e.e. cummings - may my heart always be open to little... (19) 

may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old
  
may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if it's sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young
  
and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there's never been quite such a fool who could fail
pulling all the sky over him with one smile

Light breaks where no sun shines  
by Dylan Thomas 

 
Light breaks where no sun shines;
Where no sea runs, the waters of the heart
Push in their tides;
And, broken ghosts with glow-worms in their heads,
The things of light
File through the flesh where no flesh decks the bones.

A candle in the thighs
Warms youth and seed and burns the seeds of age;
Where no seed stirs,
The fruit of man unwrinkles in the stars,
Bright as a fig;
Where no wax is, the candle shows its hairs.

Dawn breaks behind the eyes;
From poles of skull and toe the windy blood
Slides like a sea;
Nor fenced, nor staked, the gushers of the sky
Spout to the rod
Divining in a smile the oil of tears.

Night in the sockets rounds,
Like some pitch moon, the limit of the globes;
Day lights the bone;
Where no cold is, the skinning gales unpin
The winter's robes;
The film of spring is hanging from the lids.

Light breaks on secret lots,
On tips of thought where thoughts smell in the rain;
When logics dies,
The secret of the soil grows through the eye,
And blood jumps in the sun;
Above the waste allotments the dawn halts.

After a Death  
by Tomas Tranströmer
Translated by Robert Bly 

 
Once there was a shock
that left behind a long, shimmering comet tail.
It keeps us inside. It makes the TV pictures snowy.
It settles in cold drops on the telephone wires.

One can still go slowly on skis in the winter sun
through brush where a few leaves hang on.
They resemble pages torn from old telephone directories.
Names swallowed by the cold.

It is still beautiful to hear the heart beat
but often the shadow seems more real than the body.
The samurai looks insignificant
beside his armor of black dragon scales.

Carl Sandburg - For You 

THE PEACE of great doors be for you.
Wait at the knobs, at the panel oblongs.
Wait for the great hinges.
 
The peace of great churches be for you,
Where the players of loft pipe organs
Practice old lovely fragments, alone.
 
The peace of great books be for you,
Stains of pressed clover leaves on pages,
Bleach of the light of years held in leather.
 
The peace of great prairies be for you.
Listen among windplayers in cornfields,
The wind learning over its oldest music
 
The peace of great seas be for you.
Wait on a hook of land, a rock footing
For you, wait in the salt wash.
 
The peace of great mountains be for you,
The sleep and the eyesight of eagles,
Sheet mist shadows and the long look across.
 
The peace of great hearts be for you,
Valves of the blood of the sun,
Pumps of the strongest wants we cry.
 
The peace of great silhouettes be for you,
Shadow dancers alive in your blood now,
Alive and crying, “Let us out, let us out.”
 
The peace of great changes be for you.
Whisper, Oh beginners in the hills.
Tumble, Oh cubs—to-morrow belongs to you.
 
The peace of great loves be for you.
Rain, soak these roots; wind, shatter the dry rot.
Bars of sunlight, grips of the earth, hug these.
 
The peace of great ghosts be for you,
Phantoms of night-gray eyes, ready to go
To the fog-star dumps, to the fire-white doors.
 
Yes, the peace of great phantoms be for you,
Phantom iron men, mothers of bronze,
Keepers of the lean clean breeds.

( warm bright open smiles for B )

People in the Wind  
by Margot Farrington 

 
Inside the wood stove the smith steadies,
proclaims his alliance with flame as
heat quickens his hammer. And the singer, at first
inaudible, fashions her rising song from seasons
stored within logs of seasoned cherry, birch.

I have delighted in their concert
winter days and nights, rapt before
doors framed in brass, their
glass etched with twin wreaths. Circles
that focused wonders I am about to mention:
livid saints and salamanders,
paraphernalia of magicians
performing—with blue fluidity—
their act without their masters.
   And always before curtain, the casket
split asunder, the thief’s hand passing over
unattainable gems.

But now there are people in the wind;
the chimney sucks them down. I hear the
singer inhale a choir; voice of thousands.
A purity of anguish to leave the listener
breathless. The notes, the notes are inferno;
the smith beats out a knell.
Those ashes I spill tomorrow
upon freshly fallen snow
have already blown for days across the city.

