Are you looking for me?

Are you looking for me?

Are you looking for me? I am in the next seat.
My shoulder is against yours.
you will not find me in the stupas, not in Indian shrine
rooms, nor in synagogues, nor in cathedrals:
not in masses, nor kirtans, not in legs winding
around your own neck, nor in eating nothing but
vegetables.

When you really look for me, you will see me
instantly --
you will find me in the tiniest house of time.

Kabir says: Student, tell me, what is God?
He is the breath inside the breath.

Kabir

Patricia Motley's Art

Patricia Motley's Art

In my attempt to find my creative place that most recently has been hiding in some dark, dark place,  I came across this beautiful poem.  Patching the worn spots of age,  and finding our voice again, is made so much more certain by embracing the night and seeking our path from The Universe, our Higher Self, our God.

Little Night Prayer

Péter Kántor

Translated by Michael Blumenthal

Lord, I'm tired, the bunion on my right foot is throbbing, I worry about myself. Who is this anguished man, Lord? it can't be me, so woeful and sluggish. I would like to trust quietly, but like waves in the ocean, tempers bubble up in me. I try a smile, but some hairdespair impedes me. This isn't all right, Lord, feel pity for me, be scared, reward my endeavors. Evaluate things with me, delete with my own hand what isn't needed. Taste with me what needs to be tasted, and say to me: this is sweet! this is sour! Remind me of the small red car, of something that was good. There was a lot that was good, wasn't there? a lot of sunken islands, crumbled glamour. Place a net into my hands to fish with, in the past and in the present. I'm a fish too, in the night, puckering silver,   bubble-lifed. Turn me inside out, freshen me up, throw me up high and catch me! What's it to you, Lord?      If you must, lay down your cards, show me something new. How your leaves fall! your sun scorches your wind whistles. Speak to me! Talk with me through the night, it's nothing to you, Lord!

From Unknown Places: Selected Poems of Péter Kántor.  Copyright © 2010 by Michael Blumenthal and Pleasure Boat Studio.

A Potted Plant

I pull a sun from my coin purse each day.

And at night I let my pet the moon

Run freely into the sky meadow.

If I whistled,

She would turn her head and look at me.

If I then waved my arms,

She would come back wagging a marvelous tail

Of stars.

There are always a few men like me

In this world

Who are house-sitting for God.

We share His royal duties:

I water each day a favorite potted plant

Of His--

This earth.

Ask the Friend for love.

Ask Him again.

For I have learned that every heart will get

What it prays for

Most.

From: 'The Subject Tonight Is Love' 

Translated by Daniel Ladinsky

My Eyes So Soft
 
Don't surrender your loneliness so quickly
let it cut more deep.
Let it ferment and season you
as few human or even divine ingredients can
Something missing in my heart tonight
has made my eyes so soft
my voice so tender
my need of god
absolutely clear.

--Hafiz

Every child has known God

Every child has known God,
Not the God of names,
Not the God of don’ts,
Not the God who never does Anything weird,
But the God who knows only 4 words.
And keeps repeating them, saying:
“Come Dance with Me , come dance.”

-- Hafiz

Tender Words

--Rumi

Tender words we spoke

to one another

are sealed

in the secret vaults of heaven.

One day like rain,

they will fall to earth

and grow green

all over the world.

Petals

Even when you tear its petals off one after another,
the rose keeps laughing and doesn't bend in pain.
"Why should I be afflicted because of a thorn?
It is the thorn which taught me how to laugh."
Whatever you lost through fate,
be certain that it saved you from pain.

Rumi

From: "Breathing Truth" Trans. Muriel Maufroy

Look at every path closely and deliberately.

Try it as many times as you think necessary.

Then ask yourself, and yourself alone....

Does this path have a heart?  If it does, the path is good.

 If it doesn't, it is of no use.

Carlos Castaneda

God turns you from one feeling to another and teaches you by means of opposites, so that you will have two wings to fly - not one.

