I Worried

I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers

flow in the right direction, will the earth turn

as it was taught, and if not how shall 

I correct it?

Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven, can I do better?

Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrow

can do it and I am, well,

hopeless.

Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,

am I going to get rheumatism,

lockjaw, dementia?

Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing.

And gave it up. And took my old body

and went out into the morning,

and sang.

Mary Oliver

The Waxing Moon

There is a building increase of intentions,

Charged with particles of light and energy.

Sparkling with vibratory life,

The swirling divinity of my Soul,

Is like tingling bells through my ethereal body.

Reaching for the Lunar Goddess,

It strives to find the power of creation,

Evermore moving toward fruition.

Jeff Medford

The Waning Moon

And like a dying lady, lean and pale,

Who totters forth, wrapped in a gauzy veil,

Out of her chamber, led by the insane

And feeble wanderings of her fading brain,

The moon arose up in the murky east,

A white and shapeless mass. 

Percy Bysshe Shelley

The Ultimate Attainment

The past is already past.

Don't try to regain it.

The present does not stay.

Don't try to touch it.

From moment to moment.

The future has not come;

Don't think about it beforehand.

Whatever comes to the eye,

Leave it be.

There are no commandments to be kept;

There's no filth to be cleansed.

With empty mind really penetrated, 

The dharmas have no life.

When you can be like this,

You've completed the ultimate attainment.

P'ang Yün

For A New Beginning

In out-of-the-way places of the heart,

Where your thoughts never think to wander,

This beginning has been quietly forming,

Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

For a long time it has watched your desire,

Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,

Noticing how you willed yourself on,

Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

It watched you play with the seduction of safety

And the gray promises that sameness whispered,

Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,

Wondered would you always live like this.

Then the delight, when your courage kindled,

And out you stepped onto new ground,

Your eyes young again with energy and dream,

A path of plenitude opening before you.

Though your destination is not yet clear

You can trust the promise of this opening;

Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning

That is at one with your life's desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure; 

Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;

Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,

For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

~ John O'Donohue ~

To Bless the Space Between Us

Rumi

"Come, come again, whoever you are, come!

Heathen, fire worshiper or idolatrous, come!

Come even if you broke your penitence a hundred times,

Ours is the portal of hope, come as you are."

Mevlana Celalddin Rumi

The Happiest Day

The happiest day -- the happiest hour

My sear'd and blighted heart hath known,

The highest hope of pride and power,

I feel hath flown.

Of power! said I? yes! such I ween;

But they have vanish'd long, alas!

The visions of my youth have been-

But let them pass.

And, pride, what have I now with thee?

Another brow may even inherit

The venom thou hast pour'd on me

Be still, my spirit!

The happiest day -- the happiest hour

Mine eyes shall see -- have ever seen,

The brightest glance of pride and power,

I feel- have been:

But were that hope of pride and power

Now offer'd with the pain

Even then I felt -- that brightest hour

I would not live again:

For on its wing was dark alloy,

And, as it flutter'd -- fell

An essence -- powerful to destroy

A soul that knew it well.

Edgar Allan Poe

A Dirge

Rough wind, that moanest loud

Grief too sad for song;

Wild wind, when sullen cloud

Knells all the night long;

Sad storm whose tears are vain,

Bare woods, whose branches strain,

Deep caves and dreary main,--

Wail, for the world’s wrong!

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Death

Come thou, thou last one, whom I recognize,

unbearable pain throughout this body's fabric:

as I in my spirit burned, see, I now burn in thee:

the wood that long resisted the advancing flames

which thou kept flaring, I now am nourishinig

and burn in thee.

My gentle and mild being through thy ruthless fury

has turned into a raging hell that is not from here.

Quite pure, quite free of future planning, I mounted

the tangled funeral pyre built for my suffering,

so sure of nothing more to buy for future needs,

while in my heart the stored reserves kept silent.

Is it still I, who there past all recognition burn?

Memories I do not seize and bring inside.

O life! O living! O to be outside!

And I in flames. And no one here who knows me.

Rainer Maria Rilke

The Highs And Lows

Sadness settles over my soul,

Caged and Restless,

Black coal rains down on me,

Loneliness consumes me,

It's what I need,

To regain my self somehow.

I wake to a new dawn,

Crisp, clean, and lucid,

I thank my God,

For the strength to carry on,

For my waking up,

Both inside myself and out.

Life's funny that way,

The highs and lows you see,

The forces that move us forward,

Make life what it is,

The highs and lows.

Balancing on the edge of an abyss.

Before The Altar

Before the Altar, bowed, he stands

With empty hands;

Upon it perfumed offerings burn

Wreathing with smoke the sacrificial urn.

Not one of all these has he given,

No flame of his has leapt to Heaven

Firesouled, vermilion-hearted,

Forked, and darted,

Consuming what a few spare pence

Have cheaply bought, to fling from hence

In idly-asked petition.

His sole condition

Love and poverty.

And while the moon

Swings slow across the sky,

Athwart a waving pine tree,

And soon

Tips all the needles there

With silver sparkles, bitterly

He gazes, while his soul

Grows hard with thinking of the poorness of his dole.

