Topic: Verses for the Black-Winged and Ordinary

[Nichi]

One Heart


Look at the birds. Even flying
is born

out of nothing. The first sky
is inside you, open

at either end of day.
The work of wings

was always freedom, fastening
one heart to every falling thing.

 

~Li-Young Lee
Contemporary

[Nichi]

The Moment
 
The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,
 
is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can't breathe.
 
No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round.
 
~ Margaret Atwood ~
 
(morning in the burned house)
 

[Nichi]

Magic
 
We were talking about magic
as we drove along a crowded
Sunday highway
 
when the whirl of wings
made me turn
and a flock of geese
flew over our car
so low I could see
their feet tucked under them.
 
For a moment the rustle
of their presence over our heads
obscured everything
 
and as they disappeared
you said,
"I see what you mean."
 
~ Jenifer Nostrand ~
 
 
(Bless the Day, edited by June Cotner)

[Nichi]

Mysteries, Yes
 
Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous
to be understood.
 
How grass can be nourishing in the
mouths of the lambs.
How rivers and stones are forever
in allegiance with gravity
while we ourselves dream of rising.
How two hands touch and the bonds
will never be broken.
How people come, from delight or the
scars of damage,
to the comfort of a poem.
 
Let me keep my distance, always, from those
who think they have the answers.
 
Let me keep company always with those who say
"Look!" and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their heads.
 
~ Mary Oliver ~
 
(Evidence)

[Nichi]

Detour
 
I took a long time getting here,
much of it wasted on wrong turns,
back roads riddled by ruts.
I had adventures
I never would have known
if I proceeded as the crow flies.
Super highways are so sure
of where they are going:
they arrive too soon.
 
A straight line isn't always
the shortest distance
between two people.
Sometimes I act as though
I'm heading somewhere else
while, imperceptibly,
I narrow the gap between you and me.
I'm not sure I'll ever
know the right way, but I don't mind
getting lost now and then.
Maps don't know everything.
 
~ Ruth Feldman ~
 
 
 
(The Ambitions of Ghosts)

[Nichi]

Starlings in Winter
 
Chunky and noisy,
but with stars in their black feathers,
they spring from the telephone wire
and instantly
 
they are acrobats
in the freezing wind.
And now, in the theater of air,
they swing over buildings,
 
dipping and rising;
they float like one stippled star
that opens,
becomes for a moment fragmented,
 
then closes again;
and you watch
and you try
but you simply can’t imagine
 
how they do it
with no articulated instruction, no pause,
only the silent confirmation
that they are this notable thing,
 
this wheel of many parts, that can rise and spin
over and over again,
full of gorgeous life.
 
Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,
even in the leafless winter,
even in the ashy city.
I am thinking now
of grief, and of getting past it;
 
I feel my boots
trying to leave the ground,
I feel my heart
pumping hard.  I want
 
to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbably beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.


 
~ Mary Oliver ~
 
(Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays)
 


the last few posts were shamelessly snagged from Panhala

[Firestarter]

I got some bread in the car, Im gonna go feed the ducks and geese after work. Since its spring I wanna see if any of them had their babies yet

Magic
 
We were talking about magic
as we drove along a crowded
Sunday highway
 
when the whirl of wings
made me turn
and a flock of geese
flew over our car
so low I could see
their feet tucked under them.
 
For a moment the rustle
of their presence over our heads
obscured everything
 
and as they disappeared
you said,
"I see what you mean."
 
~ Jenifer Nostrand ~
 
 
(Bless the Day, edited by June Cotner)

[Nichi]

I got some bread in the car, Im gonna go feed the ducks and geese after work. Since its spring I wanna see if any of them had their babies yet

I've been saving this picture for you.... 

[Firestarter]

OH thanks Vicki! Im totally used to being chased after by ducks and geese, im a goosegirl now I guess lol! Anyway, when they see me coming with bread they will attack, as they usually do, lol!! But they're people friendly so its cool (Im gonna be walking in loads of birdshit you should see my car after I leave hehe)!

