tunnel ceaselessly
I think all the time about invisible work.
About the young mother on Welfare
I interviewed years ago,
who said, "It's hard.
You bring him to the park,
run rings around yourself keeping him safe,
and there's no one
to say what a good job you're doing,
how
Spring
Posted on by James Woodward
spring fever
Today, look: another day. Waking, wide open,
Afraid. Don't dive into the library,
Into yet another book! Reach for your guitar,
Let love, let beauty, be what it is we do:
You don't have to fly abroad, in order to kneel
And kiss the tarmac!
The breeze at daw
Music
Posted on by James Woodward
where everything is music
Don't worry about saving these songs!
And if one of our instruments breaks,
it doesn't matter.
We have fallen into the place
where everything is music.
The strumming and the flute notes
rise into the atmosphere,
and even if the whole world's
Beginnings and Endings?
Posted on by James Woodward
What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make and end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. And every phrase
And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,
Taking its place to support the others,
The word neither diffident nor ostentati
Approaching Holy Week
Posted on by James Woodward
a lion of courage
When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox:
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
Be Free
Posted on by James Woodward
Rumi has written some of the most astonishing poetry - read on
In the end you disappeared, gone beyond sight
Strange, the path you took, leaving this world
Strange how the beat of your wings destroyed the cage
And you flew to the world of the soul.
You were a nightingal
O Greening Branch
Posted on by James Woodward
O greening branch!
You stand in your nobility
Like the rising dawn.
Rejoice now and exult
And deign to free the fools we are
From our long slavery to ignorance
And hold out your hand
To raise us up.
Hildegard of Bingen
Forgiveness??
Posted on by James Woodward
Looking down on my father's
dead face
for the last time
my mother said without
tears, without smiles
without regrets
but with civility
"Good night Willie Lee, I'll see you
in the morning."
And it was then I knew that the healing
of all our wounds
is forgiveness
that pe
Greenness
Posted on by James Woodward
Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops
Speak in poetry not prose please?
Posted on by James Woodward
'Listen, now, verse should be as natural
As the small tuber that feeds on muck
And grows slowly from obtuse soil
To the white flower of immortal beauty.'
'Natural, hell! What was it Chaucer
Said once about the long toil
That goes like blood to the poem's making?
Leave it to
What will you do when you grow old?
Posted on by James Woodward
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,
I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each
Giving shape to Old Age
Posted on by James Woodward
In the Old Age of the Soul
I do not choose to dream; there cometh on me
Some strange old lust for deeds.
As to the nerveless hand of some old warrior
Te sword-hilt or the war-worn wonted helmet
Brings momentary life and long-fled cunning,
So to my soul grown old –
Memory
Posted on by James Woodward
Alzheimer’s Patient
Oh, how can this be?
You and I are losing me
Some day soon
May be morning
Many be noon
I will no longer be the me
You and I know as me
And the answer seems to be
Words, and thought, frequently scramble
And my conversations seem to ramble.
Oh, how can
Patience
Posted on by James Woodward
patience
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
How are we to understand our Life?
Posted on by James Woodward
SO MANY DIFFERENT LENGTHS OF TIME
How long is a man’s life, finally?
Is it a thousand days, or only one?
One week, or a few centuries?
How long does a man’s death last?
And what do we mean when we say, ‘gone forever’?
Adrift in such preoccupations, we seek clari
Seamus Heaney
Posted on by James Woodward
Dennis O’Driscoll
Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney
(Faber, 2008)
Seamus Heaney is regarded as possibly the finest poet of his generation. Although I find some of his writing rather dense and impenetrable, many people have been enriched by the sheer d
In Love
Posted on by James Woodward
Give all to love;
Obey thy heart;
Friends, kindred, days,
Estate, good fame,
Plans, credit, and the Muse -
Nothing refuse.
Leave all for love;
Yet, hear me, yet...
Though thou loved her as thyself,
As a self of purer clay,
Though her parting dims the day,
Stealing grace fro
Temple
Posted on by James Woodward
We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.
We are weaned from our timidity
In the flush of love's light
we dare be brave
And suddenly we see
that l
Fire and Gold
Posted on by James Woodward
The monotone of the rain is beautiful,
And the sudden rise and slow relapse
Of the long multitudinous rain.
The sun on the hills is beautiful,
Or a captured sunset sea-flung,
Bannered with fire and gold.
A face I know is beautiful-
With fire and gold of sky and se
These our actors
Posted on by James Woodward
these our actors
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itsel