Thursday ~ April 23, 2020

My efforts now turn from trying to outrun suffering
to accepting love wherever I can find it.
Stripped of causes and plans and things to strive for,
I have discovered everything I could ask for is right right here -
in flawed abundance.
We cannot eliminate hunger,
but we can feed each other.
We cannot eliminate loneliness,
but we can hold each other.
We cannot eliminate pain,
but we can live a life of compassion...
There is nothing to do and nowhere to go.
Accepting this, we can do everything and go anywhere.

(Mark Nepo, b. 1951)

Monday ~ April 20, 2020

Relax

Bad things are going to happen...

There's a Buddhist story of a woman chased by a tiger.

When she comes to a cliff, she sees a sturdy vine

and climbs halfway down. Bit there's also a tiger below.

And two mice - one white, one black - scurry out and begin to gnaw at the vine.

At this point she notices a wild strawberry growing from a crevice.

She looks up, down, at the mice.

Then she eats the strawberry.

So here's the view, the breeze, the pulse in your throat.

Your wallet will be stolen, you'll get fat,

slip on the bathroom tiles of a foreign hotel and crack your hip. You'll be lonely.

Oh, taste how sweet and tart the red juice is, how the tiny seeds crunch between your teeth.

(Ellen Bass, b. 1947)

Sunday ~ April 19, 2020

"Hope" is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -

(Emily Dickinson, 1830 - 1886)

Saturday ~ April 18, 2020

Because the year is new and the great change already underway,
we concede a thousandfold and feel, harder than the land itself,
a complicity for everything we did not see or comprehend: cynicism borne of raw despair,
long-cultivated hatreds, the promise of leaders traveling like cool silence through the dark.
My life is here, in this small room, and like you
I am waiting to know - but there is no time to wait for what has happened.
What does the future ask of me?
those who won't have enough to eat by evening,
those whose disease will now take hold -
and the decades that carry past me once I've died,
generations of children, the suffering that is never solved,
the heat over the earth, its marshes,
its crowded towers, its unbreathable night air.
I would open my hand from the wrist,
step outside, not lose nerve.
Here is the day, still to be lived.
We do not fully know what we do.

(Joanna Klink, b. 1969)

Friday ~ April, 17, 2020

Remember the sky you were born under,
know each of the star's stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun's birth at dawn:
that is the strongest point of time.
Remember sundown and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. you are evidence of
her life, and her mother's, and hers.
Remember your father. he is your life, also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animals life -
all have their tribe, their families, their histories, too.
Talk to them, listen to them.
They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. remember her voice.
She knows the origin of the universe
remember you are all people
and all people are you.
Remember you are this universe
and this universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this,
remember the dance language is, that life is.
Remember.

(Joy Harjo, b. 1951)

Wednesday ~ April, 15,2020

May the tide that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss the wind then turn from it
certain that it will love you back
may you open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that

(Lucille Clifton, 1936 - 2010)

Tuesday ~ April 14, 2020

Everyone should be born into this world happy and loving everything.
But in truth, it rarely works that way.
For myself, I have spent my life clambering toward it.
Hallelujah, anyway I'm not where I started!
And have you too been trudging like that,
sometimes almost forgetting how wondrous the world is
and how miraculously kind some people can be?

(Mary Oliver, 1935 - 2019)