Wild Words: Ferociously Nourishing Poetry

Personal

6/12/2022

Don’t take it personal, they said;
but I did, I took it all quite personal--

the breeze and the river and the color of the fields;
the price of grapefruit and stamps,

the wet hair of women in the rain--
And I cursed what hurt me

and I praised what gave me joy,
the most simple-minded of possible responses.

The government reminded me of my father,
with its deafness and its laws,

and the weather reminded me of my mom,
with her tropical squalls.

Enjoy it while you can, they said of Happiness
Think first, they said of Talk

Get over it, they said
at the School of Broken Hearts

but I couldn’t and I didn’t and I don’t
believe in the clean break;

I believe in the compound fracture
served with a sauce of dirty regret,

I believe in saying it all
and taking it all back

and saying it again for good measure
while the air fills up with I’m-Sorries

like wheeling birds
and the trees look seasick in the wind.

Oh life! Can you blame me
for making a scene?

You were that yellow caboose, the moon
disappearing over a ridge of cloud.

I was the dog, chained in some fool’s backyard;
barking and barking:

trying to convince everything else
to take it personal too.

- Tony Hoagland

Self-Compassion

6/5/2022

My friend and I snickered the first time
we heard the meditation teacher, a grown man,
call himself honey, with a hand placed
over his heart to illustrate how we too
might become more gentle with ourselves
and our runaway minds. It’s been years
since we sat with legs twisted on cushions,
holding back our laughter, but today
I found myself crouched on the floor again,
not meditating exactly, just agreeing
to be still, saying honey to myself each time
I thought about my husband splayed
on the couch with aching joints and fever
from a tick bite—what if he never gets better?--
or considered the threat of more wildfires,
the possible collapse of the Gulf Stream,
then remembered that in a few more minutes,
I’d have to climb down to the cellar and empty
the bucket I placed beneath a leaky pipe
that can’t be fixed until next week. How long
do any of us really have before the body
begins to break down and empty its mysteries
into the air? Oh honey, I said—for once
without a trace of irony or blush of shame--
the touch of my own hand on my chest
like that of a stranger, oddly comforting
in spite of the facts.

- James Crews

Speaking Tree

4/3/2022

Photograph by Ken Kingsbury. Used with permission.

I had a beautiful dream I was dancing with a tree.
—Sandra Cisneros

Some things on this earth are unspeakable:
Genealogy of the broken--
A shy wind threading leaves after a massacre,
Or the smell of coffee and no one there--

Some humans say trees are not sentient beings,
But they do not understand poetry--

Nor can they hear the singing of trees when they are fed by
Wind, or water music--
Or hear their cries of anguish when they are broken and bereft--

Now I am a woman longing to be a tree, planted in a moist, dark earth
Between sunrise and sunset--

I cannot walk through all realms--
I carry a yearning I cannot bear alone in the dark--

What shall I do with all this heartache?

The deepest-rooted dream of a tree is to walk
Even just a little ways, from the place next to the doorway--
To the edge of the river of life, and drink--

I have heard trees talking, long after the sun has gone down:

Imagine what would it be like to dance close together
In this land of water and knowledge. . .

To drink deep what is undrinkable.

- Joy Harjo

We Live to be Near Her

2/6/2022

Painting by Cindy Wood
www.cindywoodart.com

When beauty walks into the room and sits
down close to you and is willing to let you
gaze at her as much as you want,

no one has to tell you all is alright now, no
one has to parrot again . . . someday your pain
won't exist.

For we live to be near her. She oozes grace.
Part of her benediction is that all the hormones
you want to come alive do.

Passion in full throttle says to the past, says to
worries--go fuck yourself, and the past will
crouch down or run . . . like a pup in the
presence of a fierce dog.

When God makes itself more known and all
our attention rivets on some aspect of Splendor,

all our internal dialogue--what can it do, but
cease to deplete one,

then something lifts our heart toward the Sky.

- Hafiz, trans. by Daniel Ladinsky

The Scripture of Circle

1/30/2022

Female Strength by Helena Arturaleza Schotman

There is no refuge
No destination
No resolution
Only This

Blessed are the fruit of my womb
Blessed are the cycles that have no end
Blessed is the Wound
Blessed is the Hole

Blessed is the space that holds you always
Blessed is this unfinished life
Blessed is the eternal and unchanging
Blessed are we who bear the unbearable
who carry our cross from first to last breath

Blessed are we who know the relentless mercy of the
Mysterious Other
known only when we sacrifice our reaching

There is no refuge
No destination
No resolution
Only This

To you who are the Birther of Samsara
and the doorway to Nirvana
To you whose Love
is the bridge that flows between them
To you who holds the mirror of perfection
inside the crack of imperfection
whose Road leads nowhere and is everywhere

