“Every morning without thinking I open
my notebook and see if something
might have grown in me during the night.
Usually, no. But sometimes a tendril
tries a crack in my consciousness
and if I remain only indirectly aware of it
and tether my attention to the imminent
and perhaps ultimately unseeable
sun, sometimes it will grow.”

[little tree] by e.e. cummings

little tree
little silent Christmas tree
you are so little
you are more like a flower

who found you in the green forest
and were you very sorry to come away?
see          i will comfort you
because you smell so sweetly

i will kiss your cool bark
and hug you safe and tight
just as your mother would,
only don't be afraid

look          the spangles
that sleep all the year in a dark box
dreaming of being taken out and allowed to shine,
the balls the chains red and gold the fluffy threads,

put up your little arms
and i'll give them all to you to hold
every finger shall have its ring
and there won't be a single place dark or unhappy

then when you're quite dressed
you'll stand in the window for everyone to see
and how they'll stare!
oh but you'll be very proud

and my little sister and i will take hands
and looking up at our beautiful tree
we'll dance and sing
"Noel Noel"

What Space Faith Can Occupy By TC Tolbert

I believe that witness is a magnitude of vulnerability.

That when I say love what I mean is not a feeling

nor promise of a feeling. I believe in attention.

My love for you is a monolith of try.

 

The woman I love pays an inordinate amount

of attention to large and small objects. She is not

described by anything. Because I could not mean anything else,

she knows exactly what I mean.

 

Once upon a time a line saw itself

clear to its end. I have seen the shape

of happiness. (y=mx+b)

I am holding it. It is your hand.

Yokocho

Touching Each Other's Surfaces by Carol Jane Bangs

Skin meeting skin, we want to think
we know each other scientifically;
we want to believe
it is objective knowledge
gives this conviction of intimacy,
makes us say it feels so right.
That mole below your shoulder blade,
the soft hair over my thighs—
we examine our bodies with the precision
known only to lovers or surgeons,
all those whose profession is explication,
who have to believe their own words.
And yet, having memorized each turning,
each place where bone strains or bends,
each hollow, each hair, each failure of form,
we still encounter that stubborn wall,
that barrier which hides an infinite vastness
the most sincere gesture can’t find.
Nor does emotion take us further
than the shared heat of our bodies
aware of themselves,
the flattery of multiple desires.
We rest in each other’s arms unexplained
by these currents of feeling rushing past
like ripples over a pool of water
whose substance never changes,
reflecting each wave, each ribboned crossing,
without being really moved.
We search each other’s eyes so long
beyond our own reflections,
finding only the black centers,
the immeasurable interior we’ll
never reach with candle,
never plumb with love.
Perhaps it is just this ignorance,
this absence of certainty, lack of clear view,
more than anything, brings us together,
draws us into and through each other
to the unknown inside us all,
that gray space from which
what we know of ourselves
emerges briefly, casts a transient
shadow across the earth
and learns to believe in itself just enough
to believe in some one else.

Physiology of Kisses by Tony Hoagland

The kiss begins in the center of the belly

and travels upwards through the diaphragm and throat along fine filaments which no forensic scientist

has ever been able to find.

From the hard flower of the kisser’s mouth,

the kisses leave the body in single file,

into the reciprocal mouth of the kiss-recipient,

which for me is _____.

What can I say? My kisses make her happy and I need that.

And sometimes, bending over her,

I have the unmistakable impression

that I am watering a plant.

gripping myself softly by the handle,

tilting my spout forward

pouring what I need to give

into the changing shape of her thirst.

I keep leaning forward to pour out

what continues to rise up

from the fountain of the kisses

which I, also, am drinking from.

Heart to Heart by Rita Dove

It's neither red

nor sweet.

It doesn't melt

or turn over,

break or harden,

so it can't feel

pain,

yearning,

regret.

It doesn't have

a tip to spin on,

it isn't even

shapely—

just a thick clutch

of muscle,

lopsided,

mute. Still,

I feel it inside

its cage sounding

a dull tattoo:

I want, I want—

but I can't open it:

there's no key.

I can't wear it

on my sleeve,

or tell you from

the bottom of it

how I feel. Here,

it's all yours, now—

but you'll have

to take me,

too.

