me.

-- anonymous, collected by Alexander Carmichael, folklorist, and published in Carmina Gadelica (Hymns of the Gael) III

Insomnia

The moon in the bureau mirror
looks out a million miles
(and perhaps with pride, at herself,
but she never, never smiles)
far and away beyond sleep, or
perhaps she's a daytime sleeper.

By the Universe deserted,
she'd tell it to go to hell,
and she'd find a body of water,
or a mirror, on which to dwell.
So wrap up care in a cobweb
and drop it down the web

into that world inverted
where left is always right,
where the shadows are really the body,
where we stay awake all night,
where the heavens are shallow as the sea
is now deep, and you love me.

--Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979), American poet, US Poet Laureate 1949-1950, and Pulitzer Prize winner, from A Cold Spring (1955)