Rumi

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened.
Don't open the door to the study and begin reading.
Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
Rumi

You suppose you are the trouble But you are the cure You suppose that you are the lock on the door But you are the key that opens it It's too bad that you want to be someone else You don't see your own face, your own beauty Yet, no face is more beautiful than yours.       Rumi

---

* * * I saw you dancing last night

on the roof of your house

all alone.

I felt your heart longing for the Friend.

I saw you whirling

beneath the soft bright rose

that hung from an invisible stem in the sky.

So I began to change into my best clothes

in hopes of joining you,

even though I live a thousand miles away.

And if you had spun like an immaculate sphere

just two more times,

then bowed again so sweetly to the east,

you would have found God and me

standing so near

and lifting you into our arms.

I saw you dancing last night

near the roof of this world

---Hafiz  

My Eyes So Soft
Don't surrender your loneliness so quickly
let it cut more deep.
Let it ferment and season you
as few human or even divine ingredients can
Something missing in my heart tonight
has made my eyes so soft
my voice so tender
my need of god
absolutely clear.

--Hafiz

Birdwings

Your grief for what you've lost lifts a mirror
up to where you are bravely working.

Expecting the worst, you look, and instead,
here's the joyful face you've been wanting to see.

Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes.
If it were always a fist or always stretched open,
you would be paralyzed.

Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding,
the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated
as birdwings.

from 'The Essential Rumi" Coleman Barks with John Moyne

Be with those who help your being

Be with those who help your being.
Don't sit with indifferent people, whose breath
comes cold out of their mouths.
Not these visible forms, your work is deeper.

A chunk of dirt thrown in the air breaks to pieces.
If you don't try to fly,
and so break yourself apart,
you will be broken open by death,
when it's too late for all you could become.

Leaves get yellow. The tree puts out fresh roots
and makes them green.
Why are you so content with a love that turns you yellow?

Ode 2865 Trans. Coleman Barks

Life is change Life is loss. This poem by ee cummings expresses so well that no matter how many changes come our way, there is permanence within our heart. 

i carry your heart with me

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in

my heart) i am never without it (anywhere

i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling).

i fear

no fate (for you are my fate,my sweet) i want

no world (for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you.

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart) .

ee cummings

This is one of my favorite poems by Pablo Neruda. His words take me to a quiet place, usually long forgotten, and open doors to the muse who dwells within.

Lost In the Forest

Lost in the forest, I broke off a dark twig

and lifted its whisper to my thirsty lips:

maybe it was the voice of the rain crying,

a cracked bell, or a torn heart.

Something from far off it seemed

deep and secret to me, hidden by the earth,

a shout muffled by huge autumns,

by the moist half-open darkness of the leaves.

Wakening from the dreaming forest there, the hazel-sprig

sang under my tongue, its drifting fragrance

climbed up through my conscious mind

as if suddenly the roots I had left behind

cried out to me, the land I had lost with my childhood--

and I stopped, wounded by the wandering scent.

Pablo Neruda

Storms

Margie DeMerell

There will be storms, child

There will be storms

And with each tempest

You will seem to stand alone

Against cruel winds

But with time, the rage and fury

Shall subside

And when the sky clears

You will find yourself

Clinging to someone

You would have never known

But for storms

I found this poem to be an absolute formula for staying healthy, vital and young in spirit.  Aging gracefully may be the result, but aging with a love for life intact means greeting each change that comes to the door with open arms.  If not open arms, then peaceful resignation. :-)

The Layers

I have walked through many lives,

some of them my own,

and I am not who I was,

though some principle of being

abides, from which I struggle

not to stray.

When I look behind,

as I am compelled to look

before I can gather strength

to proceed on my journey,

I see the milestones dwindling

toward the horizon

and the slow fires trailing

from the abandoned camp-sites,

over which scavenger angels

wheel on heavy wings.

Oh, I have made myself a tribe

out of my true affections,

and my tribe is scattered!

How shall the heart be reconciled

to its feast of losses?

In a rising wind

the manic dust of my friends,

those who fell along the way,

bitterly stings my face.

Yet I turn, I turn,

exulting somewhat,

with my will intact to go

wherever I need to go,

and every stone on the road

precious to me.

