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 hea
awakening
Posted on by James Woodward
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 bu
your sleeping head
Posted on by James Woodward
Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The ent
The métier of blossoming
Posted on by James Woodward
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 blossoming
Easter Wings
Posted on by James Woodward
Lord, Who createdst man in wealth and store,
Though foolishly he lost the same,
Decaying more and more,
Till he became
Most poore:
With Thee
O let me rise,
As larks, harmoniously,
And sing this day Thy victories:
Then shall the fall further the flight in me.
My tender age
Easter
Posted on by James Woodward
Rise heart; thy Lord is risen. Sing his praise
Without delays,
Who takes thee by the hand, that thou likewise
With him mayst rise:
That, as his death calcined thee to dust,
His life may make thee gold, and much more just.
Awake, my lute, and struggle for thy part
With all thy
make friends with fire
Posted on by James Woodward
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 speech.
How many words will you speak today?
Too many; much too many.
How much will you be burned by love
burn
to fly towards a secret sky
Posted on by James Woodward
This is love: to fly towards a secret sky
to open the curtains, again and again
to let go of life.
How do you find it? Easy.
Take just one step (but don't move your feet)
see the world as unseeable
and forget the seeming self.
I said to my heart, what a gift it is
to w
virtue
Posted on by James Woodward
SWEET day, so cool, so calm, so bright!
The bridal of the earth and sky—
The dew shall weep thy fall to-night;
For thou must die.
Sweet rose, whose hue angry and brave
Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye,
Thy root is ever in its grave,
And thou must die.
Sweet spring, full
across the sky
Posted on by James Woodward
My mother holding me, looking down at me,
sometimes, smiling, she would weep.
Now, I know why. Love is strong, so strong
that it can break the cage, and for one holy moment
she disappeared from everything.
All that we do comes from that, that
taste of flying. The possibil
like cautious sunlight
Posted on by James Woodward
When I found the door
I found the vine leaves
speaking among themselves in abundant
whispers.
My presence made them
hush their green breath,
embarrassed, the way
humans stand up, buttoning their jackets,
acting as if they were leaving anyway, as if
the conversation had
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 to the study
And begin re
leaves
Posted on by James Woodward
The same leaves over and over again!
They fall from giving shade above
To make one texture of faded brown
And fit the earth like a leather glove.
Before the leaves can mount again
To fill the trees with another shade,
They must go down past things coming up.
They must
On the Mystery of the Incarnation
Posted on by James Woodward
It's when we face for a moment
the worst our kind can do, and shudder to know
the taint in our own selves, that awe
cracks the mind's shell and enters the heart:
not to a flower, not to a dolphin,
to no innocent form
but to this creature vainly sure
it and no other is god-lik
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
A Christmas Carol
Posted on by James Woodward
Thank God, thank God, we do believe,
Thank God that this is Christmas Eve.
Even as we kneel upon this day,
Even so, the ancient legends say
Nearly two thousand years ago
The stalled ox knelt, and even so
The ass knelt full of praise, which they
Could not express, while we c
luminous
Posted on by James Woodward
All existence
Is a sea, abundant with life.
For instance:
In a handful of ocean water
You couldn't even count all the first class
Musicians
Intelligent, sane, and
Utterly in the groove
Extremely sweet
And wild.
In a handful of the sky and earth,
In a handful of Go
inner light
Posted on by James Woodward
already i can see that sunlit hill
although my journey hardly has begun;
how what we cannot hold, can hold us with
its inner light, however far away,
and changes us, though we are nowhere near,
to something that we hardly know we are.
A sign speaks, and a sign in us
Three Poems of Incarnation
Posted on by James Woodward
Who stands at my door in the storm and rain
On the threshold of being?
One who waits till you call him in
From the empty night
Are you a stranger, out in the storm,
Or has my enemy found me out
On the edge of being?
I am no stranger who stands at the door
Nor enemy come in th
Verses for Advent – the ninth day of December
Posted on by James Woodward
O Come, O Come, thou wounded stag,
at home on rugged ridge and crag
guide us who cut our feet on stone,
and bring us hope, whose bodies groa