two words for all

I don't think this quote was intended to be poetry, but to me, it qualifies. Thanks to this gratitude-inducing friend for the reference (in her profile).

And thanks to you for reading!

---

For all that has been, thanks.

For all that will be, yes.

Dag Hammarskjold

what to remember when waking

by David Whyte

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 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 waiting desk?

we swept away

I love the bold, strong, sensuous nature of this poem. It feels childlike -- full of energy, memory, innocence...and yet so full of adult longing. The poet's choice to "personify" childhood experiences through the figure of horses gives those memories a size and majesty that just feels...right. As I think about how I've been formed by long-ago moments in my life, I realize that they do indeed carry weight and power that's intimidating, calming, wild, and beautiful.

---

There Were Horses
by Annie Lighthart

There were horses in all our days.

An open white page in any book was a lean white horse

looking out, and a swollen door stuttering at night

was the breath and stamp of a horse nearby.

Boys ran like horses

and our hidden eyes in the oak trees

wore their depth of amber.

Even the mountain swung its back low between peaks

and moved into the plain of darkness

like a horse coming home.

Those days we brushed each other's hair like the manes of horses

and with their kindness gave each other kingly gifts.

We stood skin to skin in the rain. We swept away the gathering flies.

such a kiss

Gate C22

by Ellen Bass

At gate C22 in the Portland airport

a man in a broad-band leather hat kissed

a woman arriving from Orange County.

They kissed and kissed and kissed. Long after

the other passengers clicked the handles of their carry-ons

and wheeled briskly toward short-term parking,

the couple stood there, arms wrapped around each other

like she'd just staggered off the boat at Ellis Island,

like she'd been released from ICU, snapped

out of a coma, survived bone cancer, made it down

from Annapurna in only the clothes she was wearing.

Neither of them was young. His beard was gray.

She carried a few extra pounds you could imagine

her saying she had to lose. But they kissed lavish

kisses like the ocean in the early morning,

the way it gathers and swells, sucking

each rock under, swallowing it

again and again. We were all watching--

passengers waiting for the delayed flight

to San Jose, the stewardesses, the pilots,

the aproned woman icing Cinnabons, the man selling

sunglasses. We couldn't look away. We could

taste the kisses crushed in our mouths.

But the best part was his face. When he drew back

and looked at her, his smile soft with wonder, almost

as though he were a mother still open from giving birth,

as your mother must have looked at you, no matter

what happened after -- if she beat you or left you or

you're lonely now -- you once lay there, the vernix

not yet wiped off, and someone gazed at you

as you were the first sunrise seen from the Earth.

The whole wing of the airport hushed,

all of us trying to slip into the woman's middle-aged body,

her plaid Bermuda shorts, sleeveless blouse, glasses,

little gold hoop earrings, tilting our heads up.

smell!

Such a great one.

----

by William Carlos Williams

Oh strong-ridged and deeply hollowed

nose of mine! what will you not be smelling?

What tactless asses we are, you and I, boney nose,

always indiscriminate, always unashamed,

and now it is the souring flowers of the bedraggled

poplars: a festering pulp on the wet earth

beneath them. With what deep thirst

we quicken our desires

to that rank odor of a passing springtime!

Can you not be decent? Can you not reserve your ardors

for something less unlovely? What girl will care

for us, do you think, if we continue in these ways?

Must you taste everything? Must you know everything?

Must you have a part in everything?

now i lay...

44

by e. e. cummings

Now i lay(with everywhere around)

me(the great dim deep sound

of rain;and of always and of nowhere)and

what a gently welcoming darkestness--

now i lay me down(in a most steep

more than music)feeling that sunlight is

(life and day are)only loaned:whereas

night is given(night and death and the rain

are given;and given is how beautifully snow)

now i lay me down to dream of(nothing

i or any somebody or you

can begin to begin to imagine)

something which nobody may keep.

now i lay me down to dream of Spring

he is risen indeed

Happy Easter to you. :)

Briefly It Enters, and Briefly Speaks

by Jane Kenyon

I am the blossom pressed in a book,

found again after two hundred years...

I am the maker, the lover, and the keeper...

When the young girl who starves

sits down to a table

she will sit beside me...

I am food on the prisoner's plate...

I am water rushing to the wellhead,

filling the pitcher until it spills...

I am the patient gardener

of the dry and weedy garden...

I am the stone step,

the latch, and the working hinge...

I am the heart contracted by joy...

the longest hair, white

before the rest...

I am there in the basket of fruit

presented to the widow...

I am the musk rose opening

unattended, the fern on the boggy summit...

I am the one whose love

overcomes you, already with you

when you think to call my name...