Life is the only way
to get covered in leaves,
catch your breath on the beach,
rise on wings;
to be a dog,
or stroke its warm fur;
to tell pain
from everything it's not;
to squeeze inside events,
hang out in views,
and seek the least of all possible mistakes.
A fantas
white flower
Posted on by James Woodward
He said, I am with you always.
That means, when you look for God
That God is the looking itself,
Yes, and the thought of looking
And the you that thinks the thought
Always, already, all of it;
There is no outside.
A white flower grows in the silence
Let your speech be th
radiant
Posted on by James Woodward
this blessing
God's love
calls us
to that elsewhere world
which only lovers
eyes alight, eyes aflame
can see at all.
only those who have
self surrendered:
once, they were flecks of fire;
now, they are
the radiant sun.
Rumi
prisoner of time
Posted on by James Woodward
Lord, said David, since you don't need us,
why did you make the two worlds?
The Real replied: O prisoner of time,
I am a secret treasure of kindness
that wishes itself to be known.
So, I made a mirror: its shining face
is one world, its dark back, the other.
You'd like
the double bass
Posted on by James Woodward
He is a drunk leaning companionably
Around a lamp post or doing up
With intermittent concentration
Another drunk's coat.
But close your eyes and it is sunset
At the edge of the world. It is the language
Of dolphins, the growth of tree-roots,
The heart-beat slowing down
Amaryllis
Posted on by James Woodward
One morning--and so soon!--the first flower
has opened when you wake. Or you catch it poised
in a single, brief
moment of hesitation.
Next day, another,
shy at first like a foal,
even a third, a fourth,
carried triumphantly at the summit
of those strong columns, and each
a Ju
Hands
Posted on by James Woodward
"Adam, where are you?"
God's hands
palpate darkness, the void
that is Adam's inattention,
his confused attention to everything,
impassioned by multiplicity, his despair.
Multiplicity, his despair;
God's hands
enacting blindness. Like a child
at a barbaric fairground
presence
Posted on by James Woodward
When despair grows in me
and I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild th
patience
Posted on by James Woodward
An absolute
patience.
Trees stand
up to their knees in
fog. The fog
slowly flows
uphill.
White
cobwebs, the grass
leaning where deer
have looked for apples.
The woods
from brook to where
the top of the hill looks
over the fog, send up
not one bird.
So absolute, it is
no
patience
Posted on by James Woodward
An absolute
patience.
Trees stand
up to their knees in
fog. The fog
slowly flows
uphill.
White
cobwebs, the grass
leaning where deer
have looked for apples.
The woods
from brook to where
the top of the hill looks
over the fog, send up
not one bird.
So absolute, it is
no
made of light
Posted on by James Woodward
salt rose, topaz, archery, carnations,
the birth of fire. You are none of these.
You are the holy secret darkness, that space
between shadow and soul. There, where love is.
You are the flower that only blooms
within; hidden, but made of light.
A tactile fragrance, an enhan
Gaze
Posted on by James Woodward
Gaze at the river. It is time and water.
Remember that time is itself a river
Know that we too recede always into the past.
See all of our faces flow by, like a river
and feel that to wake up is only to dream again
and that each of those dreams is as real
as the other; and tha
The Promise
Posted on by James Woodward
Promising myself before bedtime
to contend more urgently
with the problem. From nothing
nothing comes. Behind everything -
something, somebody? In the beginnning
violence, the floor of the universe
littered with fragments. After
the enormous brawl, where
did the dove come from?
look at love
Posted on by James Woodward
Look at love...
how it tangles
the lover and the beloved
look at spirit
how it fuses with earth
giving it new life
why are you so busy
with this or that or good or bad?
pay attention to how things blend
why talk about all
the known and the unknown
see how unknown mer
generosity
Posted on by James Woodward
Lord, said David, since you do not need us,
why did you create these two worlds?
Reality replied: O prisoner of time,
I was a secret treasure of kindness and generosity,
and I wished this treasure to be known,
so I created a mirror: its shining face, the heart;
its dar
joy
Posted on by James Woodward
Who are you, reader, reading my poems an hundred years hence?
I cannot send you one single flower from this wealth of the spring,
one single streak of gold from yonder clouds.
Open your doors and look abroad.
From your blossoming garden gather fragrant memories of the v
wrought flower
Posted on by James Woodward
I believe the earth
exists, and
in each minim mote
of its dust the holy
glow of thy candle.
Thou
unknown I know,
thou spirit,
giver,
lover of making, of the
wrought letter,
wrought flower,
iron, deed, dream
the ordinary glow
of common dust in ancient sunlight.
Be, that
oddity
Posted on by James Woodward
Love, thou are deep:
I cannot cross thee.
But, were there Two
Instead of One --
Rower, and Yacht -- some sovereign Summer --
Who knows, but we'd reach the Sun?
Love, thou are Veiled:
A few behold thee,
Smile, and alter, and prattle, and die.
Bliss were an Oddity, without
poppy
Posted on by James Woodward
In the whole garden
like screens of green plane
of green rising into the morning sun
a single poppy
more ornate, fuller, larger
as if a shower puff,
overlapping petals
a singular color, melting
salmon steak and orange sherbet
richer, softer
crepe paper r
shadow
Posted on by James Woodward
Are they shadows that we see?
And can shadows pleasure give?
Pleasures only shadows be
Cast by bodies we conceive
And are made the things we deem
In those figures which they seem.
But these pleasures vanish fast
Which by shadows are expressed;
Pleasures are not, if they
