A Blessing For Absence
May you know that absence is full of tender presence
and that nothing is ever lost or forgotten.
May the absences in your life be full of eternal echo
May you sense around you the secret Elsewhere which holds
the presences that have left your life.
May you be generous in your embrace of loss.
May the sore of your grief turn into a well of seamless presence.
May your compassion reach out to the ones we never hear
from and may you have the courage to speak out for the
excluded ones.
May you become the gracious and passionate subject of your own life.
May you not disrespect your mystery through brittle words or false belonging.
May you be embraced by God in whom dawn and twilight
are one and may your longing inhabit its deepest dreams
within the shelter of the Great Belonging.
-John O’Donohue
Eternal Echoes

via Whiskey River

“I have a friend who feels sometimes that the world is hostile to human life – he says it chills us and kills us. But how could we be were it not for this planet that provided our very shape? Two conditions – gravity and a livable temperature range between freezing and boiling – have given us fluids and flesh. The trees we climb and the ground we walk on have given us five fingers and toes. The “place” (from the root plat, broad, spreading, flat) gave us far-seeing eyes, the streams and breezes gave us versatile tongues and whorly ears. The land gave us a stride, and the lake a dive. The amazement gave us our kind of mind. We should be thankful for that, and take nature’s stricter lessons with some grace.”                                        - Gary Snyder 

 

John Muir on Mt. Ritter…..by Gary Snyder

After scanning its face again and again,
I began to scale it, picking my holds
With intense caution. About half-way
To the top, I was suddenly brought to
A dead stop, with arms outspread
Clinging close to the face of the rock
Unable to move hand or foot
Either up or down. My doom
Appeared fixed. I MUST fall.
There would be a moment of
Bewilderment, and then,
A lifeless rumble down the cliff
To the glacier below.
My mind seemed to fill with a
Stifling smoke. This terrible eclipse
Lasted only a moment, when life blazed
Forth again with preternatural clearness.
I seemed suddenly to become possessed
Of a new sense. My trembling muscles
Became firm again, every rift and flaw in
The rock was seen as through a microscope,
My limbs moved with a positiveness and precision
With which I seemed to have
Nothing at all to do.

A Word on Statistics

Out of every hundred people,

those who always know better:
fifty-two.

Unsure of every step:
almost all the rest.

Ready to help,
if it doesn’t take long:
forty-nine.

Always good,
because they cannot be otherwise:
four — well, maybe five.

Able to admire without envy:
eighteen.

Led to error
by youth (which passes):
sixty, plus or minus.

Those not to be messed with:
four-and-forty.

Living in constant fear
of someone or something:
seventy-seven.

Capable of happiness:
twenty-some-odd at most.

Harmless alone,
turning savage in crowds:
more than half, for sure.

Cruel
when forced by circumstances:
it’s better not to know,
not even approximately.

Wise in hindsight:
not many more
than wise in foresight.

Getting nothing out of life except things:
thirty
(though I would like to be wrong).

Balled up in pain
and without a flashlight in the dark:
eighty-three, sooner or later.

Those who are just:
quite a few, thirty-five.

But if it takes effort to understand:
three.

Worthy of empathy:
ninety-nine.

Mortal:
one hundred out of one hundred—
a figure that has never varied yet.

-Wislawa Szymborska
(translated from Polish by Joanna Trzeciak)

via Psychologically Speaking

First, forget what time it is for an hour.
Do it regularly every day.
Then forget what day of the week it is,
and do this regularly in company for a week.
Then forget what country you are in,
and practice doing it in company for a week,
and then do them together for a week
with as few breaks as possible.
Follow these by forgetting how to add
or to subtract.
It makes no difference.
You can change them around after a week.
Both will later help you to forget how to count.

Forget how to count,
starting with your own age,
starting with how to count backwards,
starting with even numbers,
with roman numerals,
starting with fractions,
with the old calendar,
going on to the alphabet,
forgetting it all until everything
is continuous and whole again.”
- W. S. Merwin

W. S. Merwin was appointed United States Poet Laureate this year – an act significantly bright enough to counterbalance several of my serious disappointments with the Obama Administration’s other progress thus far.

There resides within each of us
The seed of a fearless peace.
In some it sprouts
Uncalled.
For others it rests
In deep dormancy
Beneath multi-colored
Layers of life’s soil.

The wise, the lost
And the questioning
Conduct a search,
Initiated perhaps by
Suggestion from another,
By curiosity or
By sobering need.

And once found
This fearless peace
Will break soil,
Though it may wither
Without nurture
Or acknowledgement,
Needing for further growth
A careful balance of
Sustenance and liquidity,
Both oft delivered by
The very soil of life
Through which
The tender sprout
First emerged.

The highest purpose
Of this fearless peace
Is to expand outward
Breaking through to
Sunlight
In such abundance
That it may sustain itself
Beyond its lowly roots
Sometimes entangling
In celebratory union
With other emergents
In a shared dynamic,
Which in symbiotic
Expression prompts
At least one other
To conduct a search
For the seed within.

You cannot buy this seed
Of  fearless peace.
Nor can any other
Gift it to you.
A proferred trellis
May provide
A temporary brace,
Timely fertilizer helps,
As does the
Occasional flashlight.
But ultimately
You must leap
Beyond the trellis,
Beyond even the bed,
Sometimes through darkness,
Launching yourself
In self-sufficient
Commitment -
Into thin air!

