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Love after Love

12/27/2010

VERMEER, Johannes The Little Street (detail) 1657-58

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
Derek Wolcott
My musing~ This poem resonates with one of the purpose of this blog—to search and glimpse who we really are. I believe I have a better chance of doing this when I am alone, looking at myself, with no one around. It is then that I can feast on my life.

Last Night As I Was Sleeping

12/23/2010

Last night, as I was sleeping,
I dreamt -- marvelous error!—
that a spring was breaking
out in my heart.
I said: Along which secret aqueduct,
Oh water, are you coming to me,
water of a new life
that I have never drunk?

     Last night, as I was sleeping,
I dreamt -- marvelous error!--
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.

     Last night, as I was sleeping,
I dreamt -- marvelous error!--
that a fiery sun was giving
light inside my heart.
It was fiery because I felt
warmth as from a hearth,
and sun because it gave light
and brought tears to my eyes.

     Last night, as I slept,
I dreamt -- marvelous error!--
that it was God I had
here inside my heart.
         Antonio Machado

My musings~ I search for silence, solitude and simplicity so that I can experience that “marvelous error”. I want to feel that stream running through me or that beehive and fiery sun in my heart. It is what I call my soul work, when there is always the possibility that I will experience the ineffable, call it God, the Holy, the Mystery, the Unknown. Sometimes it happens through a dream.

where we are

12/21/2010

One of my places is Scotland.

i envy those
who live in two places:
new york, say, and London; wales and spain:
l.a. and paris; hawaii and switzerland.

there is always the anticipation
of the change, the chance that what is wrong
is the result of where you are. i have
always loved both the freshness of
arriving and the relief of leaving. with
two homes every move would be a homecoming.
i am not even considering the weather, hot
or cold, dry or wet: i am talking about hope.
Gerald Locklin

The other place is Italy.

Where are your hopes?

Going to Walden

12/7/2010

It isn't very far as highways lie.
I might be back by nightfall, having seen
The rough pines, and the stones, and the clear water.
Friends argue that I might be wiser for it.
They do not hear that far-off Yankee whisper:
How dull we grow from hurrying her and there!

Many have gone, and think me half a fool
To miss a day away in the cool country.
Maybe. But in a book I read and cherish,
Going to Walden is not so easy a thing
As a green visit. It is the slow and difficult
Trick of living, and finding it where you are.
Mary Oliver

I have a house where I go

12/7/2010

I have a house where I go, 
When there's too many people, 
I have a house where I go 
Where no one can be; 
I have a house where I go, 
Where nobody ever says "no" 
Where no one says anything - so 
There is no one but me.
A. Milne

I heard a bird sing

12/7/2010

I heard a bird sing
   In the dark of December
A magical thing
   And sweet to remember.
“We are nearer to Spring
   Than we were in September,”
I heard a bird sing
   In the dark of December
                                           Oliver Hereford

My musings on~

   When I was teaching kindergarten I always introduced this poem on December 1st. I wrote it on a chart so everyone could see it in print, and then, after reciting it together a few times, everyone could read it. It was indeed a magical thing and sweet to remember.
    When I retired from teaching and December rolled around again each year, I would send it to friends over the internet.
    This year I'm sending the magic via my blog.
    (Just for the record, I didn't take the picture.)

Why I Wake Early

12/7/2010

Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who made the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and the crotchety –

best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light –
good morning, good morning, good morning.

Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.

Mary Oliver

Wild Geese, Mary Oliver

12/7/2010

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Let Evening Come, by Jane Kenyon
And What is so Rare as a Day in June, by James Russell Lowell
Love after Love, by Derek Walcott
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Credentials, by Daniel Berrigan
Morning Poem, by Mary Oliver
A Secret Life, by Stephen
    Dunn
Tread in Solitude, by V.
    Schoffel
Desiderata, by Max Ehrmann
Beannacht, by John
    O'Donohue
The house was quiet and the world was calm, by Wallace
    Stevens
A Garden Beyond Paradise, by
    Rumi
We remember them, from a
    Jewish Book of Prayer
The Summer Day, by Mary
    Oliver
An African Elegy, by Ben Okri
Variation on a Theme by Rilke,
    by Denise Levertov
Love of the World, Charlotte
    Tall Mountain
The Poet's Obligation, Pablo
    Neruda
All True Vows, David Whyte
Sea Fever, John Masefield
The Shortest Day, Jan Sutch
    Pickard
Song for the Open Road, Walt
    Whitman
Keep Walking, Rumi
Fog in the Valley, Paul Zimmer
Bandito, Eleanor Lerman
The Peace of Wild Things,
   Wendell Berry
But the silence in the mind ,
    R.S. Thomas
I Wandered Lonely as a
Cloud, William Wordsworth
A Cloth of Fine Gold,
    Dorothy Walters
Weather, Fleur Adcock
The Blind Old Man, Robert
   Bly
The Three Goals, David
       Budbill
All Roads Lead to Me,
       Anonymous
With that Moon Language,
     Hafiz
The River and Its Waves are
     One Surf, Kabir
What to Remember When
      Waking, David Whyte
Love after Love, Derek
   Wolcott
Last Night As I Was
    Sleeping, Antonio
    Machado (version by
     Robert Bly
where we are, Gerald
    Locklin
Wild Geese, Mary Oliver
Why I Wake Early, Mary
    Oliver
I heard a bird sing, Oliver
     Hereford
I have a house where I go,
   A.A. Milne
Going to Walden, Mary
     Oliver

Love after Love

Last Night As I Was Sleeping

where we are

Going to Walden

I have a house where I go

I heard a bird sing

Why I Wake Early

Wild Geese, Mary Oliver

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