Poetry
posted
by Ann OShaughnessy on 4 Feb 2006 Heron
Dance Journal/blog
I
have been thinking about these words from Mary Oliver a lot lately.
Thank you to the wild soul who sent them to me quite a while ago.
"Athletes take care of their bodies. Writers must similarly
take care of the sensibility that houses the possibility
of poems. There is nourishment in books, other art, history,
philosophies – in holiness and in mirth. It is in
honest hands-on labor also; I don’t mean to indicate
a preference for the scholarly life. And it is in the green
world – among people, and animals, and trees for that
matter, if one genuinely cares about trees. A mind that
is lively and inquiring, compassionate, curious, angry,
full of music, full of feeling, is a mind full of possible
poetry. Poetry is a life-cherishing force. And it requires
a vision – a faith, to use an old- fashioned term.
Yes, indeed. For poems are not words, after all, but fires
for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary
as bread in the pockets of the hungry. Yes, indeed."
Mary Oliver
And a few poems that inspire me.
He told me that once
he forgot himself & his
heart opened up like a
door with a loose latch
& everything fell out &
he tried for days to put
it all back in the proper
order, but finally he
gave up & left it there
in a pile & loved
everything equally.
Brian Andreas (www.storypeople.com)
This one from Marianne Williamson. I am not traditionally
religious, but this is a good prayer, no matter what or
who you beleive in.
Dear God,
Please bring us big life and big love, deep life and deep
love.
We wish to show up now with pure and noble hearts that we
might
midwife the perfection in each other.
May we see each other’s greatness and invoke each
other’s light.
We surrender all the ways, both those we are aware of
and those that remain unconscious,
in which we block our love for each other.
We surrender our defenses.
We are ready to bring forth
the holiest vibrations of love and healing between us.
Where we are afraid to love,
where we have built walls in front of our hearts,
may we be healed and set free.
Where we are needy or do not know how to behave,
or tend to control or to judge
or to fix or be dishonest,
Please, dear God,
Show us another way.
We surrender ourselves to love.
We surrender our love to You.
May it serve Your purposes.
May it receive Your blessing and carry Your power.
May we never forsake each other.
Thank You very much.
Amen.
Marianne Williamson
And this one:
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
Derek Walcott
The very things we wish to avoid, neglect, and flee from
turn out to be the “prima materia’ from which
all real growth comes.
-Andrew Harvey
The Buddhist tradition has a lovely concept of friendship,
the notion of the Kalyana-mitra, the “noble friend.”
YourKalyana-mitra, your noble friend, will not accept pretension
but will gently and very firmly confront you with your own
blindness. No one can see his whole life totally. As there
is a blind spot in the retina of the human eye, there is
also in the soul a blind side where you are not able to
see. Therefore you must depend on the one you love to see
for you what you cannot see for yourself. Your Kalyana-mitra
complements your vision in a kind and critical way. Such
friendship is creative and critical; it is willing to negotiate
awkward and uneven territories of contradiction and woundedness.
- John O'Donohue, from Anam Cara
You can never love another person unless you are equally
involved in the beautiful but difficult spiritual work of
learning to love yourself. There is within each of us, at
the soul level, an enriching fountain of love. In other
words, you do not have to go outside yourself to know what
love is. This is not selfishness, and it is not narcissism:
they are negative obsessions with the need to be loved.
Rather this is the wellspring of love within the heart.
Through their need for love, people who lead solitary lives
often stumble upon this great fountain. They learn to whisper
awake the deep well of love within. This is not a question
of forcing yourself to love yourself. It is more a question
of exercising reserve, of inviting the wellspring of love
that is, after all, your deepest nature to flow through
your life. When this happens, the ground that has hardened
within you grows soft again. Through a lack of love everything
hardens. There is nothing as lonely in the world as that
which has hardened or grown cold. Bitterness and coldness
are the ultimate defeat.
- John O'Donohue, from Anam Cara
|
Honesty
is a gold mine
Only
in solitude can you discover a sense of your own beauty. The beauty
is frequently concealed behind the dull façade of routine.
… In the neglected crevices and corners of your evaded solitde,
you will find the treasure that you have always sought elsewhere.
Ezra Pound said something similar about beauty: Beauty likes to keep
away from the public glare.
But solitude isn't and end in itself. We all know people who are the
picture of Buddhist enlightenment at the retreat center who scream
with rage at the car that cut them off on the way home.
Which brings me back to honesty. I don't think we can learn what we
need to learn without someone telling us what they see. The ego or
personality is just too strong to let us clearly see ourselves. The
ego is very self-protective, because it is certain it knows what you
need. But if you follow it blindly, it will create a life for you
that is filled with ego-crutches: husbands and friends that never
disagree with you, work that is secure, pastimes that are socially
acceptable. It sounds good, but it is soul-sapping. Meeting a person
who is loving and honest is a gold mine.
In celebration of love,
Ann OShaughnessy
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