Every poem has been written before
at least fifteen times.
Every song
sung better.
The Neanderthals discovered caves already painted with the story of their lives. They invented fire over and over again.
And you & I whisper the same sweet nothings we were born with.
💞
History by Andrew Gent
today is the 5th anniversary of Life: acoustic & amplified!!
There Will Be Things You Do
you won’t know why.
Maybe waiting to tie
your shoelaces
until everything else
is in place.
Could be you’ll slide
your egg yolks aside
eat every bit of bacon,
toast, whites while the forsaken
yellow orbs stare at you
from the side pocket
of your empty plate.
People will ask
why do you save
your yolks for last
and you won’t know—
won’t recall
the cousin from the south
came to visit one summer
ate his eggs so odd
your family said
stuck with you
like the way
you love to be kissed
on the back of your neck
can vaguely recollect
your mother’s kisses
after your bath
too gentle for memory.
There will be things you do
you won’t know why
like the way you look up at the sky
when anxious or blue
it’s what your father
used to do
every family trip
when nothing else
was right
except those clouds
moving north by northwest through the night
he showed you
what pilots knew:
factors for safe flying
are visibility
and how low
and mean the clouds are.
☁️☁️☁️☁️
There Will Be Things You Do by Kim Dower
happy birthday to my dad!
After long icy months
the little frogs emerge,
thaw out and sing
their joy to be able
to sing for joy, sing wonder,
sing their longing, and ours,
a more than mating call,
naively throwing their hope
into the air, and ours,
not just for the more
but for the someone.
There’s little to do about it
but to notice the longing
and make a habit of knowing it,
even without words,
trusting it, even just
the high, earnest sound
of our mating call for God
and the faithful waiting,
married to the promise,
which has also been faithful
for millions of years.
You walk along the pond and listen,
let your heart rise a little,
and wait.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
As I approach,
it comes to me quickly –
all four seasons are flowing,
visible residents
of this mornings beach.
Here are bands of snow
from this spell
we call Winter.
Here, layers of leaf-surf to shuffle through the memories,
we called Fall.
Which, seems to me,
was just yesterday?
The sands dna carries the Summer sun,
still warm,
within its restless, shifting soul.
It whispers promises of returning warmth and sunshine as I stand, here and now, in cold, driving rain,
working through markers of time,
arriving, right here, at my favorite season,
Spring!
Grief, death and hope are front and center,
as Vinnie’s beautiful, driftwood cross
still stands as a memorial to his mother’s recent passing,
as well as, the hope of springs arrival!
Easter carries the sharp winds of death,
alive with the eternal mystery of resurrection.
I realize there are many symbols of spring,
on this mixed media stretch of grainy life:
The all-weather gulls floating, trusting,
eternally free.
The rhythm of the waves forever dancing with,
continually kissing,
the shore.
Then there’s me,
aware and alive,
with possibilities
of love,
music,
even that slippery word,
happiness,
surrounding my steps!
It doesn’t matter
that you aren’t here yet.
Knowing I am worthy of this is enough.
There are awakenings,
rising strong on mended wings,
trusting the healing path taken,
even as the work continues.
Allowing these
shy, twinkling lights
to glow and illuminate
the most fearful, secret corners
of the darkest rooms
of my heart.
I smile and silently shout, Yes!
I promise to love and be loved!
I am willing to let love all the way in!
Can you hear me, wherever you are?
Will your heart shout out as well?
I can’t stop smiling.
March and Courage,
these fearless lions,
who will lead us all home –
right where we belong.
😍
AL
But all your losses brought you here to walk
under one name and to walk under one name only,
and to find the guise under which all loss can live;
remember, you were given that name every day
along the way, remember, you were greeted as such,
and treated as such, and you needed no other name,
other people seemed to know you even before you gave up
being a shadow on the road and came into the light,
even before you sat down,
broke bread and drank wine,
wiped the wind-tears from your eyes:
pilgrim they called you again and again. Pilgrim.
🚶🏻
Excerpt from the poem ‘CAMINO’
From ‘PILGRIM’: Poems by David Whyte
I ᖇEᔕOᒪᐯE
TO ᗷE ᗩᗯᗩᖇE
TO ᔕEE ᗩᑎᗪ ᔕEEK
ᗪIᗩᗰOᑎᗪᔕ ᗩᑎᗪ EᗰEᖇᗩᒪᗪᔕ
TO ᗯᖇITE about
ᗩᑎᗪ
ᗪOᑕᑌᗰEᑎT TᕼEᗰ
EᐯEᖇY way
EᐯEᖇY day
I ᖇEᔕOᒪᐯE
TO ᔕᗩY
‘I ᔕᗯᗩᖇE’
To ᑕᗩᖇE and CARRY
ᗰIᖇᗩᑕᒪEᔕ ᗩᑎᗪ ᒍEᗯEᒪᔕ
TO ᔕᕼᗩᖇE
ᗯITᕼ TᕼOᔕE I ᗰEET ᗩᒪOᑎG TᕼE ᗯᗩY
EᐯEᖇY ᗯᕼEᖇE
I WILL BEAR
THE TALES OF THE PILGRIM
💃🏻
AL
The road seen, then not seen, the hillside hiding
then revealing the way you should take,
the road dropping away from you as if leaving you
to walk on thin air, then catching you, holding you up,
when you thought you would fall, and the way forward
always in the end the way that you came,
the way that you followed, the way that carried
you into your future, that brought you
to this place, no matter that it sometimes took
your promise from you, no matter that it always had to break
your heart along the way, the sense of having walked
from far inside yourself out into the revelation,
to have risked yourself for something that seemed
to stand both inside you and far beyond you,
that called you back in the end to the only road
you could follow, walking as you did, in your
rags of love and speaking in the voice
that by night, became a prayer for safe arrival…
👫
Excerpt from “SANTIAGO”
From PILGRIM: Poems by David Whyte
photos found at http://www.pinterest.com
What light?
