let it go – the

smashed word broken

open vow or

the oath cracked length

wise – let it go it

was sworn to

go

let them go – the

truthful liars and

the false fair friends

and the boths and

neithers – you must let them go they

were born

to go

let all go – the

big small middling

tall bigger really

the biggest and all

things – let all go

dear

so comes love

e.e. cummings

The Guest House by Rumi

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

Some momentary awareness comes

As an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,

Who violently sweep your house

Empty of its furniture,

Still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out

For some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

Meet them at the door laughing,

And invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,

Because each has been sent,

As a guide from beyond.

Endings by Derek Walcott

Things do not explode,

they fail, they fade,

as sunlight fades from the flesh,

as the foam drains quick in the sand,

even love’s lightning flash

has no thunderous end,

it dies with the sound

of flowers fading like the flesh

from sweating pumice stone,

everything shapes this

till we are left

with the silence that surrounds Beethoven’s head.

Anagrammer by Peter Pereira

If you believe in the magic of language,

then Elvis really Lives

and Princess Diana foretold I end as car spin.

If you believe the letters themselves

contain a power within them,

then you understand

what makes outside tedious,

how desperation becomes a rope ends it.

The circular logic that allows senator to become treason,

and treason to become atoners.

That eleven plus two is twelve plus one,

and an admirer is also married.

That if you could just rearrange things the right way

you’d find your true life,

the right path, the answer to your questions:

you’d understand how the Titanic

turns into that ice tin,

and debit card becomes bad credit.

How listen is the same as silent,

and not one letter separates stained from sainted.

Sheep by Jane Hirshfield

It is the work of feeling

to undo expectation.

A black-faced sheep

looks back at you as you pass

and your heart is startled

as if by the shadow

of someone once loved.

Neither comforted by this

nor made lonely.

Only remembering

that a self in exile is still a self,

as a bell unstruck for years

is still a bell.

The Round by Stanley Kunitz

Light splashed this morning
on the shell-pink anemones
swaying on their tall stems;
down blue-spiked veronica
light flowed in rivulets
over the humps of the honeybees;
this morning I saw light kiss
the silk of the roses
in their second flowering,
my late bloomers
flushed with their brandy.
A curious gladness shook me.

So I have shut the doors of my house,
so I have trudged downstairs to my cell,
so I am sitting in semi-dark
hunched over my desk
with nothing for a view
to tempt me
but a bloated compost heap,
steamy old stinkpile,
under my window;
and I pick my notebook up
and I start to read aloud
the still-wet words I scribbled
on the blotted page:
“Light splashed . . .”

I can scarcely wait till tomorrow
when a new life begins for me,
as it does each day,
as it does each day.

“I want to be bruised by God.
I want to be strung up in a strong light and singled out.
I want to be stretched, like music wrung from a dropped seed.
I want to be entered and picked clean.”