It cannot save us
from ourselves,
but it will
salvage the pieces.
**
It’s not the bad things that happen. It’s where someone reaches out in a human way
to someone else that seems to be charged.
I’m concerned with work that lets us be passively engaged with it because right now there’s enough in the world that does that.
I don’t think that’s what poetry is about.
Nick Flynn, interview, citation misplaced
**
The point of connection is always the same,
thought aside that is—we connect
essentially in action, in exchange, in movement,
spontaneous, unique, shared
even in difference, co-extending
currents of connections.
The poem, says Bill Stafford,
is that group of words
that catches the reader’s attention,
just so…
**
Getting it “right is not about thought.
**
The priest performed the service at the shrine of his deceased child
every morning, at dawn
…for years. He did not ask
for any comforting but said
the printed words of the sutras
and poured fresh tea
into the images’ cups, then looked
out at the sea and sky
and turned to his daily work
of telling the living to live
and the dead ones to rest in peace.
Edith Shiffert, from The Kyoto Years
**
Aspen leaves quiver
in thin morning light, practice
before the sunrise.
**
I can’t say if this
is what my teachers had in mind,
only that it is mine.
**
I believe what my whole life says.
William Stafford 2/16/82
Is this vocation?
Seems lately that all I’ve left is words
that lead me endlessly,
albeit beautifully,
nowhere,
run their course, leave me
naked, a singular pulse
in the world spread large,
awake
in the close-abiding silence
some call home
to the poem,
with nothing left
but to give myself
to it.
**
Butterfly wings, white
on white, flutter the courtyard—
shadows illumined.
**
Afternoon lies bright
on the deck overlooking
the high end of this small valley,
carrying light
the children’s voices
from the field aside the school,
organized play
made reckless and free,
affirmed as such.
**
San Pedro County Park
My path or yours?
The question was never posed.
The cat, lying large, center trail
in the sun, simply rose
and disappeared, leaving me there,
alone and glad.
**
The poet Buson
laments any day empty
of poems—possible?
**
Dreams are stories not yet lived.
Recollections sometimes speak of authentic innocence.
Each can be weighed in stories
now being told, adjustments made in their living.
**
First principles
The first principle at work is joy,
straight-forward residual of doing willingly
for others--the heart spreads, the mind rests,
each feeling more true
the matters at hand.
Though I’ve sympathy
for many named movements,
these I trust most.
**
It’s the light touch
that does us well, steady,
unobtrusive,
doing what it does,
as it does, we right there
at the rise of every breath.
**
Attentiveness is
not what we lack,
but who we are, bundles
of attentive receptors
responsively learning our way
the current shows
across the myriad pebbles,
among the rocks
against the smoothing banks,
the truest of our voices
always rising forth.