The Hush of the Very Good by Todd Boss

You can tell by how he lists
to let her
kiss him, that the getting, as he gets it,
is good.
It’s good in the sweetly salty,
deeply thirsty way that a sea-fogged
rain is good after a summer-long bout
of inland drought.
And you know it
when you see it, don’t you? How it
drenches what’s dry, how the having
of it quenches.
There is a grassy inlet
where your ocean meets your land, a slip
that needs a certain kind of vessel,
and
when that shapely skiff skims in at last,
trimmed bright, mast lightly flagging
left and right,
then the long, lush reeds
of your longing part, and soft against
the hull of that bent wood almost im-
perceptibly brushes a luscious hush
the heart heeds helplessly—
the hush
of the very good.

Testimonial by Rita Dove

Back when the earth was new
and heaven just a whisper,
back when the names of things
hadn't had time to stick;

back when the smallest breezes
melted summer into autumn,
when all the poplars quivered
sweetly in rank and file . . .

the world called, and I answered.
Each glance ignited to a gaze.
I caught my breath and called that life,
swooned between spoonfuls of lemon sorbet.

I was pirouette and flourish,
I was filigree and flame.
How could I count my blessings
when I didn't know their names?

Back when everything was still to come,
luck leaked out everywhere.
I gave my promise to the world,
and the world followed me here.

Desire by Alice Walker

My desire
is always the same; wherever Life
deposits me:
I want to stick my toe
& soon my whole body
into the water.
I want to shake out a fat broom
& sweep dried leaves
bruised blossoms
dead insects
& dust.
I want to grow
something.
It seems impossible that desire
can sometimes transform into devotion;
but this has happened.
And that is how I’ve survived:
how the hole
I carefully tended
in the garden of my heart
grew a heart
to fill it.

Atlas by U. A. Fanthorpe

There is a kind of love called maintenance
Which stores the WD40 and knows when to use it

Which checks the insurance, and doesnt forget
The milkman; which remembers to plant bulbs;

Which answers letters; which knows the way
The money goes; which deals with dentists

And Road Fund Tax and meeting trains,
And postcards to the lonely; which upholds

The permanently rickety elaborate
Structures of living, which is Atlas.

And maintenance is the sensible side of love,
Which knows what time and weather are doing
To my brickwork; insulates my faulty wiring;
Laughs at my dryrotten jokes; remembers
My need for gloss and grouting; which keeps
My suspect edifice upright in air,
As Atlas did the sky.

I want to see you.

Know your voice.

Recognize you when you
first come 'round the corner.

Sense your scent when I come 
into a room you've just left.

Know the lift of your heel,
the glide of your foot.

Become familiar with the way 
you purse your lips
then let them part, 
just the slightest bit,
when I lean in to your space
and kiss you.

I want to know the joy 
of how you whisper 
"more” 

Rumi

Joy by Lisel Mueller

“Don’t cry, its only music,”
someone’s voice is saying.
“No one you love is dying.”

It’s only music. And it was only spring,
the world’s unreasoning body
run amok, like a saint’s, with glory,
that overwhelmed a young girl
into unreasoning sadness.
“Crazy,” she told herself,
“I should be dancing with happiness.”

But it happened again. It happens
when we make bottomless love—
there follows a bottomless sadness
which is not despair
but its nameless opposite.
It has nothing to do with the passing of time.
It’s not about loss. It’s about
two seemingly parallel lines
suddenly coming together
inside us, in some place
that is still wilderness.

Joy, joy, the sopranos sing,
reaching for the shimmering notes
while our eyes fill with tears.

Wait by Galway Kinnell

Wait, for now.
Distrust everything if you have to.
But trust the hours. Haven’t they
carried you everywhere, up to now?
Personal events will become interesting again.
Hair will become interesting.
Pain will become interesting.
Buds that open out of season will become interesting.
Second-hand gloves will become lovely again;
their memories are what give them
the need for other hands. The desolation
of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness
carved out of such tiny beings as we are
asks to be filled; the need
for the new love is faithfulness to the old.

Wait.
Don’t go too early.
You’re tired. But everyone’s tired.
But no one is tired enough.
Only wait a little and listen:
music of hair,
music of pain,
music of looms weaving our loves again.
Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,
most of all to hear your whole existence,
rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.

