Poetry Of Nature

On being mindful and present through words about Nature. (Not a frequent poster, I post when I really need words and Nature to bring me into the presence, the present moment.) Main blog @ wholenessblooming.tumblr.com

[wholenessblooming]

“Poetry is a river; many voices travel in it; poem after poem moves along in the exciting crests and falls of the river waves. None is timeless, each arrives in a historical context; almost everything, in the end, passes. But the desire to make a poem, and the world’s willingness to receive it - indeed the world’s need of it - these never pass.”

—

Mary Oliver

[poetry-rivers]

Another word I love is evening for the balance it implies, balance being something I struggle with.  I suppose I would like to be more a planet, turning in & out of light It comes down again to polarities, equilibrium. Evening. The moths  take the place of the butterflies, owls the place of hawks, coyotes for dogs, stillness for business, & the great sorrow of brightness makes way for its own sorrow.  Everything dances with its strict  negation, & I like that. I have no choice but to like that. Systems are evening out all around us— even now, as we kneel before a new & ruthless circumstance.  Where would I like to be in five  years, someone asks—& what  can I tell them? Surrendering  with grace to the evening, with  as much grace as I can muster  to the circumstance of darkness,  which is only something else  that does not stay.

Jeremy Radin, poem 'Evening'

[poetry-rivers]

Look, it’s spring. And last year’s loose dust has turned

into this soft willingness. The wind-flowers have come

up trembling, slowly the brackens are up-lifting their

curvaceous and pale bodies. The thrushes have come

home, none less than filled with mystery, sorrow,

happiness, music, ambition.

And I am walking out into all of this with nowhere to

go and no task undertaken but to turn the pages of

this beautiful world over and over, in the world of my mind.

* * *

Therefore, dark past,

I’m about to do it.

I’m about to forgive you

for everything.

Mary Oliver, 'A Settlement' poem from What Do We Know: Poems and Prose Poems

[poetry-rivers]

If we will have the wisdom to survive, to stand like slow-growing trees on a ruined place, renewing, enriching it, if we will make our seasons welcome here, asking not too much of earth or heaven, then a long time after we are dead the lives our lives prepare will live here, their houses strongly placed upon the valley sides, fields and gardens rich in the windows. The river will run clear, as we will never know it, and over it, birdsong like a canopy. On the levels of the hills will be green meadows, stock bells in noon shade. On the steeps where greed and ignorance cut down the old forest, an old forest will stand, its rich leaf-fall drifting on its roots. The veins of forgotten springs will have opened. Families will be singing in the fields. In their voices they will hear a music risen out of the ground. They will take nothing from the ground they will not return, whatever the grief at parting. Memory, native to this valley, will spread over it like a grove, and memory will grow into legend, legend into song, song into sacrament. The abundance of this place, the songs of its people and its birds, will be health and wisdom and indwelling light. This is no paradisal dream. Its hardship is its possibility.

~ Wendell Berry, from the poem 'A Vision' in The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry

[poetry-rivers]

All that I serve will die, all my delights, the flesh kindled from my flesh, garden and field, the silent lilies standing in the woods, the woods, the hill, the whole earth, all will burn in man’s evil, or dwindle in its own age. Let the world bring on me the sleep of darkness without stars, so I may know my little light taken from me into the seed of the beginning and the end, so I may bow to mystery, and take my stand on the earth like a tree in a field, passing without haste or regret toward what will be, my life a patient willing descent into the grass.

Wendell Berry, in 'The Wish to be Generous' from the Selected Poems of Wendell Berry

[poetry-rivers]

Wendell Berry, 'The Stones' poem from the Selected Poems of Wendell Berry

[poetry-rivers]

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light. To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight, and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings, and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.

Wendell Berry, 'To Know the Dark' from the Selected Poems of Wendell Berry

[poetry-rivers]

The opening out and out, body yielding body: the breaking through which the new comes, perching above its shadow on the piling up darkened broken old husks of itself: bud opening to flower opening to fruit opening to the sweet marrow of the seed— taken from what was, from what could have been. What is left is what is.

Wendell Berry, poem 'The Broken Ground' from The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry

[poetry-rivers]

I want to make poems that say right out, plainly, what I mean, that don’t go looking for the laces of elaboration, puffed sleeves. I want to keep close and use often words like heavy, heart, joy, soon, and to cherish the question mark and her bold sister

the dash. I want to write with quiet hands. I want to write while crossing the fields that are fresh with daisies and everlasting and the ordinary grass. I want to make poems while thinking of the bread of heaven and the cup of astonishment; let them be

songs in which nothing is neglected, not a hope, not a promise. I want to make poems that look into the earth and the heavens and see the unseeable. I want them to honor both the heart of faith, and the light of the world; the gladness that says, without any words, everything.

Mary Oliver, "Everything" poem, from New and Selected Poems (Vol.2)

[poetry-rivers]

I thought of happiness, how it is woven

Out of the silence in the empty house each day

And how it is not sudden and it is not given

But is creation itself like the growth of a tree.

No one has seen it happen, but inside the bark

Another circle is growing in the expanding ring.

No one has heard the root go deeper in the dark,

But the tree is lifted by this inward work

And its plumes shine, and its leaves are glittering.

