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Come with me into the expansive gift of poetry to experience a disruption of habitual ways of thinking and perceiving. The magic of poetry happens when it is spoken, heard and felt as vibrations in your body.

In this blog I offer you heartfelt, homemade recordings of some of my favorite poems. I invite you also to spend time with their pulsing vibrations and pregnant pauses, to savor the luscious sensual syllables on your tongue, and to feel the subtle changes in your being as you play with the poems.

Listen, read and then slowly speak them out loud. The medicine of poetry will endlessly surprise and delight you as a portal into your own wild multidimensionality!

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To Lay One's Heart Upon the Ground

10/22/2023

 
Picture
Kali on Shiva from a Tantric Devi Painting

Mother, tonight I have taken my heart
From its cage and laid it at Your feet.
The rapture of this was indescribable.

For one thing, I didn't die as I thought.
I discovered that hearts were for giving
And not for having. This was the first

Lesson of the night. The second came
When I understood what it felt like
To lay one's heart upon the ground.

I wept to think how many years of life
I wasted not knowing where a heart
Belonged. Those were lessons enough,

But then You rested Your foot upon me
And I saw the Universe from the bottom up
The only way it could be witnessed.

That was as much as I could bear,
And there was no lesson in it, for it was
More than anyone could learn.

In the end I've decided to leave
This heart in Your keeping. Do with it just
What You do with the Universe,

And that will be good enough for me.

​    - Clark Strand

Break

10/15/2023

 
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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

 
Picture
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

 
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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


Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

7/2/2023

 
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Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion — put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

​Go with your love to the fields.
Lie easy in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

    - Wendell Berry

How the Light Comes

6/25/2023

 
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​I cannot tell you
how the light comes.

What I know
is that it is more ancient
than imagining.
That it travels
across an astounding expanse
to reach us.
That it loves
searching out
what is hidden,
what is lost,
what is forgotten
or in peril
or in pain.

That it has a fondness
for the body,
for finding its way
toward flesh,
for tracing the edges
of form,
for shining forth
through the eye,
the hand,
the heart.

I cannot tell you
how the light comes,
but that it does.
That it will.
That it works its way
into the deepest dark
that enfolds you,
though it may seem
long ages in coming
or arrive in a shape
you did not foresee.

And so
may we this day
turn ourselves toward it.
May we lift our faces
to let it find us.
May we bend our bodies
to follow the arc it makes.
May we open
and open more
and open still

to the blessed light
that comes.

​    - Jan Richardson

I Went Out to Hear

5/7/2023

 
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​I Went Out to Hear

The sound of quiet. The sky
indigo, steeping
deeper from the top, like tea.
In the absence
of anything else, my own
breathing became obscene.
I heard the beating
of bats' wings before
the air troubled above
my head, turned to look
and saw them gone.
On the surface of the black
lake, a swan and the moon
stayed perfectly
still. I knew this was 
a perfect moment.
Which would only hurt me
to remember and never
live again. My God.
How lucky to have lived
a life I would die for.

​    - Leila Chatti

Earth, Isn't This What You Want? (excerpt)

4/23/2023

 
Picture
Under Redwood by Michael Zieve
www.artworkarchive.com/profile/michael-zieve

​Earth, isn’t this what you want? To arise in us, invisible?
Is it not your dream, to enter us so wholly
there’s nothing left outside us to see?
What, if not transformation
is your deepest purpose? Earth, my love,
I want it too. Believe me,
no more of your springtimes are needed
to win me over—even one flower
is more than enough. Before I was named
I belonged to you. I see no other law
but yours, and know I can trust
the death you will bring.
​
See, I live. On what?
Childhood and future are equally present.
Sheer abundance of being
floods my heart.
​
    - Rainer Maria Rilke, from The Ninth Duino Elegy
translation by Anita Burrows and Joanna Macy

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

Earth, isn't this what you want: invisibly
to arise in us? Is it not your dream
to be some day invisible? Earth! Invisible!
What, if not transformation, is your insistent commission?
Earth, dear one, I will! Oh, believe it needs
not one more of your springtimes to win me over.
One, just one, is already too much for my blood.
From afar I'm utterly determined to be yours.
You were always right and your sacred revelation is the intimate death.

Behold, I'm alive. On what? Neither childhood nor future
grows less...surplus of existence
is welling up in my heart.

    - Rainer Maria Rilke,
from The Ninth Duino Elegy
translation by C. F. MacIntyre

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


Earth, isn’t this what you want: to arise within us,
invisible? Isn’t it your dream
to be wholly invisible someday? –O Earth: invisible
What, if not transformation, is your urgent command?
Earth, my dearest, I will. Oh believe me, you no longer
need your springtimes to win me over – one of them,
ah, even one, is already too much for my blood.
Unspeakably I have belonged to you, from the first.
You were always right, and your holiest inspiration
is our intimate companion, Death.  

Look, I am living. On what? Neither childhood nor future
grows any smaller… Superabundant being
wells up in my heart.

    
 - Rainer Maria Rilke, from The Ninth Duino Elegy
​translation by Stephen Mitchell

Wild Tenderness

4/2/2023

 
Picture
In a Dark Wood by Michael Zieve
www.artworkarchive.com/profile/michael-zieve

There is a place in my heart
When I sink down and in
Where I am surprised to discover
I am already whole
My mind is suspicious
Yet it is undeniably true

There is a place in my heart
When I sink down and in
Where I discover my problems
Are not actually problems
But places of wild tenderness
Where I find myself again

When I sink down and in
When I slow down inside
When I trust enough
To melt

I find
I am only ever meeting
Myself

And this meeting
Is the truth
It is the secret desire
Inside all desires:

All I ever really wanted
Was me

​- Maya Luna

Innocence

3/5/2023

 
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​"Innocence sees that this is it, and finds it world enough."
                                                                                         - Annie Dillard

 
At some point you make peace with it
Your life as it is, with all it offers you


Like an early evening walk, half moon
Hung in the tiger lily sky


Black cows heading to the barn
Bemoaning the end of day


Hundreds of blackbirds screeching
Live as the wire they perch upon


My long-time friend zipping by in her van
Waving. It’s after all the whining


And stomping of feet, of course. After dreams
Blur with real life. After the pin-pricked


Pop of the inflated ego. What joy
Mysterious. What humble innocence.

​    - Julie L. Moore


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  • Home
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  • IGNITION: Exploring Sacred Sensuality
  • Wild Words Poetry Blog
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  • About
    • About Xochitl
    • Spiritual Midwifery
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  • Contact