Daddy Longlegs, Ted Kooser

Daddy Longlegs

BY TED KOOSER

Here, on fine long legs springy as steel,

a life rides, sealed in a small brown pill

that skims along over the basement floor

wrapped up in a simple obsession.

Eight legs reach out like the master ribs

of a web in which some thought is caught

dead center in its own small world,

a thought so far from the touch of things

that we can only guess at it. If mine,

it would be the secret dream

of walking alone across the floor of my life

with an easy grace, and with love enough

to live on at the center of myself.

"Daddy Long Legs" from Flying at Night: Poems 1965-1985, by Ted Kooser

Hagar In The Wilderness, Tyehimba Jess

Hagar in the Wilderness

by Tyehimba Jess 

Carved Marble. Edmonia Lewis, 1875

My God is the living God,

God of the impertinent exile.

An outcast who carved me

into an outcast carved

by sheer and stony will

to wander the desert

in search of deliverance

the way a mother hunts

for her wayward child.

God of each eye fixed to heaven,

God of the fallen water jug,

of all the hope a vessel holds

before spilling to barren sand.

God of flesh hewn from earth

and hammered beneath a will

immaculate with the power

to bear life from the lifeless

like a well in a wasteland.

I'm made in the image of a God

that knows flight but stays me

rock still to tell a story ancient as

slavery, old as the first time

hands clasped together for mercy

and parted to find only their own

salty blessing of sweat.

I have been touched by my God

in my creation, I've known her caress

of anointing callus across my face. 

I know the lyric of her pulse

across these lips...  and yes,

I've kissed the fingertips

of my dark and mortal God.

She has shown me the truth

behind each chiseled blow

that's carved me into this life,

the weight any woman might bear 

to stretch her mouth toward her

one true God, her own

beaten, marble song.

Edmonia Lewis (1845-1907) was an African/Native American expatriate sculptor who was phenomenally successful in Rome.

A Blessing For Equilibrium, John O'Donohue

A Blessing for Equilibrium

 

Like the joy of the sea coming home to shore,

May the music of laughter break through your soul.

 

As the wind wants to make everything dance,

May your gravity be lightened by grace.

 

Like the freedom of the monastery bell,

May clarity of mind make your eyes smile.

 

As water takes whatever shape it is in,

So free may you be about who you become.

 

As silence smiles on the other side of what’s said,

May a sense of irony give you perspective.

 

As time remains free of all that it frames,

May fear or worry never put you in chains.

 

May your prayer of listening deepen enough

To hear in the distance the laughter of God.

 

~ John O'Donohue ~

 

(Benedictus - A Book of Blessings)

Detour, Ruth Feldman

Detour

I took a long time getting here,

much of it wasted on wrong turns, 

back roads riddled by ruts.

I had adventures

I never would have known 

if I proceeded as the crow flies.

Super highways are so sure

of where they are going:

they arrive too soon.

A straight line isn't always

the shortest distance

between two people.

Sometimes I act as though

I'm heading somewhere else

while, imperceptibly,

I narrow the gap between you and me.

I'm not sure I'll ever

know the right way, but I don't mind

getting lost now and then.

Maps don't know everything.

~ Ruth Feldman ~

(The Ambitions of Ghosts)

Still, A.R. Ammons

 

Still

 

I said I will find what is lowly
and put the roots of my identity
down there:
each day I'll wake up
and find the lowly nearby,
a handy focus and reminder,
a ready measure of my significance,
the voice by which I would be heard,
the wills, the kinds of selfishness
I could
freely adopt as my own:

 

but though I have looked everywhere,
I can find nothing
to give myself to:
everything is

 

magnificent with existence, is in 
surfeit of glory:
nothing is diminished,
nothing has been diminished for me:

 

I said what is more lowly than the grass:
ah, underneath,
a ground-crust of dry-burnt moss:
I looked at it closely
and said this can be my habitat: but
nestling in I
found
below the brown exterior
green mechanisms beyond the intellect
awaiting resurrection in rain: so I got up

 

and ran saying there is nothing lowly in the universe:
I found a beggar:
he had stumps for legs: nobody was paying
him any attention: everybody went on by:
I nestled in and found his life:
there, love shook his body like a devastation:
I said
though I have looked everywhere
I can find nothing lowly
in the universe:

 

I whirled though transfigurations up and down,
transfigurations of size and shape and place:

 

at one sudden point came still,
stood in wonder:
moss, beggar, weed, tick, pine, self, magnificent
with being!

 

~ A. R. Ammons ~ 

 

(Collected Poems 1951-1971)

April 5, 1974', Richard Wilbur

April 5, 1974 by Richard Wilbur The air was soft, the ground still cold. In the dull pasture where I strolled Was something I could not believe. Dead grass appeared to slide and heave, Though still too frozen-flat to stir, And rocks to twitch and all to blur. What was this rippling of the land? Was matter getting out of hand And making free with natural law, I stopped and blinked, and then I saw A fact as eerie as a dream. There was a subtle flood of steam Moving upon the face of things. It came from standing pools and springs And what of snow was still around; It came of winter’s giving ground So that the freeze was coming out, As when a set mind, blessed by doubt, Relaxes into mother-wit. Flowers, I said, will come of it. "April 5, 1974" by Richard Wilbur from Collected Poems

The Seder's Order, Marge Piercy

The seder's order

BY MARGE PIERCY

The songs we join in

are beeswax candles

burning with no smoke

a clean fire licking at the evening

our voices small flames quivering.

The songs string us like beads

on the hour. The ritual is

its own melody that leads us

where we have gone before

and hope to go again, the comfort

of year after year. Order:

we must touch each base

of the haggadah as we pass,

blessing, handwashing,

dipping this and that. Voices

half harmonize on the brukhahs.

Dear faces like a multitude

of moons hang over the table

and the truest brief blessing:

affection and peace that we make.

Marge Piercy, "The Seder's Order" from The Crooked Inheritance.

The a House of a Belonging, David Whyte

The House of Belonging

 

I awoke

this morning

in the gold light

turning this way

and that

 

thinking for

a moment

it was one

day

like any other.

 

But

the veil had gone

from my

darkened heart

and I thought

 

it must have been the quiet

candlelight

that filled my room,

 

it must have been

the first easy rhythm

with which I breathed

myself to sleep,

 

it must have been

the prayer I said

speaking to the otherness

of the night.

 

And

I thought

this is the good day

you could meet your love,

 

this is the black day

someone close

to you could die.

 

This is the day

you realize

how easily the thread

is broken

between this world 

and the next

 

and I found myself

sitting up

in the quiet pathway

of light,

 

the tawny

close grained cedar

burning round

me like a fire

and all the angels of this housely

heaven ascending

through the first

roof of light

the sun has made.

 

This is the bright home

in which I live,

this is where

I ask

my friends

to come,

this is where I want

to love all the things

it has taken me so long 

to learn to love.

 

This is the temple

of my adult aloneness

and I belong

to that aloneness

as I belong to my life.

 

There is no house

like the house of belonging.

 

~ David Whyte ~

 

 

(The House of Belonging)