​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

​Step closer to the story that scares you~
the one that has you gasping for air
in the night, searching for ground.
This one wants to take you past
the lip of the void to the birthplace
of stars, where all stories dissolve
into the blessing of original song.

Leap into the love that terrifies--
you know just what it will do.
It will un-hinge every door in your house.
It will blow in like a hurricane
and re-arrange your furniture.
It will howl like a banshee through your bones
and leave you delightfully hollow.
Without this love you are only playing
at this life– and you are so tired of that!

Turn your wild horses out
into the fields in the morning,
when first light purples the hills.
They are hungry for this earth
under hoof, this thunder of full gallop.
They may trample all the places
you have so carefully tended.
They may leave you in a cloud of dust.
And yet, this is the only way
they will return to you truly,
without a fence to keep them in.

Let the current lift you
out of the churning eddy. 
There is only one place where this river flows--
through slot canyons and the eyes of midnight,
through singing valleys and greening glens.
These holy waters will have their way with you.
They are dreaming you into a body of light.
Why fight what you most long for?

    - Laura Weaver

And if sun comes
How shall we greet him?
Shall we not dread him,
Shall we not fear him
After so lengthy a
Session with shade?

Though we have wept for him,
Though we have prayed
All through the night-years
What if we wake one shimmering morning to
Hear the fierce hammering
Of his firm knuckles
Hard on the door?

Shall we not shudder?
Shall we not flee
Into the shelter, the dear thick shelter
Of the familiar
Propitious haze?

Sweet is it, sweet is it
To sleep in the coolness
Of snug unawareness.

The dark hangs heavily
Over the eyes.

    - Gwendolyn Brooks

I commend my Spirit unto the Grace of the Great Way
Whether consciously or not,
this has always been the doorway to liberation.

All you lovers of truth
And all you true lovers
I tell you, now is the time to be done with it
Wash your battle-scarred hands in this Presence among us

Cast off your warrior clothing, and slip into your night slippers
Untie your hair or cut it off
The Holy One is present
And doesn’t care where you’ve been
Or what you’ve done
Or what you are doing now

Commend all of yourself - body, mind and spirit - to this Grace
And then, slip out into the night air, into the
waiting
quivering
birth
of this Golden Heart

Lean down now, like wet green grass
and kiss the bottoms of your feet.

​    - Adyashanti

By the time I recalled that it is also
terrifying, we had gone too far into
the charmed woods to return.  It was then

this beautiful animal appeared in our path:
ribs jutting, moon-fed eyes moving
from me to you and back.  If we show

none of the fear, it may tire of waiting
for the triggering flight, it may ask only
to lie between us and sleep, fur warm

on our skin, breath sweet on our necks
as it dreams of slaughter, as we dream
alternately of feeding and taming it

and of being the first to run.  The woods
close tight around us, lying nested here
like spoons in a drawer of knives, to see

​who wakes first, and from which dream.

​    - Geoffrey Brock

​​I am dreaming of a house just like this one

but larger and opener to the trees, nighter

than day and higher than noon, and you,

visiting, knocking to get in, hoping for icy

milk or hot tea or whatever it is you like.

For each night is a long drink in a short glass.

A drink of blacksound water, such a rush

and fall of lonesome no form can contain it.

And if it isn’t night yet, though I seem to

recall that it is, then it is not for everyone.

Did you receive my invitation? It is not

for everyone. Please come to my house

lit by leaf light. It’s like a book with bright

pages filled with flocks and glens and groves

and overlooked by Pan, that seductive satyr

in whom the fish is also cooked. A book that

took too long to read but minutes to unread--

that is—to forget. Strange are the pages

thus. Nothing but the hope of company.

I made too much pie in expectation. I was

hoping to sit with you in a tree house in a

nightgown in a real way. Did you receive

my invitation? Written in haste, before

leaf blinked out, before the idea fully formed.

An idea like a storm cloud that does not spill

or arrive but moves silently in a direction.

Like a dark book in a long life with a vague
​
hope in a wood house with an open door.


​    - Brenda Shaughnessy

​Tonight I want to say something wonderful
for the sleepwalkers who have so much faith
in their legs, so much faith in the invisible

arrow carved into the carpet, the worn path
that leads to the stairs instead of the window,
the gaping doorway instead of the seamless mirror.

I love the way that sleepwalkers are willing
to step out of their bodies into the night,
to raise their arms and welcome the darkness,

palming the blank spaces, touching everything.
Always they return home safely, like blind men
who know it is morning by feeling shadows.

And always they wake up as themselves again.
That's why I want to say something astonishing
like:  our hearts are leaving our bodies.

Our hearts are thirsty black handkerchiefs
flying through the trees at night, soaking up
the darkest beams of moonlight, the music

of owls, the motion of wind-torn branches.
And now our hearts are thick black fists
flying back to the glove of our chests.

We have to learn to trust our hearts like that.
We have to learn the desperate faith of sleep-
walkers who rise out of their calm beds

and walk through the skin of another life.
We have to drink the stupefying cup of darkness
and wake up to ourselves, nourished and surprised.

    - Edward Hirsch