Springs Arrival

 

Painting by David Hockney

Spring's Arrival

I went for a wee.

In that moment I noticed something

Had perceptually shifted.

A lightness had blow in

Through the night on the winds.

Or was it the dance of the moonlight?

Whatever the way the traveller

Had changed their cloak.

The heaviness had lifted

And wintered given herself over to 

Spring. Just like That.

Or was it? I am no wiser as to how

And daily question my faith.

Clouds scuttle through internal skies.

What remains is Spring's

Indomitable warmth from the rays of

The rising sun and the swaying 

Golden daffodils.

  

Equinox Blessings

What to Remember When Waking

In that first hardly noticed moment in which you wake,
coming back to this life from the other
more secret, moveable and frighteningly honest world
where everything began,

there is a small opening into the new day
which closes the moment you begin your plans.

What you can plan is too small for you to live.
What you can live wholeheartedly will make plans enough
for the vitality hidden in your sleep.

To be human is to become visible
while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others.
To remember the other world in this world
is to live in your true inheritance.

You are not a troubled guest on this earth,
you are not an accident amidst other accidents
you were invited from another and greater night
than the one from which you have just emerged.

Now, looking through the slanting light of the morning window
toward the mountain presence of everything that can be
what urgency calls you to your one love?
What shape waits in the seed of you
to grow and spread its branches
against a future sky?

Is it waiting in the fertile sea?
In the trees beyond the house?
In the life you can imagine for yourself?
In the open and lovely white page on the writing desk?

-- David Whyte --

Ithaka

Ithaka

BY C. P. CAVAFY

TRANSLATED BY EDMUND KEELEY

As you set out for Ithaka

hope your road is a long one,

full of adventure, full of discovery.

Laistrygonians, Cyclops,

angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:

you’ll never find things like that on your way

as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,

as long as a rare excitement

stirs your spirit and your body.

Laistrygonians, Cyclops,

wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them

unless you bring them along inside your soul,

unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope your road is a long one.

May there be many summer mornings when,

with what pleasure, what joy,

you enter harbors you’re seeing for the first time;

may you stop at Phoenician trading stations

to buy fine things,

mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,

sensual perfume of every kind—

as many sensual perfumes as you can;

and may you visit many Egyptian cities

to learn and go on learning from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.

Arriving there is what you’re destined for.

But don’t hurry the journey at all.

Better if it lasts for years,

so you’re old by the time you reach the island,

wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,

not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.

Without her you wouldn't have set out.

She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.

Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,

you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

C. P. Cavafy, "The City" from C.P. Cavafy: Collected Poems. Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Translation Copyright © 1975, 1992 by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Reproduced with permission of Princeton University Press.

Source: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/51296/ithaka-56d22eef917ec

When someone deeply listens to you

When someone deeply listens to you

it is like holding out a dented cup
you've had since childhood
and watching it fill up with
cold, fresh water.
When it balances on top of the brim,
you are understood.
When it overflows and touches your skin,
you are loved.

When someone deeply listens to you
the room where you stay
starts a new life
and the place where you wrote
your first poem
begins to glow in your mind's eye.
It is as if gold has been discovered!

When someone deeply listens to you
your bare feet are on the earth
and a beloved land that seemed distant
is now at home within you.

By John Fox

Trust The Process of Change

Image: Alexandra Dvornikova 

Trust the process of change.

Sometimes a familiar thing needs to die

before an unfamiliar new sprout can grow.

Whether it is a big transition

or a wee, little one

fear is a normal emotion

on the path of transformation.

A wise friend once told me

that fear of the unknown

is excitement, holding its breath.

I remember this

when I am about to birth

new little things

or little big things.

And I remember that every mountain

has a path

and that the path itself

is as valuable

if not more so

than the mountaintop

because without it

you could not get to the very top to see the view.

The path seasons us

sometimes more

than the mind expansive eye opening

perspective

at the top.

When in doubt, remember

trust the process.

trust the journey.

trust the invisible and not so invisible

helpers

that assist us

across the rivers of change.

if that does not work

and all else fails

and you are scared

and feeling tiny

and know that you are about to birth

some kind of wonderful

just imagine that you are held

in the arms

of the great mother

the grandmother

the gentle forest mother bear spirit

of nourishing trust.