The Ever-Patient Woman
by Andree Chedid 

In the flowing sap
In her growing fever
Parting her veils
Cracking out of her shells
Sliding out of her skins

The ever-patient woman
Slowly
gives herself
life

In her volcanoes
In her orchards
Seeking solidity and measure
Clasping her most tender flesh
Straining every fine-honed fiber

The ever-patient woman
Slowly
gives herself
light.

My Morning Jacket

Kathleen Lolley

Giving Myself Up
by Mark Strand

I give up my eyes which are glass eggs.
I give up my tongue.
I give up my mouth which is the contstant dream of my tongue.
I give up my throat which is the sleeve of my voice.
I give up my heart which is a burning apple.
I give up my lungs which are trees that have never seen the moon.
I give up my smell which is that of a stone traveling through rain.
I give up my hands which are ten wishes.
I give up my arms which have wanted to leave me anyway.
I give up my legs which are lovers only at night.
I give up my buttocks which are the moons of childhood.
I give up my penis which whispers encouragement to my thighs.
I give up my clothes which are walls that blow in the wind
and I give up the ghost that lives in them.
I give up. I give up.
And you will have none of it because already I am beginning
again without anything.

Not Love Perhaps
by A.S.J. Tessimond

This is not Love, perhaps,
Love that lays down its life,
that many waters cannot quench,
nor the floods drown,
But something written in lighter ink,
said in a lower tone, something, perhaps, especially our own.

A need, at times, to be together and talk,
And then the finding we can walk
More firmly through dark narrow places,
And meet more easily nightmare faces;
A need to reach out, sometimes, hand to hand,
And then find Earth less like an alien land;
A need for alliance to defeat
The whisperers at the corner of the street.

A need for inns on roads, islands in seas,
Halts for discoveries to be shared,
Maps checked, notes compared;
A need, at times, of each for each,
Direct as the need of throat and tongue for speech.

A winged spark doth soar about
by Emily Dickinson 

A winged spark doth soar about --
I never met it near
For Lightning it is oft mistook
When nights are hot and sere --

Its twinkling Travels it pursues
Above the Haunts of men --
A speck of Rapture -- first perceived
By feeling it is gone --
Rekindled by some action quaint

Noah's a meadow this year

( more pix )

If Hands Could Free You, Heart
by Philip Larkin

If hands could free you, heart,
  Where would you fly?
Far, beyond every part
Of earth this running sky
Makes desolate?  Would you cross
City and hill and sea,
  If hands could set you free?

I would not lift the latch;
  For I could run
Through fields, pit-valleys, catch
All beauty under the sun--
Still end in loss:
I should find no bent arm, no bed
  To rest my head.
 

Everything That Acts Is Actual
by Denise Levertov

From the tawny light
from the rainy nights
from the imagination finding
itself and more than itself
alone and more than alone
at the bottom of the well where the moon lives,
can you pull me

into December? a lowland
of space, perception of space
towering of shadows of clouds blown upon
clouds over new ground, new made
under heavy December footsteps? the only
way to live?

The flawed moon acts on the truth, and makes
an autumn of tentative silences.
You lived, but somewhere else,
your presence touched others, ring upon ring,
and changed. Did you think I would not change?

The black moon turns away, its work done.
A tenderness, unspoken autumn.
We are faithful only to the imagination.
What the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth.
What holds you to what you see of me is
that grasp alone.

I love being Noah's Mom.

Now!
by Robert Browning 

Out of your whole life give but a moment!
All of your life that has gone before,
All to come after it, -- so you ignore,
So you make perfect the present, condense,
In a rapture of rage, for perfection's endowment,
Thought and feeling and soul and sense,
Merged in a moment which gives me at last
You around me for once, you beneath me, above me --
Me, sure that, despite of time future, time past,
This tick of life-time's one moment you love me!
How long such suspension may linger? Ah, Sweet,
The moment eternal -- just that and no more --
When ecstasy's utmost we clutch at the core,
While cheeks burn, arms open, eyes shut, and lips meet!

Breath Is Enough
by Robert William Service 

I draw sweet air
Deeply and long,
As pure as prayer,
As sweet as song.
Where lilies glow
And roses wreath,
Heart-joy I know
Is just to breathe.