I Used To Love Him

As I look at what I've done

The type of life that I've lived

How many things I pray the father will forgive

One situation involved a young man

He was the ocean and I was the sand

He stole my heart like a thief in the night

Dulled my senses blurred my sight

I used to love him but now I don't

I used to love him but now I don't

I chose a road of passion and pain

Sacrificed too much and waited in vain

Gave up my power ceased being queen

Addicted to love like the drug of a fiend

Torn and confused wasted and used

Reached the crossroad which path would I choose

Stuck and frustrated I waited, debated

For something to happen that just wasn't fated

Thought what I wanted was something I needed

When momma said no I just should have heeded

Misled I bled till the poison was gone

And out of the darkness arrived the sweet dawn

I used to love him but now I don't

I used to love him but now I don't

Father you saved me and showed me that life

Was much more than being some foolish man's wife

Showed me that love was respect and devotion

Greater than planets deeper than oceans

My soul was weary but now it's replenished

Content because that part of my life is finished

I see him sometimes and the look in his eye

Is one of a man who's lost treasures untold

But my heart is gold I took back my soul

And totally let my creator control

The life which was his to begin with

I used to love him but now I don't

Stability, Protection, Love

Adore by Li-Young Lee

(adore, verb from Latin, adorare,

from ad- ‘to’ + orare- ‘speak, call pray’)

You lie asleep beside me,
one hand on the pillow and cupped
at your mouth, as if to tell a secret.

As if you might say in your sleep
what you could never find
words for awake.

Or as if you called
across a din of other voices,
or the howl of empty space. Calling

because there are no bells
to strike the hours where we live. And I must know
when to kneel and when to rise.
What to praise and what to curse.
I must know how to bless
and how to receive blessing. 

One hand on your pillow and cupped
at your mouth,
as if you spoke a word
you’d kept to yourself all day, waiting
for your most unguarded moment
to say, a thought meant for me, meant to be
shared between us this way,
sealed this way, a secret
no voice can carry without destroying,
a word without carriage, except conveyed
in the peace of your body and face,

a word born out of your deepest rest, a word
which only my own deepest breathing
and happiest rest beside you,
face to face, free of thinking, can sustain.

Maybe you had to be asleep
to say what you knew to be true.
Or what you had to say
you might not could bear to hear,
and so you must say so softly
I must close my eyes, I must turn
inward, to where you’ve made a room
and a bed inside me, to receive it. 

You say:
We cannot look upon Love’s face without dying.
So we face each other to see Love’s look.
And thus third-person souls
suddenly stand at gaze
and the lover and the beloved,
second- and first-persons,
You and I, eye
to eye, are born.
But such refraction, multiplying gazes, strews
Love’s eye upon the objects of the world,
as upon the objects of our room. 

My brush, hairpin, mirror, book,
your loving look finds each of these things
lovable, I can see. Things
by any other measure poor, your look crowns
to make them your heart’s royalty.
Face, blush, breath, eyes, evanescent,
pledged to death, nowhere stored,
Love’s look gathers within its fondling
to adore.

This strewing and gathering
of Love’s face, of Love’s gaze, and only this,
begun in death’s audience, is the founding
action, call it the fundamental
paradise…did I say paradise?
I meant paradox…the fundamental paradox
of the breaths we breathe,
the thoughts we witness,
the kisses we exchange,
and every poem you write.

Li Young Lee

5.
From this hour I ordain myself loos’d of limits and imaginary lines,
Going where I list, my own master total and absolute,
Listening to others, considering well what they say,
Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating, 
Gently,but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me.
I inhale great draughts of space,
The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine. 

I am larger, better than I thought,
I did not know I held so much goodness. 

All seems beautiful to me,
I can repeat over to men and women You have done such good to me I would do the same to you,
I will recruit for myself and you as I go,
I will scatter myself among men and women as I go,
I will toss a new gladness and roughness among them,
Whoever denies me it shall not trouble me,
Whoever accepts me he or she shall be blessed and shall bless me. 

Walt Whitman

"Tabernacle

transporting my life from the desert, you,

the faith I am born and reborn into,

you, rescuer, deliverer of rain."

