heartsteps

When we get out of the glass bottles of our ego
and when we escape like squirrels turning in the
cages of our personality and get into the forests again, we shall shiver with cold and fright but things will happen to us so that we don’t know
ourselves.
Cool, unlying life will rush in,
and passion will make our bodies taut with power,
we shall stamp our feet with new power
and old things will fall down,
we shall laugh, and institutions will curl up like
burnt paper.

D.H. Lawrence

my father moved through dooms of love
through sames of am through haves of give,
singing each morning out of each night
my father moved through depths of height

this motionless forgetful where
turned at his glance to shining here;
that if (so timid air is firm)
under his eyes would stir and squirm

newly as from unburied which
floats the first who, his april touch
drove sleeping selves to swarm their fates
woke dreamers to their ghostly roots

and should some why completely weep
my father’s fingers brought her sleep:
vainly no smallest voice might cry
for he could feel the mountains grow.

Lifting the valleys of the sea
my father moved through griefs of joy;
praising a forehead he called the moon
singing desire into begin

joy was his song and joy so pure
a heart of star by him could steer
and pure so now and now so yes
the wrists of twilight would rejoice

keen as midsummer’s keen beyond
conceiving mind of sun will stand,
so strictly (over utmost him
so hugely) stood my father’s dream

his flesh was flesh his blood was blood:
no hungry man but wished him food;
no cripple wouldn’t creep one mile
uphill to only see him smile.

Scorning the pomp of must and shall
my father moved through dooms of feel;
his anger was as right as rain
his pity was as green as grain

septembering arms of year extend
less humbly wealth to foe and friend
than he to foolish and to wise
offered immeasurable is

proudly and (by octobering flame
beckoned) as earth will downward climb,
so naked for immortal work
his shoulders marched against the dark

his sorrow was as true as bread:
no liar looked him in the head;
if every friend became his foe
he’d laugh and build a world with snow.

My father moved through theys of we,
singing each new leaf out of each tree
(and every child was sure that spring
danced when she heard my father sing)

then let men kill which cannot share,
let blood and flesh be mud and mire,
scheming imagine, passion willed,
freedom a drug that’s bought and sold

giving to steal and cruel kind,
a heart to fear, to doubt a mind,
to differ a disease of same,
conform the pinnacle of am

though dull were all we taste as bright,
bitter all utterly things sweet,
maggoty minus and dumb death
all we inherit, all bequeath

and nothing quite so least as truth
—i say though hate were why man breathe—
because my father lived his soul
love is the whole and more than all

e.e. cummings

We pray to make it whole,
tip the world on edge and
follow the trail home, singing.
Our voices carry
into the future,
our brief language
a migration of words,
slow voice of mountain,
wandering voices of caribou, wind.
Blown seed, all the
lost languages wandering
through seasons, moon and sun,
wandering through centuries,
drifting, every year
the grass return, the birds
begin to sing,
the sky clears and
we can see forever.

Gary Lawless

Learn the alchemy true human beings know.
The moment you accept what troubles
you’ve been given, the door will open.

Welcome difficulty, as a familiar comrade.
Joke with torment brought by the Friend.

Sorrows are the rags of old clothes
and jackets that serve to cover,
and then are taken off.

That undressing,
and the naked body underneath,
is the sweetness that comes after grief.

Rumi

Gentle souls, walk with me sometimes through
the breath of strangers, which parts like rain,
tremblingly brushes your cheeks, then behind you
with the parting tremble joins together again.

Strong, compassionate ones who reach the plateau
of the heart’s new capital, settle here, mark
how your arrows love the bull’s-eye and the bow,
how tears extend your eyesight through the dark.

Don’t be afraid to suffer. Learn to give back
heaviness to the dead weight of the Earth,
its mountains and seas, nothingness to the black

hole inside the Earth’s core. Though all the trees
you planted as children now have the girth
of monsters, still there are spaces … and the breeze.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Open the door,
liberate the blue sky;
let the inquisitive flower-scents
enter my room;
the light of the early sun,
let it flood my body
from vein to vein;
I am alive, the word of greeting
that’s throbbing
in every twig and leaf,
let me hear it;
this dayspring dawn,
let it swathe my heart and mind
with its scarf as it does the field
green with the shoots
of new grass.
The love I have known in my life
utters its silent language
in the sky, in the air,
everywhere.
I am bathed in the light
of its pure enthronement.
All that’s real I see
as a necklace of jewels
on the breast of blue.

Rabindrinath Tagore

Forsake your devotion
to predicament and discord
Break the tradition
of rivalry and curse

Quick while there’s time
Uproot hostility
Claim your humanity
Insist on brotherhood

Open your fists
into embraces
Open your arms’ length
into loving circles

Remove every roadblock
to the peaceable kingdom
Outnumber the hawks
Outdistance the angels

James Broughton

That hurt we embrace becomes joy.
Call it to your arms where it can change.
A silkworm eating leaves makes a cocoon. Each of us weaves a chamber
of leaves and sticks.
Like silkworms, we begin to exist
as we disappear
inside that room.

Without legs, we fly.
When I stop speaking, this poem
will close in silence more magnificent…

I don’t regret how much I love,
and I avoid those who repent their passion.

Hundreds of sweethearts!
I am the lover and the one
lovers long for. Blue, and a cure
for blues, sky in a small cage,

badly hurt but flying.
Everybody’s scandalous flaw is mine.

Rumi

“I wish I could show you
When you are lonely or in darkness,
The Astonishing Light
Of your own Being!”

I know the voice of depression
Still calls to you.

I know those habits that can ruin your life
Still send their invitations.

But you are with the Friend now
And look so much stronger.

You can stay that way
And even bloom!

Keep squeezing drops of the Sun
From your prayers and work and music
And from your companions’ beautiful laughter.

Keep squeezing drops of the Sun
From the sacred hands and glance of your Beloved
And, my dear,
From the most insignificant movements
Of your own holy body.

Learn to recognize the counterfeit coins
That may buy you a moment of pleasure,
But then drag you for days
Like a broken man
Behind a farting camel.

You are with the Friend now.
Learn what actions of yours delight Him,
What actions of yours bring freedom
And Love.

Whenever you say God’s name, dear pilgrim,
My ears wish my head was missing
So they could finally kiss each other
And applaud all your nourishing wisdom!

O keep squeezing the drops of the Sun
From your prayers and work and music
And from your companions’ beautiful laughter

And from the most insignificant movements
Of your own holy body.

Now, sweet one,
Be wise,
Cast all your votes for Dancing!

Hafiz

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light.
For a time I rest in the grace of the world,
and am free.

Wendell Berry