Wild Words: Ferociously Nourishing Poetry

Vodadahue Mountain

12/3/2023

photo by Sneha Cecil

When I feel tall I tell myself
that when the time comes I will know
as the elephant knows as the puma knows
and I will go
to Vodadahue Mountain
by the deep green inlet
by the deep green gorge
and in steady pain I will climb the basalt tower
and on the last ice step before the summit
unmarked by everything but air
I will be still for a long moment
and then let the white mouth of the snowcloud eat me
and there will be only this silence
and the trees at the foot will begin to feed
and I will have paid back all that I have owed
and there will be only this silence.

- Paul Kingsnorth

Nobody Cares

11/19/2023

photo by Leah Berman

Nobody cares if you stop here. You can
look for hours, gaze out over the forest.
And the sounds are yours too—take away
how the wind either whispers or begins to
get ambitious. If you let the silence of
afternoon pool around you, that serenity
may last a long time, and you can take it
along. A slant sun, mornings or evenings,
will deepen the canyons, and you can carry away
that purple, how it gathers and fades for hours.
This whole world is yours, you know. You can
breathe it and think about it and dream it after this
wherever you go. It’s all right. Nobody cares.

- William Stafford

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

Aimless Love

7/30/2023

This morning as I walked along the lakeshore,
I fell in love with a wren
and later in the day with a mouse
the cat had dropped under the dining room table.

In the shadows of an autumn evening,
I fell for a seamstress
still at her machine in the tailor’s window,
and later for a bowl of broth,
steam rising like smoke from a naval battle.

This is the best kind of love, I thought,
without recompense, without gifts,
or unkind words, without suspicion,
or silence on the telephone.

The love of the chestnut,
the jazz cap and one hand on the wheel.

No lust, no slam of the door –
the love of the miniature orange tree,
the clean white shirt, the hot evening shower,
the highway that cuts across Florida.

No waiting, no huffiness, or rancor –
just a twinge every now and then

for the wren who had built her nest
on a low branch overhanging the water
and for the dead mouse,
still dressed in its light brown suit.

But my heart is always propped up
in a field on its tripod,
ready for the next arrow.

After I carried the mouse by the tail
to a pile of leaves in the woods,
I found myself standing at the bathroom sink
gazing down affectionately at the soap,

so patient and soluble,
so at home in its pale green soap dish.
I could feel myself falling again
as I felt its turning in my wet hands
and caught the scent of lavender and stone.

- Billy Collins

Finally

7/9/2023

James Green, San Antonio, Texas

Finally will it not be enough,
after much living, after
much love, after much dying
of those you have loved,
to sit on the porch near sundown
with your eyes simply open,
watching the wind shape the clouds
into the shape of clouds?

Even then you will remember
the history of love, shaped
in the shape of flesh, everchanging
as the clouds that pass, the blessed
yearning of body for body,
unending light.
You will remember, watching
the clouds, the future of love.

- Wendell Berry

My DNA results came in

5/14/2023

My DNA results came in.
Just as I suspected, my great great grandfather
was a monarch butterfly.
Much of who I am is still wriggling under a stone.
I am part larva, but part hummingbird too.
There is dinosaur tar in my bone marrow.
My golden hair sprang out of a meadow in Palestine.
Genghis Khan is my fourth cousin,
but I didn't get his dimples.
My loins are loaded with banyan seeds from Sri Lanka,
but I descended from Ravanna, not Ram.
My uncle is a mastodon.
There are traces of white people in my saliva.
3.7 billion years ago I swirled in hydrogen dust,
dreaming of a planet overgrown with lingams and yonis.
More recently, say 60,000 B.C.
I walked on hairy paws across a land bridge
joining Sweden to Botswana.
I am the bastard of the sun and moon.
I can no longer hide my heritage of raindrops and cougar scat.
I am made of your grandmother's tears.
I am the brother who sold you, and marched you to the sea.
I am the merchant from Savannah, and the cargo of blackness.
I am the chain.

Admit it, you have wings, vast and golden,
like mine, like mine.
you have sweat, dark and salty,
like mine, like mine.
You have secrets silently singing in your blood,
like mine, like mine.

Don't pretend that earth is not one family.
Don't pretend we never hung from the same branch.
Don't pretend we don't ripen on each other's breath.
Don't pretend we didn't come here to forgive.

- Alfred K. LaMotte

I Went Out to Hear

5/7/2023

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

Wild Tenderness

4/2/2023

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

Motel Chronicles (excerpt)

3/12/2023

He changed the canary
Fed the mule
Stood transfixed for half an hour
Every morning
He changed the canaries
Fed the mule
And stood transfixed for half an hour
He never planned on standing transfixed for half an hour
It just happened
Every morning
Maybe it was the pause in finishing feeding the mule
The momentum running down
There seemed to be a natural momentum
From changing the canaries
To feeding the mule
There was never any problem
Moving from the canaries
To the mule
It just happened
Every morning
It was the pause
After feeding the mule
That stunned him
A Giant Pause
He even knew what the next thing was
He knew it very clearly
He knew the next thing was feeding himself
After feeding the mule
But he couldn’t move
He stood transfixed for half an hour
Staring at the desert
Sometimes staring at his bottle house
Sometimes staring at the well pump
It depended on which direction he happened to be facing
When the transfixion struck him
It got to the point when he looked forward
To standing transfixed for half an hour
It was the high point of his morning
Change the canaries
Feed the mule
Stand transfixed for half an hour

- Sam Shepard

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