Diptych

Rothko

Silvery light of the western sky
In the pine boughs. I smile.
Then I smile again, just because I can.
I am not an old man. Not yet.

From "Twilight Comes" by Hayden Carruth

A Prayer among Friends

{Photo by Ben Barnes}

Among other wonders of our lives, we are alive
with one another, we walk here
in the light of this unlikely world
that isn't ours for long.
May we spend generously
the time we are given.
May we enact our responsibilities
as thoroughly as we enjoy our pleasures.
May we see with clarity,
may we seek a vision
that serves all beings, may we honor
the mystery surpassing our sight,
and may we hold in our hands
the gift of good work
and bear it forth whole, as we
were borne forth by a power we praise
to this one Earth, this homeland of all we love.

by John Daniel

What is Divinity

brianne-wills.com

What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth,
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?
Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch,
These are the measures destined for her soul.


by Wallace Stevens

Celebration

"Wind From the Sea" by Andrew Wyeth

Brilliant, this day—a young virtuoso of a day.
Morning shadows cut by sharpest scissors,
deft hands. And every prodigy of green—
whether it's ferns or lichen or needles
or impatient points of bud on spindly bushes—
greener than ever before.
                                               And the way the conifers
hold new cones to the light for blessing,
a festive rite, and sing the oceanic chant the wind
transcribes for them!
A day that shines in the cold
like a first-prize brass band swinging along the street
of a coal-dusty village, wholly at odds
with the claims of reasonable gloom.

By Denise Levertov

Aware

Tree Trunks With Ivy by Vincent Van Gogh

When I opened the door
I found the vine leaves
speaking among themselves in abundant
whispers.
                   My presence made them
hush their green breath,
embarrassed, the way
humans stand up, buttoning their jackets,
acting as if they were leaving anyway, as if
the conversation had ended
just before you arrived.
                                               I liked
the glimpse I had, though,
of their obscure
gestures. I liked the sound
of such private voices. Next time
I'll move like cautious sunlight, open
the door by fractions, eavesdrop
peacefully.

By Denise Levertov

Prayer for What is Lost

We are moving forward
or in some direction up,
down, east, west, to the side,
down the canyon walls,
watching the light fall
on the cliffs, which makes
the light seem ancient because
the red stone is hundreds
of millions of years old,
but the light is from today,
it is what the plants are moving
out of the earth to meet,
it heats the air that lifts the birds
that float and hover
over what is made from now.

By Stuart Kestenbaum

I Could Take

I could take
two leaves
         and give you one.
Would that not be
a kind of perfection?

But I prefer
one leaf
         torn to give you half
              showing

(after these years, simply)
love's complexity in an act,
         the tearing and
              the unique edges —
one leaf (one word) from the two
imperfections that match.




-Hayden Carruth


{"Pink Dish and Green Leaves," Georgia O'Keeffe}

Woman Feeding Chickens

Her hand is at the feedbag at her waist,
sunk to the wrist in the rustling grain
that nuzzles her fingertips when laced
around a sifting handful. It's like rain,
like cupping water in your hand, she thinks,
the cracks between the fingers like a sieve,
except that less escapes you through the chinks
when handling grain. She likes to feel it give
beneath her hand's slow plummet, and the smell,
so rich a fragrance she has never quite
got used to it, under the seeming spell
of the charm of the commonplace. The white
hens bunch and strut, heads cocked, with tilted eyes,
till her hand sweeps out and the small grain flies.


-Roy Scheele


{"The Sick Chicken" by Winslow Homer"}

Tree Marriage

In Chota Nagpur and Bengal
the betrothed are tied with threads to
mango trees, they marry the trees
as well as one another, and
the two trees marry each other.
Could we do that some time with oaks
or beeches? This gossamer we
hold each other with, this web
of love and habit is not enough.
In mistrust of heavier ties,
I would like tree-siblings for us,
standing together somewhere,
two trees married with us, lightly, their
fingers barely touching in sleep,
our threads invisible but holding.


By William Meredith


{photo by Alisa Demidova}

Clover

These are fragrant acres where
Evening comes long hours late
And the still unmoving air
Cools the fevered hands of Fate. 


Meadows where the afternoon
Hangs suspended in a flower
And the moments of our doom
Drift upon a weightless hour.


And we who thought that surely night
Would bring us triumph or defeat
Only find the stars are white
Clover at our naked feet.


By Tennessee Williams


{image credit}

Reading Hemingway

Reading Hemingway makes me so hungry,
for jambon, cheeses, and a dry white wine.
Cold, of course, very cold. And very dry.

Reading Hemingway makes some folks angry:
the hip drinking, the bitter pantomime.
But reading Hemingway makes me hungry

for the good life, the sun, the fish, the sky:
blue air, white water, dinner on the line . . .
Had it down cold, he did. And dry. Real dry.