Remarkably,
The leap itself
Provides something
Of an indestructible
Bridge to quiet certainty,
Leaving you thereafter
Paradoxically more grounded
Rather than less
Like you’d think.

For now
The fearless peace within
Exists beyond uprooting,
A recognized
And constant presence
Within and without,
Unshakable ever after
Which with minimal vigilance
Becomes your chosen
And preferred
State of being
And resting place.

There are many names
For this fearless peace
In the multiple
Tongues of man.
With words and rituals
For the process
Of its discovery
And cultivation.
Use caution near those
Who would exclude
All names other
Than their preferred
As less perfect
In some way.
And question those
Who use exclusion,
Or any other rule,
As an excuse to
Cultivate fear
And stray from peace
Entirely.

There resides
Within each of us
The seed of a fearless peace,
Present before any words
And thus beyond all names,
Awaiting excavation
And destined to be found
By all of us and each of us
Sooner
Or later.

Trish Wareing, (c)  2009

I often yearn for
The wordless place
Of quiet brushstrokes
And gently rustling nature,
Where falling backward
In total trust
Without direction
Feels as perfect
As its common opposite.
Where the restful process
Of simply being
Is creativity enough.

And this place,
By its simple perfection,
Without judgment, labels,
Goals or true effort
Can transform a nothingness
Into a somethingness
An objet d’art from and for
My unlonely spirit,
At the very least.

Though sometimes it rends
Manifest trinkets
Worth barter or trade
Readmission to the throng,
Symbolizing thereto
A “successful” and reasoned passage
Into and back out
Of Treasured Solitude.

But trinketless passages
To and from
And about the altered state
Between the two
Hold no less
Intrinsic value
For the True Lover
Of Solitude.

- Trish Wareing (c) 2009

Wild Geese   by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

The poem’s still imperfect and will remain so eternally – unfinished like life and good friendships. But posting the poem allows me to sneak in another opportunity to pressure Kathy into reevaluating her schedule.

Friendship never really fits
Inside a purchased card.
Cards may brush the truth
With quips and clever punch
But cards’ unexpanded tales
Miss friendship’s mortal soul -
The bond beyond the quip,
Unique between two friends.

She’s short and voluptuous
To my tall and not very
And we both love our walks
In nature and not
So we value our knees and our legs.
But when walking as two,
Her innate shorter stride
Hurries quick-time to mine.
Though she never falls back
And not once has complained
Burns more calories perhaps
Something always worthwhile
For carrot cake fests
And sticky bun loves
Dependent on chocolate
For solace.
When walking and laughing,
And walking and crying,
And walking and laughing again.

We first walked as neighbors
Near daily patrol
The banks of Shilshole Bay
A life aboard sailboats,
Sailors soldiering through
Feisty elements marine
On long laundry hauls
And facility showers.
Jelling friendship with
Walking and laughing
And walking and crying
And walking and laughing again.

How perplexed we could be
Over confounding, alien ways
Of our logical, linear men
Who’d unwittingly retreat
To their logical lines
And offer them up to us mates
Who most needed their hugs
And not logic, of course.
So as friends we would hug
In sorry console,
Sharing a bottle of wine or two,
A fine mug of grog and a dinghy ride.
“What do you do
with a drunken sailor?”
You laugh,
You laugh,
You cry from time to time
And then you laugh again.

Both loved as children,
A particular cross
In this culture of the good excuse.
But our fine childhoods’ grew,
Another bond from our roots
Common libraries of family songs,
Old tunes and carols
Serendipitously sprout out
In spontaneous duets
On some of our walks -
Surprising each other
And any audience about
(‘Cause we’re not very good).
But granting to us
Another reason to laugh,
Walking and laughing,
And walking and singing,
And crying from time to time,
And walking and laughing again.

But have I told her often or lately
How much I admire
Her grit and resilience
Through passionate loves
And deep, deep loss.
Her ceaseless momentum,
Education devotion.
(She taught on her knees once
In pain’s compensation.)

How appreciative I am,
That she scours her schedule
Fitting adventures with me in the mix
Sidelining striving enough
So I’m privileged to be
With this woman at rest,
In her natural state
Doing goofy and giggly
Like they matter most.

Not enough time for herself,
Her life’s tightly-packed,
Bulky, day-timer ruled,
Which is baffling to
Someone like me
Who does time at arms length
Keeping calendars blank,
Clocks often unwatched,
Something baffling to her
I know.

She endures all my jibes
When I tease about stress
And she rarely jibes me back.
But it’s with affection deep-felt
I remind her again:
“That third chapter starts NOW
Retire and paint.
Let the goof rule your day.
Every day.”

No longer neighbors,
Our circles disparate
An hour or more apart
Our bond never hits that
Old, always-there thing.
But we both know it could
And without pause it would
If the need ever surfaced again.

So now, frequently weeks,
And often some months,
And one time even some years
Vanish between our meets
But we jump right back in
Where we last left off,
The dialog never ends.
For now when we walk,
Our good union includes
This long tale to review,
Depth-filled with laughter and tears
Where fears of the world,
And aging and change,
Are allayed by the joys
Of true wisdom and worth
Of fine transits well made.
Walking and laughing,
And walking and laughing,
And walking and crying at times,
And returning to laughter again.

Autumn’s hush inhales

Through the long morning shadows -

Furtive, cool sunshine.

Vine maple’s first blood

Signals the unstoppable -

Summer’s fine demise.