Thanks by W. S. Merwin

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water thanking it
standing by the windows looking out
in our directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks we are saying thank you
in the faces of the officials and the rich
and of all who will never change
we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
taking our feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
thank you we are saying and waving
dark though it is

“Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you don't know what work these conditions are doing inside you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where all this is coming from and where it is going? Since you know, after all, that you are in the midst of transitions and you wished for nothing so much as to change. If there is anything unhealthy in your reactions, just bear in mind that sickness is the means by which an organism frees itself from what is alien; so one must simply help it to be sick, to have its whole sickness and to break out with it, since that is the way it gets better.” 

“It is not for me to judge another man's life. I must judge, I must choose, I must spurn, purely for myself. For myself, alone.”

A Ritual to Read to Each Other by William Stafford

If you don't know the kind of person I am

and I don't know the kind of person you are

a pattern that others made may prevail in the

           world

and following the wrong god home we may miss

           our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,

a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break

sending with shouts the horrible errors of

          childhood

storming out to play through the broken dike.

And as elephants parade holding each

          elephant's tail,

but if one wanders the circus won't find the

          park,

I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty

to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something

         shadowy,

a remote important region in all who talk:

though we could fool each other, we should

         consider—

lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the

dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,

or a breaking line may discourage them back to

          sleep;

the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe —

should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

Heliotrope by Linda Gregerson

I was his favorite, simply that.
                      And you can see

for yourself why it might have been so:
                     the lushest, least

likely to weary the eyes of all
                     the serried wavelengths.

Never obvious.
                     My bit

of the spectrum unstable somehow,
                     in a way that kept

bringing him back. Search
                     image

on your browser and you’ll see
                     what I mean.

I’ve never had the advantage of
                     sculptural

beauty, as the lily has, I haven’t
                     been able to boast

that stricture of line. That making-
                    no-mistakes. God

knows I’ve wished for it, beggars
                     can dream.

But no. Some neither-this-nor
                    that turns out to be

my sphere. Some manyness rather
                     than singular

perfection. Which I like to think
                     he thought about.

He made this place.
                     They named it

for him. And upholstered the seats
                     in heliotrope,

whose cluster of vowels and con-
                     sonants

he loved like my blue-going-violet-
                     with-touches-of-

gray. The vocal colors. Warm-up,
                     nightly, before

the play. So you see, they were
                     wrong, the ones

who called me unrequited. I
                     was in his throat,

among the folds and ridges and
                     beyond them to

the very dome upon whose curve
                     the heart resides.

Just think what it used to be then,
                     in the hour before

they’d let the rest of you in:
                     my many faces toward

the sun who spoke—no, sang—
                     my name.

Orient by Billy Collins

You are turning me
like someone turning a globe in her hand,
and yes, I have another side
like a China no one,
not even me, has ever seen.
So describe to me what’s there,
say what you are looking at
and I will close my eyes
so I can see it too,
the oxcarts and all the lively flags.
I love the sound of your voice
like a little saxophone
telling me what I could never know
unless I dug a hole all the way down
through the core of myself.
 

Beautiful Women by Stephen Dunn

More things come to them,
and they have more to hide.
All around them: mirror, eyes.
In any case
they are different from other women
and like great athletes have trouble
making friends, and trusting a world
quick to praise.

I admit without shame
I’m talking about superficial beauty,
the beauty unmistakable
to the honest eye, which causes
some of us to pivot and to dream,
to tremble before we dial.

Intelligence warmed by generosity
is inner beauty, and what’s worse
some physically beautiful woman have it,
and we have to be strapped and handcuffed
to the mast, or be ruined.

But I don’t want to talk of inner beauty,
it’s the correct way to talk
and I’d feel too good
about myself, like a parishioner.
Now, in fact,
I feel like I’m talking
to a strange beautiful woman at a bar, I’m
animated, I’m wearing that little fixed
smile, I might say anything at all.

Still, it’s better to treat a beautiful woman
as if she were normal, one of many.
She’ll be impressed that you’re unimpressed,
might start to lean your way.
This is especially true if she has aged
into beauty, for she will have learned
the sweet gestures one learns
in a lifetime of seeking love.
Lucky is the lover of such a woman
and lucky the woman herself.

Beautiful woman who’ve been beautiful girls
are often in some tower of themselves
waiting for us to make the long climb.

