The Love of Morning

It is hard sometimes to drag ourselves 

back to the love of morning
after we've lain in the dark crying out
O God, save us from the horror . . . .

 

God has saved the world one more day
even with its leaden burden of human evil;
we wake to birdsong.
And if sunlight's gossamer lifts in its net
the weight of all that is solid,
our hearts, too, are lifted,
swung like laughing infants;

 

 but on gray mornings,
all incident - our own hunger,
the dear tasks of continuance,
the footsteps before us in the earth's
beloved dust, leading the way - all,
is hard to love again
for we resent a summons
that disregards our sloth, and this
calls us, calls us.

 

~ Denise Levertov

This Old World

We are but

recent visitors

in this

old world.

Try To Understand

Do not deny

the intimacies perceived

in the provenance 

of gathered images

framed and influenced 

by strong beliefs 

and personal recollections

as you struggle to paint

a particular alphabet 

composed in black 

silhouette.

If anything…

Try to understand

something

of the semblance

of their history,

attending to

the tiniest pieces

of life in the

interrogation of
each impression's

raw data.

The Fire In The Song

The mouth opens and fills the air with its vibrant shape
Until the air and the mouth become one shape
And the first word
your own word
Spoken from that fire
Surprises burns
Grieves you now because you made that pact
With the dark presence in your life
He said, “If you only stop singing
I’ll make you safe”
And he repeated the line,
“I’ll make you safe”.
Knowing you would hear it as the comforting sound
Of a door closed on the fear at last

But his darkness slipped under your tongue and became the dim cave
Where you sheltered and grew in that small place
Too frightened to remember the songs of the world
Its impossible notes
And the sweet joy that flew out the door
Of your wild mouth as you spoke

 

~ David Whyte

Shaking The Tree

Vine and branch we’re connected in this world 

of sound and echo, figure and shadow, the leaves
contingent, roots pushing against earth. An apple
 
belongs to itself, to stem and tree, to air
that claims it, then ground. Connections
balance, each motion changes another. Precarious,
 
hanging together, we don’t know what our lives
support, and we touch in the least shift of breathing.
Each holy thing is borrowed.  Everything depends.

 

~ Jeanne Lohmann 

Anyone Can Sing

Anyone can sing. You just open your mouth, 

and give shape to a sound. Anyone can sing.
What is harder, is to proclaim the soul,
to initiate a wild and necessary deepening:
to give the voice broad, sonorous wings
of solitude, grief, and celebration,
to fill the body with the echoes of voices
lost long ago to bravery, and silence,
to prise the reluctant heart wide open,
to witness defeat, to suffer contempt,
to shrink, lose face, go down in ignominy,
to retreat to the last dark hiding-place
where the tattered remnants of your pride
still gather themselves around your nakedness,
to know these rags as your only protection
and yet still open - to face the possibility
that your innermost core may hold nothing at all,
and to sing from that - to fill the void
with every hurt, every harm, every hard-won joy
that staves off death yet honours its coming,
to sing both full and utterly empty,
alone and conjoined, exiled and at home,
to sing what people feel most keenly
yet never acknowledge until you sing it.
Anyone can sing. Yes. Anyone can sing.

~ William Ayot

A Morning Offering

I bless the night that nourished my heart

To set the ghosts of longing free
Into the flow and figure of dream
That went to harvest from the dark
Bread for the hunger no one sees.

 

All that is eternal in me
Welcome the wonder of this day,
The field of brightness it creates
Offering time for each thing
To arise and illuminate.

 

I place on the altar of dawn:
The quiet loyalty of breath,
The tent of thought where I shelter,
Wave of desire I am shore to
And all beauty drawn to the eye.

 

May my mind come alive today
To the invisible geography
That invites me to new frontiers,
To break the dead shell of yesterdays,
To risk being disturbed and changed.

 

May I have the courage today
To live the life that I would love,
To postpone my dream no longer
But do at last what I came here for
And waste my heart on fear no more.

 

~ John O'Donohue

Self Portrait

It doesn't interest me if there is one God

or many gods.

I want to know if you belong or feel

abandoned.

If you know despair or can see it in others.

I want to know 

if you are prepared to live in the world

with its harsh need

to change you. If you can look back

with firm eyes

saying this is where I stand. I want to know

if you know 

how to melt into that fierce heat of living

falling toward

the center of your longing. I want to know

if you are willing

to live, day by day, with the consequence of love

and the bitter

unwanted passion of your sure defeat.

I have heard, in that fierce embrace, even

the gods speak of God.

  

– David Whyte

That In-Between Time

Sleepwalking through

established dimensions,

where thought conjoins
in strange, yet
satisfying patterns.

Fragments of the visible 

world force focus on what is 

in front of us, verifying

what is know and felt.

 Jumping hopscotch,

we toy with words and colours 

that swirl in our minds, 

in search of some kind of
rhythm to life.