Inspiration: Poems

Slowly She celebrated the sacrament of Letting Go… First she surrendered her Green Then the Orange, yellow, and Red… Finally she let go of her Brown… Shedding her last leaf She stood empty and silent, stripped bare Leaning against the sky she began her vigil of trust…...

Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart, and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Do not search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able...

it’s 3:23 in the morning and I’m awake because my great great grandchildren won’t let me sleep my great great grandchildren ask me in dreams what did you do while the planet was plundered? what did you do when the earth was unraveling? surely you did something when...

May we raise children who love the unloved things – the dandelion, the worms and spiderlings. Children who sense the rose needs the thorn & run into rainswept days the same way they turn towards sun… And when they’re grown & someone has to speak for those who have no...

My love, I’m grateful tonight Our listing bed isn’t a raft Precariously adrift As we dodge the coast-guard light, And clasp hold of a girl and a boy. I’m glad that we didn’t wake Our kids in the thin hours, to take Not a thing, not a favorite toy, And we didn’t hand...

And one of the elders of the city said, Speak to us of Good and Evil. And he answered: Of the good in you I can speak, but not of the evil. For what is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thirst? Verily when good is hungry it seeks food even in dark caves,...

May we come together after so many bitter words and such division. May our minds open to the experience and points of view of those who are not just like ourselves. May we heal from sexism, racism, bigotry, and misunderstandings of all kinds. May we have imagination...

Just lying on the couch and being happy. Only humming a little, the quiet sound in the head. Trouble is busy elsewhere at the moment, it has so much to do in the world. People who might judge are mostly asleep; they can’t monitor you all the time, and sometimes they...

Tell us of a bypassed heart beating in 12C, how the woman holds a stranger’s hand to the battery sewn in beneath her collarbone, and says feel this. Tell us of the man’s ear listening across the aisle, hugging itself, a fist long since blistered by blaze. Outside,...

Good morning. I missed your “good” because a plane, because a truck, because a gun, because a cop, because a government, because a people suffering, because too many people suffering, because war, because famine, because some mornings it is so hard to rise, to wake,...

Our heart wanders lost in the dark woods. Our dream wrestles in the castle of doubt. But there is music in us. Hope is pushed down but the angel flies up again taking us with her. The summer mornings begin inch by inch while we sleep, and walk with us later as...

Return to the most human, nothing less will nourish the torn spirit, the bewildered heart, the angry mind: and from the ultimate duress, pierced with the breath of anguish, speak of love. Return, return to the deep sources, nothing less will teach the stiff hands a...

Life is short, though I keep this from my children. Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways, a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least fifty percent terrible, and that’s a...

We have memorized America, how it was born and who we have been and where. In ceremonies and silence we say the words, telling the stories, singing the old songs. We like the places they take us. Mostly we do. The great and all the anonymous dead are there. We know...

A bear is chasing me through a meadow and I’m running as fast as I can but he’s gaining on me—it seems he’s always gaining on me. I’m running and running but also thinking I should just turn around and say, “Stop it! Stop chasing me. We both know you aren’t going to...

Once during the war on a bus going to Portsmouth a navy yard worker told me the secret of life. The secret of life, he said, can never be passed down one generation to the other. The secret of life, he said, is hunger. It makes an open hand. The secret of life is...

(after Stephen Hawking) Do you sometimes want to wake up to the singularity we once were? so compact nobody needed a bed, or food or money — nobody hiding in the school bathroom or home alone pulling open the drawer where the pills are kept. For every atom belonging...

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....

the angels have no wings, they come to you wearing their own clothes. they have learned to love you and will keep coming unless you insist on wings.

I follow Plato only with my mind. Pure beauty strikes me as a little thin, A little cold, however beautiful. I am in love with what is mixed, impure, doubtful and dark and hard to disencumber. I want a beauty I must dig for, search for. Pure beauty is beginning and...