The moon is a sow
and grunts in my throat
Her great shining shines through me
so the mud of my hollow gleams
and breaks in silver bubbles
She is a sow
and I a pig and a poet
When she opens her white
lips to devour me I bite back
and laughter rocks the moon.
&nb
For the small things – Thankfulness?
Posted on by James Woodward
Praises
I praise those things I always take for granted:-
The tap my sister turns on for my bath
Every time I stay, the safety pin –
And who invented it? I do not know –
The comb, the piece of soap, a shoe, its shine,
The name tape and the string, a lea
Words?
Posted on by James Woodward
Oranges
Be careful of words,
even the miraculous ones.
For the miraculous we do our best,
sometimes they swarm like insects
and leave not a sting but a kiss.
They can be as good as fingers.
They can be as trusty as the rock
you stick your bottom on.
But they ca
dahlia
Posted on by James Woodward
They brought me a quilled, yellow dahlia,
Opulent, flaunting.
Round gold
Flung out of a pale green stalk.
Round, ripe gold
Of maturity,
Meticulously frilled and flaming,
A fire-ball of proclamation.
From Amy Lowell, Autumn
petals
Posted on by James Woodward
somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look will easily unclose me
though i have closed myself as finge
Let us return?
Posted on by James Woodward
ultimate blue
Let us return to imperfection's school.
No longer wandering after Plato's ghost,
Seeking the garden where all fruit is flawless,
We must at last renounce that ultimate blue
And take a walk in other kinds of weather.
From Adrienne Rich, Ste
reflected
Posted on by James Woodward
Love
there is enough magic here
inside this one word
to change our world forever
mountain snow lying
across life's pasture a
shadow reflected over
stone moss forest dream
man's ability to under
stand nature's living need
green comet seen in the
Where everything is Music
Posted on by James Woodward
Don't worry about saving these songs,
And if one of our instruments breaks,
It doesn't matter.
We have fallen,
We have fallen into the place,
Where everything is music...
Today, like every other day,
We wake up empty and frightened
Don't open the door
Feast on your life !
Posted on by James Woodward
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. G
Love – always Love?
Posted on by James Woodward
eyes
Love is the cure.
Your pain will keep giving birth to more pain.
Just let your eyes breathe out love
as easily as a flower breathes out its sweetness.
Rumi, Love is the cure
Long Dark Days
Posted on by James Woodward
fall, leaves, fall
Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;
Lengthen night and shorten day;
Every leaf speaks bliss to me
Fluttering from the autumn tree.
I shall smile when wreaths of snow
Blossom where the rose should grow;
I shall sing when night’s decay
Ushers in a dreari
Posted on by James Woodward
The beautiful changes
The beautiful changes as a forest is changed
By a chameleon's tuning his skin to it;
As a mantis, arranged
On a green leaf, grows
Into it, makes the leaf leafier, and proves
Any greenness is deeper than anyone knows.
Your hands hold roses
New Books on Poetry
Posted on by James Woodward
Making Nothing Happen
Five Poets Explore Faith and Spirituality
Gavin D'Costa, University of Bristol, UK, Eleanor Nesbitt, University of Warwick, UK, Mark Pryce, Diocese of Birmingham, UK, Ruth Shelton, Director of Emmanuel House Day Centre,
New Year Resolution: Silence and Reflection
Posted on by James Woodward
cushion
it's possible to sit
in meditation
until the cushion is
worn flat
and never know
the thing that is.
let me tell you
about that thing.
it's inside you
(and me)
already
right here
yay
end of.
Lu Tung Pin
New Year Resolutions : Dig deeper into God
Posted on by James Woodward
a tree
God
is a tree said Kabir
a tree in the forest; when the woodsmen come
to cut Him down
He will not defend Himself
He will not shame them.
And God, he said,
is the earth
an endless wonder
that allows Himself
to be ruined by us
bu
New Year Resolution: Embrace Change
Posted on by James Woodward
hammered gold and gold enamelling
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence
New Year resolution: Follow the heart
Posted on by James Woodward
make friends with fire I look at my heart, such as it is, so much lower than what language can do; but yet: the heart is itself what is, is all that is, it is all that is disguised by s
New Year resolutions : attention…..
Posted on by James Woodward
The métier of blossoming
If humans could be
that intensely whole, undistracted, unhurried,
swift from sheer
unswerving impetus! If we could blossom
out of ourselves, giving
nothing imperfect, withholding nothing!
From Denise Levertov, The métier of blos
Yellow
Posted on by James Woodward
A yellow flower
(Light and spirit)
Sings by itself
For nobody.
A golden spirit
(Light and emptiness)
Sings without a word
By itself.
Let no one touch this gentle sun
In whose dark eye
Someone is awake.
(No light, no gold, no na
here’s to opening and upward
Posted on by James Woodward
here’s to opening and upward, to leaf and to sap
and to your(in my arms flowering so new)
self whose eyes smell of the sound of rain
and here’s to silent certainly mountains;and to
a disappearing poet of always, snow
and to morning; and to morning’s beautiful
