Wild Words: Ferociously Nourishing Poetry

Keep Me Fully Glad

9/24/2023

Photo by Rodolpho Sanches Carvolho

Keep me fully glad with nothing. Only take my hand in your hand.
In the gloom of the deepening night take up my heart and play with it as you list. Bind me close to you with nothing.
I will spread myself out at your feet and lie still. Under this clouded sky I will meet silence with silence. I will become one with the night clasping the earth in my breast.
Make my life glad with nothing.
The rains sweep the sky from end to end. Jasmines in the wet untamable wind revel in their own perfume. The cloud-hidden stars thrill in secret. Let me fill to the full my heart with nothing but my own depth of joy.

- Rabindranath Tagore

On the Other Side, for Equinox

9/17/2023

Grass Cocoon
Grass sculpture and photo by Jeanne K. Simmons

Through the looking glass,
down the rabbit hole,
into the wardrobe and out
into the enchanted forest
where animals talk
and danger lurks and nothing
works quite the way it did before,
you have fallen into a new story.
It is possible that you
are much bigger—or smaller--
than you thought.
It is possible to drown
in the ocean of your own tears.
It is possible that mysterious friends
have armed you with magical weapons
you don’t yet understand,
but which you will need
to save your own life and the world.
Everything here is foreign.
Nothing quite makes sense.
That’s how it works.
Do not confuse the beginning
of the story with the end.

- Lynn Ungar

Camas Lilies

9/10/2023

Photo by Aaron Cloward

Consider the lilies of the field,
the blue banks of camas opening
into acres of sky along the road.
Would the longing to lie down
and be washed by that beauty
abate if you knew their usefulness,
how the natives ground their bulbs
for flour, how the settlers’ hogs
uprooted them, grunting in gleeful
oblivion as the flowers fell?
And you—what of your rushed
and useful life? Imagine setting it all down--
papers, plans, appointments, everything--
leaving only a note: “Gone
to the fields to be lovely. Be back
when I’m through with blooming.”
Even now, unneeded and uneaten,
the camas lilies gaze out above the grass
from their tender blue eyes.
Even in sleep your life will shine.
Make no mistake. Of course
your work will always matter.
Yet Solomon in all his glory
was not arrayed like one of these.

- Lynn Ungar

Yes, We Can Talk

9/3/2023

Photo by Yura Tsipak

Having loved enough and lost enough,
I am no longer searching,
just opening,

no longer trying to make sense of pain,
but trying to be a soft and sturdy home
in which real things can land.

These are the irritations
that rub into a pearl.

So we can talk awhile
but then we must listen,
the way rocks listen to the sea.

And we can churn at all that goes wrong
but then we must lay all distractions
down, and water every living seed.

And yes, on nights like tonight
I too feel alone, but seldom do I
face it squarely enough
to see that it's a door
into the endless breath
that has no breather,
into the surf that human shells
call god.

- Mark Nepo

Keep Me Fully Glad

On the Other Side, for Equinox

Camas Lilies

Yes, We Can Talk

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Keep Me Fully Glad

On the Other Side, for Equinox

Camas Lilies

Yes, We Can Talk

Archives

Categories

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