Poem for 12/30/22 - The Need Is So Great by Jim Moore

 

The Need Is So Great

Jim Moore

Sometimes I just sit like this at the window and watch the darkness come. If I’m smart, I’ll put on Bach. I’m thinking now of how far it always seems there is to go. Maybe it is too easy that I speak so often of late last light on a December day, of that stubborn grass that somehow still remains green behind the broken chain link fence on the corner. But the need is so great for the way light looks as it takes its leave of us. We say what we can to each other of these things, we who are such thieves, stealing first one breath and then the next. Bach, keep going just this slowly, show me the way to believe that what matters in this world has already happened and will go on happening forever. The way light falls on the last of the stricken leaves of the copper beech at the end of the block is something to behold.

Poem for 12/28/22 - Why Are Your Poems so Dark? by Linda Pastan

 Why Are Your Poems so Dark?

BY LINDA PASTAN

Isn't the moon dark too,

most of the time?

And doesn't the white page

seem unfinished

without the dark stain

of alphabets?

When God demanded light,

he didn't banish darkness.

Instead he invented

ebony and crows

and that small mole

on your left cheekbone.

Or did you mean to ask

"Why are you sad so often?"

Ask the moon.

Ask what it has witnessed.

Poem for 12/27/22 - In the Shadows by Rami Shapiro

In the Shadows

by Rami Shapiro

I live my life in the shadows:

shadows of doubt,

shadows of regret,

shadows of guilt,

shadows of half baked ideas

and overcooked ones.

There is nothing wrong

with living in the shadows.

Living in the dark, however,

is something else.

Living in the shadows

you know there is light.

Living in the dark

you know nothing of light.

Living in the shadows

you can always walk

toward the light.

Living in the dark

there is no light

toward which to walk.

Assist those who

live in the shadows.

Resist those who

live in the dark.

Poem for 12/26/22 - "Open your eyes to the four streams..." by Rumi, translated by Haleh Liza Gafori

Open your eyes to the four streams

by Rumi, translated by Haleh Liza Gafori

Listen to an interview with the translator here.

Open your eyes to the four streams

flowing through you-

water, milk, honey, wine.

Pay no attention to what gossips say.

They call the wide-eyed flower jasmine.

They call the wide-eyed flower a thorn.

The wide-eyed flower doesn't care what they call it.

I Adore that freedom. I bow to it.

Some say you worship fire.

Some say you follow scripture.

What do they know?

Labels blind and tear us apart.

Your eyes are not a vulture's beak.

See through the Beloved's eyes.

See one when your mind says two.

The angels adore your Love-drunk eyes.

Open them

and dismiss the vicious judge

from the post you gave him.

Bow to a human

and greet the angel.

(Here's another version I found on the internet--always interesting to compare translations from languages I do not read!)

Your first eyes

A lover has four streams inside,
of water, wine, honey and milk.

Find those in yourself and pay no attention
what so-and-so says about such-and-such.

The rose does not care
if someone calls it a thorn, or a jasmine.

Ordinary eyes categorize human beings.
That one is Zoroastrian. This one, Muslim.

Walk instead with the other vision given you, your first eyes.
Do not squint and do not stare blankly like a vulture.

Those who love fire fall in the fire.
A fly slips from the edge into the whey.

If you are in love with the infinite,
why grieve over the ground washing away in the rain?

Bow to the essence in a human being.
A desert drinks war-blood,
but if it knew this secret, springs would rise, rose gardens.

Do not be content with judging people good and bad.
Grow out of that. The great blessing is
that Shams has poured a strength into the ground
that lets us wait and trust the waiting.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Version by Coleman Barks

Poem for 12/22/22 - "the earth is a living thing" by Lucille Clifton

I found reference to this poem in a provocative blog post by rabbinical student and S'vara Fellow Kendra Watkins. You can find their essay here. 

the earth is a living thing

Lucille Clifton - 1936-2010

is a black shambling bear ruffling its wild back and tossing mountains into the sea

is a black hawk circling 
the burying ground circling the bones
picked clean and discarded

is a fish black blind in the belly of water
is a diamond blind in the black belly of coal

is a black and living thing 
is a favorite child
of the universe
feel her rolling her hand
in its kinky hair
feel her brushing it clean

Poem for 12/21/22 - AIMLESS LOVE by Billy Collins

 

AIMLESS LOVE

by Billy Collins

This morning as I walked along the lakeshore,
I fell in love with a wren
and later in the day with a mouse
the cat had dropped under the dining room table.
 
In the shadows of an autumn evening,
I fell for a seamstress
still at her machine in the tailor’s window,
and later for a bowl of broth,
steam rising like smoke from a naval battle.
 
This is the best kind of love, I thought,
without recompense, without gifts,
or unkind words, without suspicion,
or silence on the telephone.
 
The love of the chestnut,
the jazz cap and one hand on the wheel.
 
No lust, no slam of the door –
the love of the miniature orange tree,
the clean white shirt, the hot evening shower,
the highway that cuts across Florida.
 
No waiting, no huffiness, or rancor –
just a twinge every now and then
 
for the wren who had built her nest
on a low branch overhanging the water
and for the dead mouse,
still dressed in its light brown suit.
 
But my heart is always propped up
in a field on its tripod,
ready for the next arrow.
 
After I carried the mouse by the tail
to a pile of leaves in the woods,
I found myself standing at the bathroom sink
gazing down affectionately at the soap,
 
so patient and soluble,
so at home in its pale green soap dish.
I could feel myself falling again
as I felt its turning in my wet hands
and caught the scent of lavender and stone.

Poem for 12/20/22 - Miracles by Walt Whitman

 

Miracles

Walt Whitman - 1819-1892

Why, who makes much of a miracle?
As to me I know of nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water,
Or stand under trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep in the bed at night with any one I love,
Or sit at table at dinner with the rest,
Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,
Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon,
Or animals feeding in the fields,
Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,
Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so quiet and bright,
Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring;
These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,
The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.

To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same,
Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.

To me the sea is a continual miracle,
The fishes that swim—the rocks—the motion of the waves—the
        ships with men in them,
What stranger miracles are there?