But Papa had it all, the brio, the Brie:
clear-eyed, tight-lipped, advancing on a stein . . .
Reading Hemingway makes me so hungry,

I'd knock down Monsieur Stevens, too, if I
drank too much retsina before we dined.
(Too old, that man, and way too cold. And dry

enough to rub one's famished nerves awry,
kept talking past the kitchen's closing time!)
Reading Hemingway makes me so hungry . . .
And cold, of course. So cold. And very dry.


by James Cummins

Love at First Sight

You always hear about it— 
a waitress serves a man two eggs 
over easy and she says to the cashier, 
That is the man I'm going to marry, 
and she does. Or a man spies a woman 
at a baseball game; she is blond 
and wearing a blue headband, 
and, being a man, he doesn't say this 
or even think it, but his heart is a homing bird 
winging to her perch, and next thing you know 
they're building birdhouses in the garage. 
How do they know, these auspicious lovers? 
They are like passengers on a yellow 
bus painted with the dreams 
of innumerable lifetimes, a packet 
of sepia postcards in their pocket. 
And who's to say they haven't traveled
backward for centuries through borderless 
lands, only to arrive at this roadside attraction 
where Chance meets Necessity and says, 
What time do you get off? 


  —Jennifer Maier

Welcome, Morning

There is joy
in all:
in the hair I brush each morning,
in the Cannon towel, newly washed,
that I rub my body with each morning,
in the chapel of eggs I cook
each morning,
in the outcry from the kettle
that heats my coffee
each morning,
in the spoon and the chair 
that cry "hello there, Anne"
each morning,
in the godhead of the table
that I set my silver, plate, cup upon
each morning.


All this is God,
right here in my pea-green house
each morning
and I mean,
though often forget,
to give thanks,
to faint down by the kitchen table
in a prayer of rejoicing
as the holy birds at the kitchen window
peck into their marriage of seeds.


So while I think of it,
let me paint a thank-you on my palm
for this God, this laughter of the morning, 
lest it go unspoken.


The Joy that isn't shared, I've heard,
dies young.




-Anne Sexton


{image by Andrew Wyeth}

Mary Oliver

She's my favorite poet, and here she is reading my favorite poem of all time (at 1:50), as well as a few other goodies. I seriously started crying when I first heard her read it. Hearing it makes my soul feel so much better. 

“A kiss on the forehead”

A kiss on the forehead—erases misery.
I kiss your forehead.

A kiss on the eyes—lifts sleeplessness.
I kiss your eyes.

A kiss on the lips—is a drink of water.
I kiss your lips.

A kiss on the forehead—erases memory.


BY MARINA TSVETAEVA

The Way We Were Made

But you made every
delicate, elegant wrist
& glistening ankle.
But you made them
beautiful
in braided rope
& dime store gold.
But you made every
necklace clasp.
But you made them
caress the nape
like an errant wind
after a shower.
But you made every
eyelash erotic. Every
single strand of hair
soft.
But you made them
from dust & bone.
Made every glorious
singing thigh. Every
button nose.
But you made them
with holes—
wide open
to the faintest hints
of salt
in a sea breeze, salt
in the sweaty mouth
of a navel, salt
in the blood, sweet
in every wrong way.


BY MARCUS WICKER

An Exercise in Love

My friend wears my scarf at his waist
I give him moonstones
He gives me shell & seaweeds
He comes from a distant city & I meet him
We will plant eggplants & celery together
He weaves me cloth

----- Many have brought the gifts
----- I use for his pleasure
----- silk, & green hills
----- & heron the color of dawn

My friend walks soft as a weaving on the wind
He backlights my dreams
He has built altars beside my bed
I awake in the smell of his hair & cannot remember
his name, or my own.


BY DIANE DI PRIMA

for Jackson Allen

[love is more thicker than forget]

{photo by Tim Walker}

love is more thicker than forget
more thinner than recall
more seldom than a wave is wet
more frequent than to fail

it is more mad and moonly
and less it shall unbe
than all the sea which only
is deeper than the sea

love is less always than to win
less never than alive
less bigger than the least begin
less littler than forgive

it is most sane and sunly
and more it cannot die
than all the sky which only
is higher than the sky


BY E. E. CUMMINGS

In the Middle of Dinner

{image credit}

my mother put down her knife and fork,
pulled her wedding ring from its groove,
placing it contemplatively on her middle
finger. So natural was the move,
so tender, I almost didn’t notice.
Five years, she said, five years, once a week,
I wrote a letter to your father. And waited
until time was like ash on my tongue.
Not one letter back, not a single note.
She sighed, smiling, the weight gone. This
prime rib is really tender, isn’t it? she asked.


BY CHRIS ABANI

Quietly

Lying here quietly beside you,
My cheek against your firm, quiet thighs,
The calm music of Boccherini
Washing over us in the quiet,
As the sun leaves the housetops and goes
Out over the Pacific, quiet-
So quiet the sun moves beyond us,
So quiet as the sun always goes,
So quiet, our bodies, worn with the
Times and the penances of love, our
Brains curled, quiet in their shells, dormant,
Our hearts slow, quiet, reliable
In their interlocked rhythms, the pulse
In your thigh caressing my cheek. Quiet.


By Kenneth Rexroth