But let us have sympathy for the loneliness
of beautiful women.
Let us have no contempt for their
immense privilege, or for the fact
that they never can be wholly ours.

It is not astonishing
when the scared little girl in all of them
says here I am, or when they weep.
But we are always astonished by what
beautiful women do.

“Boxers punch harder when women are around,”
Kenneth Patchen said. Think what happens
when beautiful women are around.
We do not question
that a thousand ships were launched.

In the eye of the beholder? A platitude.
A beautiful woman enters a room,
and everyone beholds. Geography changes.
We watch her everywhere she goes.

The Breather by Billy Collins

Just as in the horror movies 

when someone discovers that the phone calls 

are coming from inside the house 

so too, I realized  

that our tender overlapping 

has been taking place only inside me. 

All that sweetness, the love and desire— 

it’s just been me dialing myself 

then following the ringing to another room 

to find no one on the line, 

well, sometimes a little breathing 

but more often than not, nothing. 

To think that all this time— 

which would include the boat rides, 

the airport embraces, and all the drinks— 

it’s been only me and the two telephones, 

the one on the wall in the kitchen 

and the extension in the darkened guest room upstairs.

Always Something More Beautiful by Stephen Dunn

 This time I came to the starting place

with my best running shoes, and pure speed

held back for the finish, came with only love

of the clock and the underfooting

and the other runners. Each of us would 

be testing excellence and endurance

in the other, though in the past I’d often

veer off to follow some feral distraction

down a side path, allowing myself

to pursue something odd or beautiful,

becoming acquainted with a few of the ways

not to blame myself for failing to succeed.

I had come to believe what’s beautiful

had more to do with daring

to take yourself seriously, to stay

the course, whatever the course might be.

The person in front seemed ready to fade,

his long, graceful stride shortening

as I came up along his side. I was sure now

I’d at least exceed my best time.

But the man with the famous final kick

already had begun his move. Beautiful, I heard

a spectator say, as if something inevitable

about to come from nowhere was again on its way.

In the Beginning God Said Light by Mary Szybist

and there was light.
Now God says, Give them a little theatrical lighting

and they’re happy,
and we are. So many of us

dressing each morning, testing
endless combinations, becoming in our mirrors

more ourselves, imagining,
in an entrance, the ecstatic

weight of human eyes.
Now that the sun is sheering

toward us, what is left
but to let it close in

for our close-up? Let us really feel
how good it feels

to be still in it, making
every kind of self that can be

looked at. God, did you make us
to be your bright accomplices?

God, here are our shining spines.
Let there be no more dreams of being

more than a beginning.
Let it be

that to be is to be
backlit, and then to be only that light.

omm:

How was I resentful?

How was I selfish?

How was I dishonest?

How was I afraid?

Do I owe an apology?

What have I wrongly kept secret?

Was I unkind (i.e cruel, harsh, unfeeling)?

Was I unloving (i.e. cold, unresponsive, indifferent)?

What could I have done better?

Was I thinking of myself most of the time?

Was I thinking of what I could do for others?

Was I thinking what I could pack into the stream of life?

Who did I help today?

What did I accomplish today?

What am I grateful for today?

Who needs my prayers today?

To Have Without Holding by Marge Piercy

Learning to love differently is hard,

love with the hands wide open, love

with the doors banging on their hinges,

the cupboard unlocked, the wind

roaring and whimpering in the rooms

rustling the sheets and snapping the blinds

that thwack like rubber bands

in an open palm.

It hurts to love wide open

stretching the muscles that feel

as if they are made of wet plaster,

then of blunt knives, then

of sharp knives.

It hurts to thwart the reflexes

of grab, of clutch ; to love and let

go again and again. It pesters to remember

the lover who is not in the bed,

to hold back what is owed to the work

that gutters like a candle in a cave

without air, to love consciously,

conscientiously, concretely, constructively.

I can’t do it, you say it’s killing

me, but you thrive, you glow

on the street like a neon raspberry,

You float and sail, a helium balloon

bright bachelor’s button blue and bobbing

on the cold and hot winds of our breath,

as we make and unmake in passionate

diastole and systole the rhythm

of our unbound bonding, to have

and not to hold, to love

with minimized malice, hunger

and anger moment by moment balanced.