To you whose breast is the refuge of no refuge
To you whose passion dissolves all ignorance
and whose innocence reveals unstained beauty

Enveloped by your Grace
With nowhere to go
Around and around
Heart to the Ground

Here
I
am

-Maya Luna

Lead

1/16/2022

Photo by Duane Roy

Here is a story
to break your heart.
Are you willing?
This winter
the loons came to our harbor
and died, one by one,
of nothing we could see.
A friend told me
of one on the shore
that lifted its head and opened
the elegant beak and cried out
in the long, sweet savoring of its life
which, if you have heard it,
you know is a sacred thing,
and for which, if you have not heard it,
you had better hurry to where
they still sing.
And, believe me, tell no one
just where that is.
The next morning
this loon, speckled
and iridescent and with a plan
to fly home
to some hidden lake,
was dead on the shore.

I tell you this
to break your heart,
by which I mean only
that it break open and never close again
to the rest of the world.

- Mary Oliver

Everything I Have is Also Yours

12/26/2021

The World. Painting by Shauna Crandall

There are so many gifts still unopened from your
birthday. There are so many hand-crafted presents
that have been sent to your door by God.

The Beloved does not mind repeating, "Everything I
have is also yours."

So forgive Hafiz and the Friend if we break into a
sweet laughter when your heart complains of being
thirsty . . . when ages ago, every cell in your
body capsized forever into His infinite golden sea.

A lover's pain is like holding one's breath too long
in the middle of a vital performance, in the middle
of one of Creation's favorite songs.

Indeed, a lover's pain is this sleeping, this sleeping
when God just rolled over and gave you such a big
good-morning smooch.

There are so many gifts still unopened from your
soul's birthday. There are so many hand-crafted
presents that have been sent into your life by God.

And the Beloved does not mind at all repeating,

"Everything I have is also yours."

- Hafiz, trans. by Daniel Ladinsky

Arms Full

11/21/2021

Gratitude
bronze sculpture by Paige Bradley, 2019

Gratitude means showing up on life's doorstep,
love's threshold, dressed in a clown suit,
rubber-nosed, gunboat shoes flapping.
Gratitude shows up with arms full of wildflowers,
reciting McKuen or the worst of Neruda.

To talk of gratitude is to be
the fool in a cynic's world.
Gratitude is pride's nightmare,
the admission of humility before something
given without expectation or attachment.

Gratitude tears open the shirt
of self importance, scatters buttons
across the polished floors of feigned indifference,
ignores the obvious and laughs out loud.

Even more, gratitude bears her breasts, rips open
her ribs to show the naked heart, the holy heart.
What if that sacred heart is not, after all, about sacrifice?
Imagine it is about joy, barefoot and foolhardy,
something unasked for, something unearned.

What if the beat we hear, when we are finally quiet is simply this:
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

- Rebecca del Rio

Holy Fire

11/7/2021

Painting by Erica Grimm Vance

Slow down....inside
I am right here
I am not where you are going
I am the place you leave to find me

I am Holy Fire
Do you trust me?

I am the One who makes your heart beat
and every heart beat
I am the Portal to the indescribable flame within you
I am every longing you have ever felt
and every passion you have ever suppressed

I am Aliveness
Open
Allow
Be danced
Do you trust me?

If you want to know bliss
to feel passion burn
You must become available
to be astonished and amazed
by the simplest things

Notice the way when you wiggle your toes
a tendril of joy quietly sprouts inside your chest

Notice how you can run your fingertips
on the edges of your skin
and rivers of desire become instantly fulfilled

You can take one single breath
and watch your body explode in gratitude for living

Then you can exhale and melt into the Great Fire
of life's fertile emptiness

You are the Portal

It costs nothing....except
everything you have ever dreamed you are

Your dissatisfaction is a dream
Your disappointment is a dream

I am right here
I have always been right here
It really is this innocent
Savor me
Enter me
Ignite

- a compilation of poetry excerpts by Maya Luna

The Second Music

10/24/2021

"Ophelia" by Sir John Everett Millais.

Now I understand that there are two melodies playing,
one below the other, one easier to hear, the other

lower, steady, perhaps more faithful for being less heard
yet always present.

When all other things seem lively and real,
this one fades. Yet the notes of it

touch as gently as fingertips, as the sound
of the names laid over each child at birth.

I want to stay in that music without striving or cover.
If the truth of our lives is what it is playing,

the telling is so soft
that this mortal time, this irrevocable change,

becomes beautiful. I stop and stop again
to hear the second music.

I hear the children in the yard, a train, then birds.
All this is in it and will be gone. I set my ear to it as I would to a heart.

- Annie Lighthart

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