Aye, so I think
By shore or sea,
As deep I drink
Of purity.
This brave machine,
Bare to the buff,
I keep ice-clean,
Breath is enough.

From mountain stream
To covert cool
The world, I deem,
Is wonderful;
The great, the small,
The smooth, the rough,
I love it all,--
Breath is enough.

27,000 Miles  
by Albert Goldbarth 

These two asleep . . . so indrawn and compact,
like lavish origami animals returned

to slips of paper once again; and then
the paper once again become a string

of pith, a secret that the plant hums to itself . . . .
You see? — so often we envy the grandiose, the way

those small toy things of Leonardo’s want to be
the great, air-conquering and miles-eating

living wings
they’re modeled on.  And the bird flight is

amazing: simultaneously strength,
escape, caprice: the Artic tern completes

its trip of nearly 27,000 miles every year;
a swan will frighten bears away

by angry aerial display of flapping wingspan.
But it isn’t all flight; they also

fold; and at night on the water or in the eaves
they package their bodies

into their bodies, smaller, and deeply
smaller yet: migrating a similar distance

in the opposite direction.

There is a girl inside
by Lucille Clifton
  

There is a girl inside.
She is randy as a wolf.
She will not walk away and leave these bones
to an old woman.

She is a green tree in a forest of kindling.
She is a greeen girl in a used poet.

She has waited patient as a nun
for the second coming,
when she can break through gray hairs
into blossom

and her lovers will harvest
honey and thyme
and the woods will be wild
with the damn wonder of it.

Palm
by Rainer Maria Rilke 

Interior of the hand. Sole that has come to walk
only on feelings. That faces upward
and in its mirror
receives heavenly roads, which travel
along themselves.
That has learned to walk upon water
when it scoops,
that walks upon wells,
transfiguring every path.
That steps into other hands,
changes those that are like it
into a landscape:
wanders and arrives within them,
fills them with arrival.

***********************************************

light heart

smile

warm

home

love you

circled

~ O ~

Hundreds Of Sparrows
by Sparklehorse
 
Every hair on your head is counted
You are worth hundreds of sparrows
The tree you planted has become fecund
With kamikaze hummingbirds

Wings of hundreds of beats per second
By people whose wings are just a blur
Afraid our eyes might become impaled
By their sharp and tiny beaks

I'm so sorry
My spirit's rarely in my body
It wanders through the dry country
Looking for a good place to rest
Your head upon my chest
And I can feel the pillow of your breast

You are worth Hundreds of Sparrows

( The Next Place )

Passage  
by Eve Alexandra 

Tiny jewels of sand and salt spill from her mouth. Her
lips lie like cloistered nuns. But her ears--they open like
lilies. And suddenly all around her there are songs being
sung. New notes slick and green, currency on everyone
else’s tongue. Her own was slow, cut from the wrong cloth,
it hadn’t been out on the town in years. When it slipped
out it wore shoes of cordovan and danced the old dances
like somebody’s grandmother. There had been a book like the
big screen. She had slept for years on pages of silk and sweet
organza. Her legs opening fields of lavender and white space.
And the babies. It’s true she had wished for them. But
this chapter she had wrapped tight, kissed their little
heads and left them sleeping. She was prepared to be a murderer,
to be the worst kind of woman if that’s what it took. She
would later her best black dress and make it new. She would
pray for red shoes. She who had chattered away inside
her won mind through miles of salt and sea was not afraid to
dine alone. She would go to the finest of restaurants and
point to the menu. Her teeth would bite and her tongue
would remember: asparagus, quail egg, tiramisu. When
she cleaned her plate she would stare down into it like a
mirror, the tiny pond where she had said goodnight to her
two sons. It would blink back, her third eye. The city
sparkles before her. Oh glory of glass, oh gloss of
steel. Waltzing back through the maze of brilliance, past the
park and public library, the lions purring, her teeth
clicking, the alliteration of old avenues and boulevards,
the constellations necking with the skyline, the chambers
of her heart glowing now, her blood orchestral, the little
cells, the millions clapping--the men she passes, their
mouths itching Aren’t you? Do I? Didn’t she?