So happiness is woven out of the peace of hours

And strikes its roots deep in the house alone:

The old chest in the corner, cool waxed floors,

White curtains softly and continually blown

As the free air moves quietly about the room;

A shelf of books, a table, and the white-washed wall—

These are the dear familiar gods of home,

And here the work of faith can best be done,

The growing tree is green and musical.

For what is happiness but growth in peace,

The timeless sense of time when furniture

Has stood a life's span in a single place,

And as the air moves, so the old dreams stir

The shining leaves of present happiness?

No one has heard thought or listened to a mind,

But where people have lived in inwardness

The air is charged with blessing and does bless;

Windows look out on mountains and the walls are kind.

May Sarton, “The Work of Happiness” poem from Collected Poems: 1930-1993

[poetry-rivers]

“True gardeners cannot bear a glove

Between the sure touch and the tender root,

Must let their hands grow knotted as they move

With a rough sensitivity about

Under the earth, between the rock and shoot,

Never to bruise or wound the hidden fruit.

And so I watched my mother's hands grow scarred,

She who could heal the wounded plant or friend

With the same vulnerable yet rigorous love;

I minded once to see her beauty gnarled,

But now her truth is given me to live,

As I learn for myself we must be hard

To move among the tender with an open hand,

And to stay sensitive up to the end

Pay with some toughness for a gentle world.”

May Sarton, “An Observation” poem from the book Honey in the Hive: Judith Matlack 1898-1982

[poetry-rivers]

My work is loving the world.

Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird—

    equal seekers of sweetness.

Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.

Here the clam deep in the speckled sand. Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?

Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me

    keep my mind on what matters,

which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be

    astonished.

The phoebe, the delphinium.

The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.

Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart

    and these body-clothes,

a mouth with which to give shouts of joy

    to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,

telling them all, over and over, how it is

    that we live forever.

Mary Oliver, “The Messenger” poem in Thirst: Poems

[poetry-rivers]

I am making a home inside myself. A shelter of kindness where everything is forgiven, everything allowed—a quiet patch of sunlight to stretch out without hurry, where all that has been banished and buried is welcomed, spoken, listened to—released. ​ A fiercely friendly place I can claim as my very own. ​ I am throwing arms open to the whole of myself—especially the fearful, fault-finding, falling apart, unfinished parts, knowing every seed and weed, every drop of rain, has made the soil richer. ​ I will light a candle, pour a hot cup of tea, gather around the warmth of my own blazing fire. I will howl if I want to, knowing this flame can burn through any perceived problem, any prescribed perfectionism, any lying limitation, every heavy thing. ​ I am making a home inside myself where grace blooms in grand and glorious abundance, a shelter of kindness that grows all the truest things. ​ I whisper hallelujah to the friendly sky. Watch now as I burst into blossom.

Julia Fehrenbacher, "The Most Important Thing" poem

(watch the poet read her poem in this video on her YouTube channel)

[poetry-rivers]

When death comes

like the hungry bear in autumn; when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut; when death comes like the measle-pox;

when death comes like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering: what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything as a brotherhood and a sisterhood, and I look upon time as no more than an idea, and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth, tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something precious to the earth.

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real. I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

Mary Oliver, "When Death Comes" poem, from New and Selected Poems

[poetry-rivers]

Listen with the night falling we are saying thank you we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings we are running out of the glass rooms with our mouths full of food to look at the sky and say thank you we are standing by the water thanking it standing by the windows looking out in our directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging after funerals we are saying thank you after the news of the dead whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators remembering wars and the police at the door and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you in the banks we are saying thank you in the faces of the officials and the rich and of all who will never change we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us taking our feelings we are saying thank you with the forests falling faster than the minutes of our lives we are saying thank you with the words going out like cells of a brain with the cities growing over us we are saying thank you faster and faster with nobody listening we are saying thank you thank you we are saying and waving dark though it is

W.S. Merwin, "Thanks" poem from Migration: New and Selected Poems

[poetry-rivers]

Don’t worry about saving these songs! And if one of our instruments breaks, it doesn’t matter.

We have fallen into the place where everything is music.

The strumming and the flute notes rise into the atmosphere, and even if the whole world’s harp should burn up, there will still be hidden instruments playing.

So the candle flickers and goes out. We have a piece of flint, and a spark.

This singing art is sea foam. The graceful movements come from a pearl somewhere on the ocean floor.

Poems reach up like spindrift and the edge of driftwood along the beach, wanting!

They derive from a slow and powerful root that we can’t see.

Stop the words now. Open the window in the center of your chest, and let the spirits fly in and out.

Rumi, 'Where Everything Is Music' poem from Rumi: Selected Poems (tr. Coleman Barks)

[poetry-rivers]

One day I went out into a wonderful ongoing afternoon, it was fall,

the pine trees were brushing themselves against the sky as though they were painting it, and Swirler,

who was alive then, was walking slowly through the green bog, his neck

as thick as an ox, his antlers brushing against the trees, his three good feet tapping

the softness beneath him and the fourth, from an old wound, swirling. I know he saw me

for he gave me a long look which was as precious as a few good words, since his eyes

were without terror. What do the creatures know? What in this world can we be certain about? How did he know I was nothing

but a harmless mumbler of words, some of which would be about him and this wind-whipped day? In a week he would be dead,

arrowed down by a young man I like, though with some difficulty. In my house there are a hundred half-done poems. Each of us leaves an unfinished life.

Mary Oliver, 'Thinking of Swirler' poem from Evidence: Poems