What Time Is It Where You Are? (William Stanhope)

What time is it where you are?

Here leaves fall in golden showers
Leaving branches one by one
A miracle of delicate grace
Falling into sleep

Here the giver of life passes
Through my window and sits
Warmly on my shoulders
Exploding in a kaleidoscope of color

Here the fire gently chases away
The chill bathing me in liquid waves
Of ancient oak forest
And sighing meadow grasses

What time is it where you are?

Do you here the celestial call
In your little corner of the world?
Can you feel the pull of stars
In the center of your chest?

Lost (Poem by David Wagoner)

I found this lovely reminder on Krista Tippett's blog .  It seems to capture the truth of what it means to be in the present as apposed to being elsewhere. We can never find ourselves unless we wander out of the wilderness into the present moment.

Lost
by David Wagoner, from Collected Poems 1956-1976
Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. you must let it find you.

Hommage To The Oaks

 

Lately I saw you standing, 
brilliant, naked sun everywhere 
streaming incandescent photons like
Threads of silver 
On your knotted body.

Majestic, silent, patient forest alchemist, 
On every visible and invisible frontier
You bestow your patient blessing 
and manifest the very ebb and flow 
of a breathing God. 

O! How the entire universe (my heart) 
contracts now that you have 
fallen into the openness 
With one last thunderous echo! 

What final blessing did you bestow, 
trembling exquisitely on those last tiny fibers, 
awaiting the supreme moment: 
the ancient Pull of supernovas? 

What can I do now? 
Bow in gratitude! 

That which passes through everything 
Passes through me (Kerouac). 
I bow in a suspended moment of that recognition.

Your thunderous echo 
bestows upon me 
a final blessing, spreading outward 
in the delicate arc of your falling grace.

A myriad of spring buds 
singing one last alleluia 
before the crushing weight 
of congealed sunlight forces them 
down into the yielding 
earth, where galaxies of beings 
embrace your return. 

In your final act of falling, 
I too dive headlong and blind 
Into the fierce eye of God 

WPS May 2014

The Honored Guest

    

The Honored Guest

Outside my window 

An invitation to dance

Sways in the wind and
The warm hand of that light
Smooths rough linear bodies
Stretching up and out to endless blue where
Wet lambits of cloud
Catch wildly in the
Bony extremities of branch

O! To become once again
A lover of trees!

O! To feel that strength inside
My own feeble bones

And stretch my body
Along those soaring flanks
To drink the rising sap

And so,  loved once more
By forest glade,
Become the honored guest 

WPS. Hawkscry 7/7/2010

Birdsong From Inside The Egg

 
Birdsong From Inside The Egg


Sometimes a lover of God may faint
In the presence. Then the Beloved bends
And whispers in his ear, “Beggar, spread out
Your robe. I’ll fill it with gold.
I’ve come to protect your consciousness.
Where has it gone? Come back into awareness.”

This fainting is because
Lovers want so much.

A chicken invites a camel into her hen house,
And the whole structure is demolished.
A rabbit nestles down
With its eyes closed
In the arms of a lion.

There is an excess
In spiritual searching
That is profound ignorance.

Let that ignorance be our teacher!

The Friend breathes into one
who has no breath.

A deep silence revives the listening
And the speaking of those two who meet on the riverbank.
Like the ground turning green
in a spring wind.
Like birdsong beginning inside the egg.
Like this universe coming into existence,
The lover wakes, and whirls
in a dancing joy,
then kneels down in praise.


- Rumi   

Because A Blue Heron Flew Overhead by Dick Allen

Because a Blue Heron Flew Overhead Because a blue heron flew overhead, It was a good day to butter bread, To listen to James Taylor, Stockbridge to Boston, And visit the Garden of the Unsuccessful Politician. A good day to ask a clock what makes it tick, Or place one brick upon another brick, To remember that if you think, there are ripples, But also if you don’t think, there are ripples. And because a blue heron flew overhead, We swept up the porch, we made up the bed. We bought packaged shirts, then took out their pins. We placed gray umbrellas in clear storage bins. There was a road, a lake, a moonlit field, A brow to be soothed, a wound to be healed. Stockbridge to Boston. Sweet Baby James. The glory, the wonder, the sheer joy of names! And my life was a story of thread and unthread Because a blue heron flew overhead.