[Nichi]

Out of Hiding

Someone said my name in the garden,

while I grew smaller
in the spreading shadow of the peonies,

grew larger by my absence to another,
grew older among the ants, ancient

under the opening heads of the flowers,
new to myself, and stranger.

When I heard my name again, it sounded far,
like the name of the child next door,
or a favorite cousin visiting for the summer,

while the quiet seemed my true name,
a near and inaudible singing
born of hidden ground.

Quiet to quiet, I called back.
And the birds declared my whereabouts all morning.

 

Li-Young Lee

[Nichi]

Window, Window

13.

Sometimes he thinks the earth
might be better without humans.
He’s ashamed of that.
It worries him,
him being a human, and needing
to think well of others
in order to think well of himself.
And there are
a few he thinks well of,
a few he loves
as well as himself almost,
and he would like to say
better.  But history
is so largely unforgivable.
And now his might government
wants to help everybody
even if it has to kill them
to do it - like the fellow in the story
who helped his neighbor to Heaven:
‘I heard the Lord calling him,
Judge, and I sent him on.’
According to the government
everybody is just waiting
to be given a chance
to be like us.  He can’t
go along with that.

Here is a thing, flesh of his flesh,
that he hates.  He would like
a little assurance
that no one will destroy the world
for some good cause.
Until he dies, he would like his life
to pertain to the earth.
But there is something in him
that will wait, even
while he protests,
for things turn out as they will.
Out his window this morning
he saw nine ducks in flight,
and a hawk dive at his mate
in delight.
The day stands apart
from the calendar.  There is a will
that receives it as enough.
He is given a fragment of time
in this fragment of the world.
He likes it pretty well.

~ Wendell Berry ~

[Nichi]

Pax

All that matters is to be at one with the living God
to be a creature in the house of the God of Life.

Like a cat asleep on a chair
at peace, in peace
and at one with the master of the house, with the mistress,
at home, at home in the house of the living,
sleeping on the hearth, and yawning before the fire.

Sleeping on the hearth of the living world
yawning at home before the fire of life
feeling the presence of the living God
like a great reassurance
a deep calm in the heart
a presence
as of the master sitting at the board
in his own and greater being,
in the house of life.


~DH Lawrence
1885-1930





http://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/

[Nichi]

Ask Much, The Voice Suggested
 
Ask much, the voice suggested, and I startled.
Feeling my body like the trembling body of a horse
tied to its tree while the strange noise
passes over its ears.
I who in extremity had always wanted less,
even of eating, of sleeping.
Agile, the voice did not speak again, but waited.
"Want more" --
a cure for longing I had not thought of.
But that is how it is with wells.
Whatever is taken refills to the steady level.
The voice agreed, though softly, to quiet the feet of the horse:
a cup taken out, a cup reappears; a bucketful taken, a bucket.
 
~ Jane Hirshfield ~
 
(After)

[Nichi]

Solar
 
On a gray day, when the sun
has been abducted, and it’s chill
end-of-the-world weather,
I must be the sun.
I must be the one
to encourage the young
sidetracked physicist
working his father’s cash register
to come up with a law of nature
that says brain waves can change
the dismal sky.  I must be the one
to remind the ginger plant
not to rest on the reputation
of its pungent roots, but to unveil
those buttery tendrils from the other world.
When the sky is an iron lid
I must be the one to simmer
in the piquant juices of possibility,
though the ingredients are unknown
and the day begins with a yawn.
I must issue forth a warmth
without discrimination, and any guarantee
it will come back to me.
On a dark day I must be willing
to keep my disposition light,
I have to be at the very least
one stray intact ray
of local energy, one small
but critical fraction
of illumination.  Even on a day
that doesn’t look gray
but still lacks comfort or sense,
I have to be the sun,
I have to shine as if
sorry life itself depended on it.
I have to make all the difference.
 
~ Thomas Centolella ~
 
(Views from along the Middle Way)





Panhala

[Nichi]

A Minor Bird

I have wished a bird would fly away,
   And not sing by my house all day;

   Have clapped my hands at him from the door
   When it seemed as if I could bear no more.

   The fault must partly have been in me.
   The bird was not to blame for his key.

   And of course there must be something wrong
   In wanting to silence any song.


~Robert Frost