Moon Missing, Allan Peterson

Moon Missing

BY ALLAN PETERSON

I was so worried the hickory I recognized

had died from salt burn in the last hurricane

I may have passed by vervain and apple haw

like they didn’t matter, but this spring

it put out seven shoots from its base.

Still, the oldest trick is the moon missing,

then the “new” moon appears,

though we know it’s the old one, and we pretend

to be taken in like the mother or baby

behind the bath towel.

Really it’s the moon winking,

being the stone that holds stones and now footprints.

And when I tell Frances, I see she is a moon

motionless in the doorway, skin reflecting

a lamp, a face that awakens on paper.

Allan Peterson, "Moon Missing" from Fragile Acts

Hallelujah, Mary Oliver

Halleluiah

 

Everyone should be born into this world happy

and loving everything.

But in truth it rarely works that way.

For myself, I have spent my life clamoring toward it.

Halleluiah, anyway I'm not where I started!

 

And have you too been trudging like that, sometimes

almost forgetting how wondrous the world is

and how miraculously kind some people can be?

And have you too decided that probably nothing important

is ever easy?

Not, say, for the first sixty years.

 

Halleluiah, I'm sixty now, and even a little more,

and some days I feel I have wings.

 

~ Mary Oliver ~

 

(Evidence)

 

The Land Of Plenty, Leonard Cohen

The Land of Plenty

 

Don't really have the courage

To stand where I must stand.

Don't really have the temperament

To lend a helping hand.

 

Don't really know who sent me

To raise my voice and say:

May the lights in The Land of Plenty

Shine on the truth some day.

 

I don't know why I come here,

Knowing as I do,

What you really think of me,

What I really think of you.

 

For the millions in the prison,

That wealth has set apart - 

For the Christ who has not risen,

From the caverns of the heart -

 

For the innermost decision,

That we cannot but obey - 

For what's left of our religion,

I lift my voice and pray:

May the lights in The Land of Plenty

Shine on the truth some day.

 

I know I said I'd meet you,

I'd meet you at the store,

But I can't buy it, baby.

I can't buy it anymore.

 

And I don't really know who sent me,

To raise my voice and say:

May the lights in The Land of Plenty

Shine on the truth some day.

 

For the innermost decision

That we cannot but obey

For what's left of our religion

I lift my voice and pray:

May the lights in The Land of Plenty

Shine on the truth some day.

 

~ Leonard Cohen ~

 

Ten New Songs

 

Today I Have No Wisdom, David Whyte

Today I Have No Wisdom

 

I have walked blessed and bareheaded

on the seashore

with as little wisdom as the opened clam

its dead mouth streaming with sand

or the birds half sunk

in shallow halls of wood-trunk and tide pool.

 

I have listened with the small acuity of

crabshell on rock

of water falling through sand

of the tide coming home

to welcome on by boot-tops

and always

moving everywhere

the sea air is running hands over my open neck.

 

I have never learned to tread quietly here

where sounds are always rushing on the beach

or upward with the gulls,

on an open beach

a voice can be tenacious in the wind

and the chest heaves to snatch a breath

and cry again.

 

For today I have no wisdom but that of sand

heaving from some dream that sleeps beneath the tide

until I come with my voice bellowing

and my small child's heart

and I walk through the sea-spume

like a man walking through sparks

or an intense fire where the heart ignites

and explodes leaving nothing

not an ember of wisdom to warm me

 

It is all consumed in the moment

the dazzling

upward

 

flame of pure presence.

 

~ David Whyte ~

 

(Songs for Coming Home)