Bouyancy

Buoyancy 

Love has taken away all my practices And filled me with poetry. 

I tried to keep quietly repeating No Strength but yours, But I couldn't. 

I had to clap and sing. 

I used to be respectable and chaste and stable,

 but who can stand in this strong wind and remember those things? 

I am scrap wood thrown in your fire, and quickly reduced to smoke.

I saw you and became empty. 

This emptiness, more beautiful than existence, it obliterates existence, 

and yet when it comes, existence thrives and creates more existence. 

The sky is blue. 

he world is a blind man squatting on the road. 

But whoever sees your emptiness sees beyond blue and beyond the blind man. 

A great soul hides like Mohammed, or Jesus, moving through a crowd in a city where no one knows him.

 To praise is to praise how one surrenders to the emptiness. 

To praise the sun is to praise your own eyes. 

Praise, the ocean. What we say, a little ship. 

So the sea-journey goes on, and who knows where!

 Just to be held by the ocean is the best luck we could have. 

It's a total waking up! 

Why should we grieve that we've been sleeping? 

It doesn't matter how long we've been unconscious. 

We're groggy, but let the guilt go. 

Feel the motions of tenderness around you, the buoyancy. -

Rumi

When All The Others Were Away At Mass by Seamus Heaney

Noble Prise winner (1998) Seamus Heaney died at 74 at the end of August. Here is one of my favorite poems. I love how intimate these few lines can be, and how poignant. May the smiling face of God shine on your journey as you go. For more on Seamus heaney follow the link http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-13930435

Daffy Duck In Hollywood by John Ashbery

For lovers of language! I am smitten by the impeccable use of language so beautifully recited by Tom O'Bedlam (SpokenVerse). I love the line:
Achievement is only to end up less boring than the others. Enjoy!

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver

Oh, to love what is lovely, and will not last!
What a task to ask
of anything, or anyone,
yet it is ours,
and not by the century or the year, but by the hours.
One fall day I heard
above me, and above the sting of the wind, a sound I did not know, and my look shot upward; it was a flock of snow geese, winging it faster than the ones we usually see,
and, being the color of snow, catching the sun
so they were, in part at least, golden. 
I held my breath as we do
sometimes to stop time
when something wonderful
has touched us...
The geese flew on.
I have never seen them again.
Maybe I will, someday, somewhere.
Maybe I won’t.
It doesn’t matter.
What matters
is that, when I saw them,
I saw them as through the veil, secretly, joyfully, clearly.

Falling Heavenward

Falling Heavenward

All around signs of expectation

Sound deep within...

A lone string grown slack

On a forgotten instrument

Vibrates with renewed hope.

A veil lifts from the eye

And falls in a soft breeze...

And through a chink Light enters

Ancient obscuring wound

Transformed with healing truth.
Deep up-welling tenderness

Overtakes the shadows

We, newly adorned and released

Are falling heavenward. 

WPS

Asheville

12/13/12

(Note: For best experience start the voice recording at 1min 15sec into the video and open video to full screen view)

Richard Blanco One Today

Richard Blanco was chosen to read the inauguration poem for Barac Obama. The choice of Richard is very meaningful to me personally as he represents so much of what it means to be American; to live in America. Richard was born in Cuba to working class parents, raised in Spain, and then finally immigrated with his parents to the United States. As such he is a visible reminder that society is evolving inexorably toward acceptance of a greater diversity, toward the ideals enshrined in the Constitution of equality for all. As Obama says in his speech,

“We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths — that all of us are created equal — is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall."

We are still on that journey of course. But choosing Richard to read his poetry is a sure sign that we are still moving in the right direction.

