A poem by Maxine Kumin

I just love to find these poems, these rare gems, that are stirring and unlike any other. They gently transport me to another place and for a lovely time, I am suspended.

After Love

Afterwards, the compromise.
Bodies resume their boundaries.

These legs, for instance, mine.
Your arms take you back in.

Spoons of our fingers, lips
admit their ownership.

The bedding yawns, a door
blows aimlessly ajar

and overhead, a plane
singsongs, coming down.

Nothing is changed, except
there was a moment when

the wolf, the mongering wolf
who stands outside the self

lay lightly down, and slept.

A poem by Ranier Maria Rilke

Rilke's poems are masterful in their use of images to describe. He knew and often spoke of languages limitation. Where do we keep the deepest parts of ourselves that are masked from day to day existance, these parts that are central to our being yet are not always readily available to access? We keep our true selves far away from our verbal ability to express. A great deal goes on beyond the spoken word.

Moving Forward

The deep parts of my life pour onward,
as if the river shores were opening out.
It seems that things are more like me now,
that I can see farther into paintings.
I feel closer to what language can't reach.
With my sense, as with birds, I climb
into the windy heaven, out of the oak,
and in the ponds broken off from the sky
my feeling sinks, as if standing on fishes.

A poem by John Yellow Lark

Native American Prayer

Oh Great Spirit,
Whose voice I hear in the wind,
Whose breath gives life to the world,
Hear me!
I come to you as one of your many children.
I am small and weak.
I need your strength and wisdom.
May I walk in beauty.
Make my eyes behold the red and purple sunset.
Make my hands respect the things that you have made,
And my ears sharp to hear your voice.
Make me wise so that I may know the things
That you have taught your children--
The lessons that you have hidden in every leaf and rock.
Make me strong, not to be superior to my brothers, but to be
able to fight my greatest enemy: myself.
Make me ever ready to come to you with straight eyes, so that
When life fades as the faded sunset
My spirit will come to you without shame."

A poem by Wendell Berry

Faith, so profoundly stated. This excerpt from Wendell Berry's imagination soars in a simple and searing profusion of truth that surrounds every being and every life.

What We Need Is Here

Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. What we need is here.

A poem by William Wordsworth

Those words of Wordsworth’s lie deep and dear. What is it that we are forgetting? What is it that we know but remember not? Even lifelong, impassioned friends sometimes forget to take the best from each other in these ego centered times....

From "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood"

"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!"