The Night Migrations

This is the moment when you see again
the red berries of the mountain ash
and in the dark sky
the birds' night migrations.

It grieves me to think
the dead won't see them—
these things we depend on,
they disappear.

What will the soul do for solace then?
I tell myself maybe it won't need
these pleasures anymore; 
maybe just not being is simply enough,
hard as that is to imagine. 
Louise Gluck
RIP

Gratitude: October 5, 2023

I know now the beloved
Has no fixed abode,
That each body 
She inhabits
Is only a temporary
Home.
             That she
Casts off forms
As eagerly
As lovers shed clothes.

I accept that he's
Just passing through
That flower
Or that stone.

And yet, it makes 
Me dizzy—
The way he hides
In the flow of it,
The way she shifts
In fluid motions,
Becoming other things.

I want to stop him— 
If only briefly.
I want to lure her
To the surface
And catch her
In this net of words.

Gregory Orr

*

To be alive: not just the carcass
But the spark.
That's crudely put, but...
If we're not supposed to dance,
Why all this music?

Gregory Orr

 

Asleep

 

Gratitude: September 26, 2023

Leaves

Years do odd things to identity.

What does it mean to say

I am that child in the photograph

at Kishamish in 1935?

Might as well say I am the shadow

of a leaf of the acacia tree

felled seventy years ago

moving on the page the child reads.

Might as well say I am the words she read

or the words I wrote in other years,

flicker of shade and sunlight

as the wind moves through the leaves.

Ursula K. Le Guin

 

*

Gratitude: September 25, 2023

To Revolt Is To Insist On Joy

Today my steps are finally light,
and the pale afternoon is a little breath.
I love cauliflower with turmeric,
the taste of sweet olive oil,
the rubber trees, how we really belong
to all of this, how the universe is as old
as it is young, and what a thought.
I am sending you a long voice note
about how so much has changed.
Nothing I say will be new,
you’ve heard it all before and still, I think,
I know—you will listen. Anyways.
You can’t see the waves from here
but they remind me of that day,
the last time we stood close. What generous sun.
To have lived is to have seen,
and come to think of it, we haven’t seen much.
I call my mother, and my mother
calls my brothers, and my father
is such a good man. The gardenia
is sprouting after I’d given up on it.
The grass is shooting, like stars,
in too many directions at once.
Look, there. I am stopping to lay in this patch,
they haven’t stolen it—yet. Even tragedy
has a shape, can be uprooted. The sea is breaking,
again and again, like our flimsy hearts. Nothing dies.
Smell this yellow flower, so little, here.
The poems weren’t lying. It’s true.
It’s true it’s true it’s true

Nur Turkmani

*

The Layers

I have walked through many lives, some of them my own,

and I am not who I was,

though some principle of being

abides, from which I struggle

not to stray.

When I look behind,

as I am compelled to look

before I can gather strength

to proceed on my journey,

I see the milestones dwindling

toward the horizon

and the slow fires trailing

from the abandoned camp-sites,

over which scavenger angels

wheel on heavy wings.

Oh, I have made myself a tribe

out of my true affections,

and my tribe is scattered!

How shall the heart be reconciled

to its feast of losses?

In a rising wind

the manic dust of my friends,

those who fell along the way,

bitterly stings my face.

Yet I turn, I turn,

exulting somewhat,

with my will intact to go

wherever I need to go,

and every stone on the road

precious to me.

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.

I am not done with my changes.

Stanley Kunitz

*

Note #6: 

LONGING 

Not that I want to be a god or a hero. Just to change into a tree, grow for ages, not hurt anyone.

Czeslaw Milosz

Gratitude: September 5, 2023