In my darkest night,

when the moon was covered

and I roamed through wreckage,

a nimbus-clouded voice

directed me:

"Live in the layers,

not on the litter."

Though I lack the art

to decipher it,

no doubt the next chapter

in my book of transformations

is already written.

I am not done with my changes.

Stanley Kunitz

One afternoon I was trying to find the right composition for my first stab at abstract art, and became creatively paralyzed in the process.  I put it aside for a time, and found this poem by Sara Teasdale.  In the tranquil scene of her soft rain, she seems to be saying that we are such a small fraction of our universe, that nothing is of lasting consequence.Seeking perfection in my art, or perfection in life, is truly a wasted effort.

So I let my colors fly, and hello abstract!

There will come Soft Rain

Sara Teasdale

There will come soft rain and the smell of the ground,

And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,

And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire

Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire.

And not one will know of the war, not one

Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,

If mankind perished utterly.

And Spring herself when she woke at dawn,

Would scarcely know that we were gone.

Sadie and Maud

Another wonderful poem by Gwendolyn Brooks. But I think I'd much rather be Maud.

Maud went to college.

Sadie stayed home.

Sadie scraped life

With a fine toothed comb.

She didn't leave a tangle in

Her comb found every strand.

Sadie was one of the livingest chicks

In all the land.

Sadie bore two babies

Under her maiden name.

Maud and Ma and Papa

Nearly died of shame.

When Sadie said her last so-long

Her girls struck out from home.

(Sadie left as heritage

Her fine-toothed comb.)

Maud, who went to college,

Is a thin brown mouse.

She is living all alone

In this old house.

Gwendolyn Brooks

I Sit and Think

I sit beside the fire and think

of all that I have seen,

of meadow-flowers and butterflies

in summers that have been;

Of yellow leaves and gossamer

in autumns that there were,

with morning mist and silver sun

and wind upon my hair.

I sit beside the fire and think

of how the world will be

when winter comes without a spring

that I shall never see.

For still there are so many things

that I have never seen:

in every wood in every spring

there is a different green.

I sit beside the fire and think

of people long ago,

and people who will see a world

that I shall never know.

But all the while I sit and think

of times there were before,

I listen for returning feet

and voices at the door.

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

After the Winter

Some day, when trees have shed their leaves

And against the morning's white

The shivering birds beneath the eaves

Have sheltered for the night,

We'll turn our faces southward, love,

Toward the summer isle

Where bamboos spire to shafted grove

And wide-mouthed orchids smile.

And we will seek the quiet hill

Where towers the cotton tree,

And leaps the laughing crystal rill,

And works the droning bee.

And we will build a cottage there

Beside an open glade,

With black-ribbed blue-bells blowing near,

and ferns that never fade.

Claude McKay

The Guest House

Jalal ad-Din Rumi

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meaness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain all!

Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still, treat each guest honorably

He may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing,

and invite them in.

Be grateful for whomever comes,

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.

A Poem by Mary Oliver from AMERICAN PRIMITIVE

One of my favorite poems is Blackwater Woods by Mary Oliver. . Life is change, often uninvited, and more often than not, feared. Fear should not prevent us from greeting each day with a child's anticipation, nor should it stop us from loving without reservation, no matter what the cost.

Blackwater Woods

Look, the trees

are turning their own bodies

into pillars of light,

are giving off the rich

fragrance of cinnamon

and fulfillment,

the long tapers

of cattails

are bursting and floating away over

the blue shoulders

of the ponds,

and every pond,

no matter what its

name is, is

nameless now.

Every year

everything I have ever learned

in my lifetime

leads back to this: the fires

and the black river of loss

whose other side

is salvation,

whose meaning

none of us will ever know.

To live in this world

you must be able

to do three things:

to love what is mortal;

to hold it

against your bones knowing

your own life depends on it;

and, when the time comes to let it go,

to let it go.

-- from American Primitive, by Mary Oliver

Warning

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
with a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people's gardens
And learn to spit.
You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.
But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.
But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.


Jenny Joseph