Category: Poetry

spiral wine the colour of day wine the colour of night wine deep purple o topaz blood wine: starlit son of earth wine, smooth as a golden sword wine like a spiral seashell wondrous loving marine unconfinable in one glass or one song, or drunk alone: choral, gregarious and always shared from Neruda, To wine, […]

  what we need is here Geese appear high over us, pass, and the sky closes. Abandon, as in love or sleep, holds them to their way, clear in the ancient faith: what we need is here. And we pray, not for new earth or heaven, but to be quiet in heart, and in eye, […]

morning rain   The dawn light. A light rain. I hear it on the treetop leaves. Then, the mist. The morning wind blows it and the clouds away. Now colours deepen, and a sense of grace: the presence of water. And then, across the landscape the smell of morning rain.   Du Fu (712-770 AD) […]

veins   Look: how they grow to be each other. In their veins there is only God. Each other’s axis, a shimmering shape that glows, like fire, a rapture, a delight. They thirst, and are each other’s wine; see, how they are each other’s seeing. Let us let each rejoice into the other: outlasting self, […]

focus   Walking, snow falling, it is possible to focus at various distances in turn on separate flakes, sharply engage the attention at several spatial points: the nearer cold and more uncomfortable, the farther distanced and almost pleasing. Living, time passing, it is preferable to focus the memory in turn upon the more distant retrospects […]

  radiant   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

Love After Love   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 […]

intricate Intricate and untraceable weaving and interweaving, dark strand with light: designed, beyond all spiderly contrivance, to link, not to entrap: elation, grief, joy, contrition, entwined; shaking, changing, forever forming, transforming: all praise, all praise to the great web. Denise Levertov, Web  

  delicate The fire in leaf and grass so green it seems each summer the last summer. The wind blowing, the leaves shivering in the sun, each day the last day. A red salamander so cold and so easy to catch, dreamily moves his delicate feet and long tail. I hold my hand open for […]

  unspoken Autumn The black moon turns away, its work done. A tenderness, unspoken autumn. We are faithful only to the imagination. What the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth. What holds you to what you see of me is that grasp alone. from Denise Levertov, Everything That Acts Is Actual

acting with no expectations Can you coax your mind from its wandering and keep to the original oneness? Can you let your body become supple as a newborn child’s? Can you cleanse your inner vision until you see nothing but the light? Can you love people and lead them without imposing your will? Can you […]

  The peace of wild things   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 […]

  awakening Enter the turret of your love, and lie close in the arms of the sea; let in new suns that beat and echo in the mind like sounds risen from sunken cities lost to fear; let in the light that answers your desire awakening at midnight with the fire, until its magic burns […]

  wild flower To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour. From William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

  wondering I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it. Backward I see in my own days where I sweated through fog with linguists and contenders, […]