Wild Words: Ferociously Nourishing Poetry

Dear Human

10/13/2024

Art by Autumn Skye

Dear Human:
You've got it all wrong.

You didn't come here to master unconditional love. This is where you came from and where you'll return.

You came here to learn personal love.
Universal love.
Messy love.
Sweaty Love.
Crazy love.
Broken love.
Whole love.
Infused with divinity.
Lived through the grace of stumbling.
Demonstrated through the beauty of...messing up.
Often.

You didn't come here to be perfect, you already are.

You came here to be gorgeously human. Flawed and fabulous.

And then to rise again into remembering.

But unconditional love? Stop telling that story.

Love in truth doesn't need any adjectives.
It doesn't require modifiers.
It doesn't require the condition of perfection.

It only asks you to show up.
And do your best.
That you stay present and feel fully.
That you shine and fly and laugh and cry and hurt and heal and fall and get back up and play and work and live and die as YOU.

It's enough.

It's plenty.

- Courtney A. Walsh

That's the Whole Idea, for Solstice

6/16/2024

Photo by Karin Rosenthal

Fire has a love for itself--
It wants to keep burning.

It is like a woman
Who is at last making love
To the person she most desires.

Find a Master who is like the Sun.

Go to His house
In the middle of the night.

Smash a window.
Act like a great burglar--
Jump in.

Now,
Gather all your courage--
Throw yourself into His bed!

He will probably kill you.

Fantastic--
That's the whole idea!

- Hafiz

why i feed the birds

5/26/2024

once
i saw my grandmother hold out
her hand cupping a small offering
of seed to one of the wild sparrows
that frequented the bird bath she
filled with fresh water every day

she stood still
maybe stopped breathing
while the sparrow looked
at her, then the seed
then back as if he was
judging her character

he jumped into her hand
began to eat
she smiled

a woman holding
a small god

- Richard Vargas

The Purpose of Your Life

3/24/2024

Solitary Refinement
Painting by Duy Huynh

The purpose of your
Life
Is to be
Confronted
By a problem
You cannot solve
This problem
Is your soul's
Blueprint
It haunts you
And finds you
Again and again
You will try
Relentlessly
To resolve this problem
And in your trying
You will deepen
Into the primordial
Waters
Of wisdom,
Beyond understanding.
This problem
Is the Beloved
That won't let you
Get away
This problem only asks
That you live into her
This koan with no
Meaning
This mystery school
With one student
This repetitive question
This unsolvable
Problem
This riddle
Is your path
It is the way you walk the earth
Your life itself
Is the answer

- Maya Luna

The Bull

3/3/2024

He stood alone in the backyard, so dark
the night purpled around him.
I had no choice. I opened the door
& stepped out. Wind
in the branches. He watched me with kerosene
-blue eyes. What do you want? I asked, forgetting I had
no language. He kept breathing,
to stay alive. I was a boy–
which meant I was a murderer
of my childhood. & like all murderers, my god
was stillness. My god, he was still
there. Like something prayed for
by a man with no mouth. The green-blue lamp
swirled in its socket. I didn’t
want him. I didn’t want him to
be beautiful – but needing beauty
to be more than hurt gentle
enough to want, I
reached for him. I reached – not the bull –
but the depths. Not an answer but
an entrance the shape of
an animal. Like me.

- Ocean Vuong

I No Longer Pray

2/25/2024

I no longer pray—
now I drink dark chocolate
and let the moon sing to me.

I no longer pray--
I let my ancestors dance
through my hips
at the slightest provocation.

I no longer pray--
I go to the river
and howl my ancient pain
into the current.

I no longer pray--
I ache, I desire,
I say “yes” to my longing.

I no longer pray as I was taught
but as the stars crawl
onto my lap like soft animals at nighttime
and God tucks my hair behind my ears
with the gentle fingers of her wind
and a new intimacy is uncovered in everything,
perhaps it's that I’m finally learning
how to pray.

- Chelan Harkin

Break

10/15/2023

Rest, now.
Let the weight you run from every day
now draw you down.

Later there will be time to tend
to everything left undone.
Now, rest.

Fall
into your own bones
lying horizontal on this ground.

Come
into your dark corners.
Come into this

original nakedness
under all the layers.
Come where all your losses

split
you
open.

Don't rise,
yet--
Rest.

Be drawn deeper down
into the salt tide of tears.
Let grief wash you,

then drown you
beyond the name
you first were given,

when you reached to touch
your own mother's face for the very first time,
and she smiled her light down into you.

Now reach those same fingers
for the face of infinity--
so that, opening your eyes

you will know
the one dreaming you
is pleased with you,

that everything seen
is your self,
and that now is the time

to rise wholehearted into the work
aching to be animated
by precisely you.

- Brooke McNamara

The Threshold of This Life

10/1/2023

The Madonna and Child
Oil on wood, around 1520 AD, possibly by Sodoma

I was not aware of the moment
when I first crossed the threshold of this life.

What was the power that made me open out into this vast mystery
like a bud in the forest at midnight!

When in the morning I looked upon the light
I felt in a moment that I was no stranger in this world,
that the inscrutable without name and form
had taken me in its arms in the form of my own mother.

Even so, in death the same unknown will appear as ever known to me.
And because I love this life,
I know I shall love death as well.

The child cries out
when from the right breast the mother takes it away,
in the very next moment to find in the left one its consolation.

- Rabindranath Tagore

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

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

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