look yonder.
Is that a candle in the window of a stranger?
Is it the moon, which shines for all the same?
or could it be the glow of love
from the heart of a friend?
a fellow pilgrim with shining eyes.
a brother or sister,
who may not look like me,
may not talk like me,
but with whom I share the same royal bloodline –
the light of hope
which lives within all
created by God
for goodness sake
let me come near to you
let me share your pathway
let’s walk in this light together for a while
so I can learn your songs
and you can learn mine
🌝
AL
A GLIMPSE
The beauty of the imagination is that it can discover such magnificent vastness inside a tiny space. Our culture is dominated by quantity. Even those who have plenty hunger for more and more. Everywhere around us, the reign of quantity extends and multiplies. Sadly the voyage of greed has all the urgency but no sense of destination. Desire becomes inflated and loses all sense of vision and proportion. When beauty becomes an acquisition it brings no delight. When time seemed longer and slower, the eye of the beholder had more space and distance to glimpse the beautiful. There was a respect for the worlds that could be suggested by a glimpse.
☄
John O’Donohue
Excerpt from BEAUTY
I steal glimpses of beauty,
in all she is –
this moment,
sky in my rearview.
A huge bowl of rainbow sherbet
my favorite-color-kind
with raspberry, orange & lime
swatches of lemon, indigo & periwinkle
float like barges –
in, out
&
around.
Framing.
Dancing.
Living.
At one point tangerine fills the top of the hilly crest,
headlight stars
blaze brilliant against the backdrop.
Indigo stretched above, framing this momentary masterpiece.
At times I find it hard to keep moving forward
into the matt gray of drudgery ahead.
With so much loveliness going on
right behind me…
how can I keep heading away from it?
How can I not be a part of this splendor?
Eventually, midnight blue seizes its moment of glory,
then night falls over all,
and I am left,
aching with the beauty,
the majesty,
the extravagant display,
of this wonderful world.
I go to wondering
if this longing in my heart
will ever be answered?
If my whole life I will wait
for a moment which will never come?
Will it never be realized under this piece of sky?
Will it always be this whisper?
The magic of hope,
this thing with wings,
hovering over my heart
for another 50 years,
echoing on into eternity.
🌄
AL
Poetry is a life-cherishing force. For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.
☄
– Mary Oliver
Running to Catch a Poem: Remembering the Poet in the Story
Poems came to me
As if from far away.
I would feel them coming,
I would rush into the house,
Looking for paper and pencil.
It had to be quick,
For they passed through me
And were gone forever.
💫
– Ruth Stone, “Fragrance” (in her last collection “What Love Comes To”
💥
As a poet myself, I feel for Ruth Stone, because thanks to Elizabeth Gilbert, Stone’s mode of chasing poems like runaway horses is favorite, but few have read the poet herself or even remember her name. It’s well worth seeking out her work and noticing, along the way, how she rose above a dark river of grief and pain, especially after her second husband (also a poet) hanged himself from a door in the family home.
Oh yes. Then there are two delicious further revelations in Gilbert’s account of how she heard it from Stone. When a poem got away from her, she felt it galloping away, “searching for another poet”. Then sometimes she would manage to grab an escaping poem by the tail, and would feel herself pulling it back. “In these instances, the poem would appear on the page from the last word to the first – backward, but otherwise intact.” (Elizabeth Gilbert, “Big Magic”, 65.)
Many of us dreamers know exactly how that works, as we pull back dreams by the tail as they run away. How many of the dreams that escape go searching for another dreamer?
💫
Robert Moss
photo sources found @ http://www.pinterest.com
✨
I string words like pearls
Knotting silence between each one
like silk thread
in a jewelers skillful hands
long strands or chokers
strategic placing of diamonds
where needed
sometime a sparkling featured
brilliant jeweled pendant
always taking special care with the hardware
the finishing is the most important
must stand up to daily use
easy for right or left hands alike
then a final polish before bagging
when each piece is complete
💦
AL
Picasso, when asked if painter’s ideas come to him “by chance or by design answer: “I don’t have a clue. Ideas are simply starting points. I can rarely set them down as they come to my mind. As soon as I start to work, others well up in my pen. To know what you’re going to draw, you have to begin drawing… When I find myself facing a blank page, that’s always going through my head. What I capture in spite of myself interests me more than my own ideas”.
Thank you, in advance. It’s what I desire. 💞
life: acoustic & amplified 