The Fountain (Denise Levertov)

The Fountain

 

Don't say, don't say there is no water

to solace the dryness at our hearts.

I have seen

 

the fountain springing out of the rock wall

and you drinking there. And I too

before your eyes

 

found footholds and climbed

to drink the cool water.

 

The woman of that place, shading her eyes,

frowned as she watched-but not because

she grudged the water,

 

only because she was waiting

to see we drank our fill and were

refreshed.

 

Don't say, don't say there is no water.

That fountain is there among its scalloped

green and gray stones,

 

it is still there and always there

with its quiet song and strange power

to spring in us,

 

up and out through the rock.

 

~ Denise Levertov

Holy and Incarnate One (Janet Morley)

Holy And Incarnate One
(Janet Morley)

Holy and incarnate one,
at whose unexpected touch
the ordinary world
is charged with God:

we pray for those
whose hardship is overwhelming, who cannot find you;
who live in poverty, anxiety, and hunger;
whose lives are fearful or lonely;
who are exploited, exhausted or ill.

For the Word was made flesh
and dwelt among us.

We pray for those
whose ambition is overwhelming, who do not want to find you;
whose lives are choked with overwork or consumption;
who have chosen an unreal path;
who have hardened their hearts.

For the Word was made flesh
and dwelt among us.

We pray for those
who have begun to find you, and are overwhelmed;
for whom the risk of healing is too painful;
who are afraid of your embrace,
and fear your energetic power
to reconstitute the world.

For the World was made flesh
and dwelt among us.  

(John 1:14)

Coyotes (Mark Jarman)

Coyotes

Is this world truly fallen? They say no.
For there's the new moon, there's the Milky Way,
There's the rattler with a wren's egg in its mouth,
And there's the panting rabbit they will eat.
They sing their wild hymn on the dark slope,
Reading the stars like notes of hilarious music.
Is this a fallen world? How could it be?

And yet we're crying over the stars again,
And over the uncertainty of death,
Which we suspect will divide us all forever.
I'm tired of those who broadcast their certainties,
Constantly on their cell phones to their redeemer.
Is this a fallen world? For them it is.
But there's that starlit burst of animal laughter.

The day has sent its fires scattering.
The night has risen from its burning bed.
Our tears are proof that love is meant for life
And for the living. And this chorus of praise,
Which the pet dogs of the neighborhood are answering
Nostalgically, invites our answer, too.
Is this a fallen world? How could it be?

~ Mark Jarman ~

 

(The Atlantic, May 2003

Moon (Billy Collins)

Moon

 

The moon is full tonight

an illustration for sheet music,

an image in Matthew Arnold

glimmering on the English Channel,

or a ghost over a smoldering battlefield

in one of the history plays.

 

It's as full as it was

in that poem by Coleridge

where he carries his year-old son

into the orchard behind the cottage

and turns the baby's face to the sky

to see for the first time

the earth's bright companion,

something amazing to make his crying seem small.

 

And if you wanted to follow this example,

tonight would be the night

to carry some tiny creature outside

and introduce him to the moon.

 

And if your house has no child,

you can always gather into your arms

the sleeping infant of yourself,

as I have done tonight,

and carry him outdoors,

all limp in his tattered blanket,

making sure to steady his lolling head

with the palm of your hand.

 

And while the wind ruffles the pear trees

in the corner of the orchard

and dark roses wave against a stone wall,

you can turn him on your shoulder

and walk in circles on the lawn

drunk with the light.

You can lift him up into the sky,

your eyes nearly as wide as his,

as the moon climbs high into the night.

 

~ Billy Collins ~

 

(Picnic, Lightning

Gregory Orr

Let's remake the world with words.

Not frivolously, nor

To hide from what we fear,

But with a purpose.

Let's,

As Wordsworth said, remove

"The dust of custom" so things

Shine again, each object arrayed

In its robe of original light.

 

And then we'll see the world

As if for the first time.

As once we gazed at the beloved

Who was gazing at us.

 

~ Gregory Orr ~

 

 

(Concerning The Book That Is the Body Of The Beloved)

 

What We Want (Linda Pastan)

What We Want

 

What we want

is never simple.

We move among the things

we thought we wanted:

a face, a room, an open book

and these things bear our names--

now they want us.

But what we want appears

in dreams, wearing disguises.

We fall past,

holding out our arms

and in the morning

our arms ache.

We don't remember the dream,

but the dream remembers us.

It is there all day

as an animal is there

under the table,

as the stars are there

even in full sun.

 

~ Linda Pastan ~

 

 

 

(Carnival Evening

The Bellringer (David Whyte)

The Bell Ringer

 

Consider the bell

ringer as an image

of the human soul,

he stands foursquare

on the stone flagged

ground, and surrounded

by a circle of communal

concentration

searches in his fixed

aloneness

for a world

beyond straight,

human,

eye to eye

discourse,

in this case

above him,

the collision of metal

worlds chiming

to each bend and lift

of the knees,

letting his weight bear down

on the rope,

creating out of the heave

and upward pull,

a hollowed out

brass utterance,

a resonant

on-going argument

for his continued presence,

independent

of daily mood

or the necessities

for a verbal

proclamation.

 

***

 

Let him stand there

then

for the human soul,

let his weight

come true on the rope,

the way we want to lean

into the center of things,

the way we want to

fall with the gravity

of the situation

and then afterwards

laugh and

defy it 

with an upward

ultimately untraceable

flight,

a great ungovernable

ringing

announcement

to the world

that something, somewhere,

has changed.

 

Consider

the bell ringer

as one of us,

attempting some

unachieved,

magnificent

difference in the world,

far above

and far beyond

the stone-closed

space we seem

to occupy.

 

Below

we're all

effort, listening

and willful concentration,

above,

like a moving sea,

another power

shoulders

just

for a moment

the whole burden,

lifts us

against our will,

lets us find

in the skyward pull

a needed antidote

to surface noise,

a gravity against gravity,

another way to hear

amid

the clamor of the heavens.

 

~ David Whyte ~

 

 

(Everything Is Waiting For You)