"Shining and distant Goddess, hear my prayer

Where you swim in the high air!

With charity look down on me,

Under this tree,

Tending the gifts I have not brought,

The rare and goodly things

I have not sought.

Instead, take from me all my life!

"Upon the wings

Of shimmering moonbeams

I pack my poet's dreams

For you.

My wearying strife,

My courage, my loss,

Into the night I toss

For you.

Golden Divinity,

Deign to look down on me

Who so unworthily

Offers to you:

All life has known,

Seeds withered unsown,

Hopes turning quick to fears,

Laughter which dies in tears.

The shredded remnant of a man

Is all the span

And compass of my offering to you.

"Empty and silent, I

Kneel before your pure, calm majesty.

On this stone, in this urn

I pour my heart and watch it burn,

Myself the sacrifice; but be

Still unmoved: Divinity."

From the altar, bathed in moonlight,

The smoke rose straight in the quiet night.

Amy Lowell

From Adonais

The One remains, the many change and pass;

Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly;

Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,

Stains the white radiance of Eternity,

Until Death tramples it to fragments.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

As Once the Winged Energy of Delight

As once the winged energy of delight

carried you over childhood's dark abysses,

now beyond your own life build the great

arch of unimagined bridges.

Wonders happen if we can succeed

in passing through the harshest danger;

but only in a bright and purely granted

achievement can we realize the wonder.

To work with Things in the indescribable

relationship is not too hard for us;

the pattern grows more intricate and subtle,

and being swept along is not enough.

Take your practiced powers and stretch them out

until they span the chasm between two

contradictions...For the god

wants to know himself in you.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Spirits Of The Dead

Thy soul shall find itself alone

'Mid dark thoughts of the grey tomb-stone --

Not one, of all the crowd, to pry

Into thine hour of secrecy:

Be silent in that solitude

Which is not loneliness -- for then

The spirits of the dead who stood

In life before thee are again

In death around thee -- and their will

Shall then overshadow thee: be still.

For the night -- tho' clear -- shall frown --

And the stars shall look not down,

From their high thrones in the Heaven,

With light like Hope to mortals given --

But their red orbs, without beam,

To thy weariness shall seem

As a burning and a fever

Which would cling to thee for ever :

Now are thoughts thou shalt not banish --

Now are visions ne'er to vanish --

From thy spirit shall they pass

No more -- like dew-drop from the grass:

The breeze -- the breath of God -- is still --

And the mist upon the hill

Shadowy -- shadowy -- yet unbroken,

Is a symbol and a token --

How it hangs upon the trees,

A mystery of mysteries! --

Edgar Allan Poe

1829

Don't Quit

When things go wrong as they sometimes will;

When the road you're trudging seems all uphill;

When the funds are low, and the debts are high

And you want to smile, but have to sigh;

When care is pressing you down a bit-

Rest if you must, but do not quit.

Success is failure turned inside out;

The silver tint of the clouds of doubt;

And you can never tell how close you are

It may be near when it seems so far;

So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit-

It's when things go wrong that you must not quit.

Author Unknown

1914 I: Peace

Now, God be thanked Who has watched us with His hour,

And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping,

With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power,

To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping,

Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary,

Leave the sick hearts that honour could not move,

And half-men, and their dirty songs and dreary,

And all the little emptiness of love!

Oh! we, who have known shame, we have found release there,

Where there's no ill, no grief, but sleep has mending,

Naught broken save this body, lost but breath;

Nothing to shake the laughing heart's long peace there

But only agony, and that has ending;

And the worst friend and enemy is but Death.

Rupert Brooke

What had that flower to do with being white,

The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?

What brought the kindred spider to that height,

Then steered the white moth thither in the night?

What but design of darkness to appall? -

If design govern in a thing so small

Robert Frost

Still I Rise

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?

Why are you beset with gloom?

'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells

Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,

With the certainty of tides,

Just like hopes springing high,

Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops.

Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don't you take it awful hard

'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines

Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise

That I dance like I've got diamonds

At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame

I rise

Up from a past that's rooted in pain

I rise

I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise

I rise.

Maya Angelou

A Dream Within A Dream

Take this kiss upon the brow!

And, in parting from you now,

Thus much let me avow-

You are not wrong, who deem

That my days have been a dream;

Yet if hope has flown away

In a night, or in a day,

In a vision, or in none,

Is it therefore the less gone?

All that we see or seem

Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar

Of a surf-tormented shore,

And I hold within my hand

Grains of the golden sand-

How few! yet how they creep

Through my fingers to the deep,

While I weep- while I weep!

O God! can I not grasp

Them with a tighter clasp?

O God! can I not save

One from the pitiless wave?

Is all that we see or seem

But a dream within a dream?

Edgar Allan Poe



Where The Sidewalk Ends

 There is a place where the sidewalk ends

And before the street begins,

And there the grass grows soft and white,

And there the sun burns crimson bright,

And there the moon-bird rests from his flight

To cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black

And the dark street winds and bends.

Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow

We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,

And watch where the chalk-white arrows go

To the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,

And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,

For the children, they mark, and the children, they know

The place where the sidewalk ends.

Shel Silverstein