Words by The Wild Matryoshka

Sleeping In The Forest

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 -

Nikki Giovanni - Badass

I was born in the congo
I walked to the fertile crescent and built
the sphinx
I designed a pyramid so tough that a star
that only glows every one hundred years falls
into the center giving divine perfect light
I am bad

I sat on the throne
drinking nectar with allah
I got hot and sent an ice age to europe
to cool my thirst
My oldest daughter is nefertiti
the tears from my birth pains
created the nile

I am a beautiful woman
I gazed on the forest and burned
out the sahara desert
with a packet of goat's meat
and a change of clothes

I crossed it in two hours
I am a gazelle so swift
so swift you can't catch me
For a birthday present when he was three

I gave my son hannibal an elephant
He gave me rome for mother's day
My strength flows ever on
My son noah built new/ark and
I stood proudly at the helm
as we sailed on a soft summer day

I turned myself into myself and was
jesus
men intone my loving name
All praises All praises
I am the one who would save

I sowed diamonds in my back yard
My bowels deliver uranium
the filings from my fingernails are
semi-precious jewels
On a trip north

I caught a cold and blew
My nose giving oil to the arab world
I am so hip even my errors are correct
I sailed west to reach east and had to round off
the earth as I went
The hair from my head thinned and gold was laid
across three continents

I am so perfect so divine so ethereal so surreal
I cannot be comprehended
except by my permission

I mean . . . I . . . can fly
like a bird in the sky . . .

- Nikki Giovanni -

A Thousand Years of Healing

A thousand years of healing

From whence my hope, I cannot say,
Except it grows in the cells of my skin,
In my envelope of mysteries it hums.
In this sheath so akin to the surface of the earth
it whispers. Beneath
the wail and dissonance in the world,
hope’s song grows.
Until I know
that with this turning
we put a broken age to rest.
We who are alive at such a cusp
Now usher in
One thousand years of healing!

Winged ones and four leggeds,
Grasses and mountains and each tree,
All swimming creatures,
Even we, wary two leggeds
Hum, and call and create
The changing song. We remake
all our relations. We convert
our minds to the earth. In this turning time
we finally learn to chime and blend,
attune our voices; sing the vision
of the Great Magic we move within.
We begin
the new habit, getting up glad
for a thousand years of healing.

Susa Silvermarie

Joy

Joy like the spring feels
   as if she is untouchable
far away over the hill.
I know she's there,
   we want to meet again.
Her smile gives me hope.
   Allows me to take faint steps forward,
Another day passes,
     and she seems lost to me.
I hear her heartfelt voice calling me on
 over and over again.
She claims me back into the parts of me
that need quenching,
    like a slow warm Sunday walk
along the banks of the Dart
  No destination
Always home
   where I am meant to be
Spring returns once more
 and winter ebbs away

Kissing the Earth

An aspiration and intention setting for this coming first week of February 2020. 

Inshallah it may come to pass.

As it was

As it is

As it shall be

Lost Words Blessing for Imbolc

The Lost Words Blessing

Enter the wild with care, my love
And speak the things you see
Let new names take and root and thrive and grow
And even as you travel far from heather, crag and river
May you like the little fisher, set the stream alight with glitter
May you enter now as otter without falter into water

Look to the sky with care, my love
And speak the things you see
Let new names take and root and thrive and grow
And even as you journey on past dying stars exploding
Like the gilded one in flight, leave your little gifts of light
And in the dead of night my darling, find the gleaming eye of starling
Like the little aviator, sing your heart to all dark matter

Walk through the world with care, my love
And sing the things you see
Let new names take and root and thrive and grow
And even as you stumble through machair sands eroding
Let the fern unfurl your grieving, let the heron still your breathing
Let the selkie swim you deeper, oh my little silver-seeker
Even as the hour grows bleaker, be the singer and the speaker
And in city and in forest, let the larks become your chorus
And when every hope is gone, let the raven call you home

Fierce Aloneness

Fierce aloneness freezes my eyes shut,
         darkness pervades like a dampened heavy cloak
My shoulders fall forward
   the void of all voids
beckons me into her deep embrace
  This cannot be my fate
       Not now
         Not today

I fear falling and falling forever
Gripped by this place
I shout for HELP reaching my hands into the nothing

hands meet mine
   the most tender loving hands
that guide me, I know not how

I begin to place delicate tremulous steps before me
  the fear ebbing away
    my body unfurls like a flower in the spring sun.

Every Year With Out Fail

... why?