As Richard approaches the podium, he takes a moment to look out. Eventually the camera will show us what he sees, a sea of humanity stretching off into the distance and toward the Washington Monument. This is a moment he will never forget. He stands before America, a humble man born into humble circumstances. A man who was not provided the advantages of money or class to arrive where he stands. Just a simple man who writes beautiful and evocative poetry which has a way of uniting so many diverse people under the same sky.  And yes, let us not forget. A gay man!

Hawkscry (A Poem By Linda Metzner)

New Hawkscry Poem by Linda Metzner

via Hawkscry by William on 8/26/12

This poem was written at Hawkscry on Saturday, August 25th, 2012










Hawkscry

Alone on the Earth at Hawkscry, all quiet,
     a fullness of beauty, of light.
In sun and shadow on the mountain peaks,
     a circle of love.
Lying here long upon our Mother’s warm skin,
     one feels a sound, deeper than any sound,
     energy reverberating from within Her Heart.
It is late summer, 
     when the Earth speaks through singing.
Do you hear Her song?
A soft warm cradle of Her singing,
     this hum of the Great Mother
     we can only feel.
In Her soft warm cradle, in the circle of Her arms,
     She sings for all of us,
     the finned, the furry, the feathered.
She sings, too, for the Stone People, Her most ancient ones,
     the peaks and valleys and rivers where Her waters run,
     Her oceans and Her air.
Can you hear Her song, so huge, so wild,
     so deep within, yet immanent in all things?
That song is for us, for you and me,
     here where we lay close to Her on the Earth,
     and where e’er we walk,
     each step springing from Her deepest heart.

Annelinde Metzner
Hawkscry, August 25, 2012

L'école des ruisseaux

L'école des ruisseaux by Zsolt Miklya
Animation by Peter Vcaz


Une montagne parle,
Une vallée murmure,
Le ciel écoute,
En silence.

Au coeur de la vallée,
Un petit ruisseau apprend :
Les roches sont sa loi
Et le ciel son maître.

A l'abri des regards,
il grandit.
Creusant son chemin,
il disparaît dans le lointain.

Il rejoint les plaines,
Et déborde de son lit.
Au fond de lui,
Il voudrait rester un petit cours d'eau,

Mais l'infini et l'inconnu l'appellent,
Plus forts que la peur.
Dans le courant de la rivière,
Les désirs des ruisseaux
s'amoncellent en vagues

Pour aller loin, très loin,
Vers des terres inconnues,
Là où vogue le bâteau-Rêve,
Haut perché sur les flots,

Là où le fleuve sage
s'abandonne à la mer.


Vácz Péter

Beauty Like A River

Trust is the hardest thing! 

Believing that with enough
Silence, enough stillness,
Our earthly tethers will
Slacken their hold just long enough to let the soul breathe

Like a chained dog testing
A thousand times the limits
Of its freedom,

Suddenly, by sheer Grace,
No longer feeling the familiar
Choke-hold in one last, frenzied thrust away from every crushing thing

And there, suspended mid-air
In that brilliant moment...

Beauty like a river
Flows all around and was
Never absent!

Freedom, like a wave,
Sweeps every barren place
Anointing darkness with light
And a profusion of flowers.


Hawkscry April 9, 2012
William Stanhope
(This is the first poem written in Dogwood Cottage)

Brook And Sparrow

Brook And Sparrow

I come to work the earth, my heart
To shape this precious stillness
And exchange sad stories
For the fragrant humus, my soul's healing

I come to bear witness to time's
Slow downward pull
Slipping by, scudding like a low cloud
Across the mountain's spine

I come to hear the ancestor's buried song
To tune the heart's ear
To music of brook and sparrow
And sap's slow descent beneath the bark

I come as well to see...
Not with human eyes
But eyes that pierce this veil 
And see the shimmering thread
Connecting me to cloud and brook and sparrow
Until only luminous space remains


Then, stretching invisible body
Along warm curving sunlight,
Aching like a lover
I yield to Your awakening touch.

WPS
Hawkscry
12/3/12