From the Reiki page:
I have known both good and ill,
Sin and virtue,
Justice and injustice;
I have passed judgement
and been judged mysellf;
I have gone through
Death and birth,
Joy and sorrow,
Heaven and Hell;
And in the end, I recognized
That I am part of everything
And that everything is part of me.
Hazarat Inayat Khan
Toward the Winter Solstice
Although the roof is just a story high,
It dizzies me a little to look down.
I lariat-twirl the cord of Christmas lights
And cast it to the weeping birch’s crown;
A dowel into which I’ve screwed a hook
Enables me to reach, lift, drape, and twine
The cord among the boughs so that the bulbs
Will accent the tree’s elegant design.
Friends, passing home from work or shopping, pause
And call up commendations or critiques.
I make adjustments. Though a potpourri
Of Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Jews, and Sikhs,
We all are conscious of the time of year;
We all enjoy its colorful displays
And keep some festival that mitigates
The dwindling warmth and compass of the days.
Some say that L.A. doesn’t suit the Yule,
But UPS vans now like magi make
Their present-laden rounds, while fallen leaves
Are gaily resurrected in their wake;
The desert lifts a full moon from the east
And issues a dry Santa Ana breeze,
And valets at chic restaurants will soon
Be tending flocks of cars and SUVs.
And as the neighborhoods sink into dusk
The fan palms scattered all across town stand
More calmly prominent, and this place seems
A vast oasis in the Holy Land.
This house might be a caravansary,
The tree a kind of cordial fountainhead
Of welcome, looped and decked with necklaces
And ceintures of green, yellow, blue, and red.
Some wonder if the star of Bethlehem
Occurred when Jupiter and Saturn crossed;
It’s comforting to look up from this roof
And feel that, while all changes, nothing’s lost,
To recollect that in antiquity
The winter solstice fell in Capricorn
And that, in the Orion Nebula,
From swirling gas, new stars are being born.
by Timothy Steele
The Afterlife
by Louis Jenkins
Older people are exiting this life as if it were a movie… "I didn’t get it,"
they are saying.
He says, "It didn’t seem to have any plot."
"No." she says, "it seemed like things just kept coming at me. Most of the
time I was confused… and there was way too much sex and violence."
"Violence anyway," he says.
"It was not much for character development either; most of the time
people were either shouting or mumbling. Then just when someone started
to make sense and I got interested, they died. Then a whole lot of new
characters came along and I couldn’t tell who was who."
"The whole thing lacked subtlety."
"Some of the scenery was nice."
"Yes."
They walk on in silence for a while. It is a summer night and they walk
slowly, stopping now and then, as if they had no particular place to go.
They walk past a streetlamp where some insects are hurling themselves at
the light, and then on down the block, fading into the darkness.
She says, "I was never happy with the way I looked."
"The lighting was bad and I was no good at dialogue," he says.
"I would have liked to have been a little taller," she says.
From North of the Cities (Will o’ the Wisp Books, 2007) © Louis Jenkins.
The Afterlife
by
Louis Jenkins
God Says Yes To Me
I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic
and she said yes
I asked her if it was okay to be short
and she said it sure is
I asked her if I could wear nail polish
or not wear nail polish
and she said honey
she calls me that sometimes
She said you can do just exactly what you want to
Thanks God I said
And is it even okay if I don't paragraph
my letters
Sweetcakes God said
Who knows where she picked that up
What I'm telling you is
Yes Yes Yes
by Kaylin Haught, from The Palm of Your Hand
Tilbury House Publishers, 1995
Sleeping in the Forest
I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths
among the branches of the perfect trees.
All night I heard the small kingdoms
breathing around me, the insects,
and the birds who do their work in the darkness.
All night I rose and fell, as if in water,
grappling with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.
from Sleeping In The Forest by Mary Oliver
© Mary Oliver
Here is the new poem posted outside at the house, May 19,2013
Many of the recent poems are from a book titled The Tree that Time Built, A celebration of nature, science and imagination. This poem is by Tony Johnston
THE SEA IS OUR MOTHER
The sea is our mother
rocking,
rocking.
See how she fills
her blue arms
with gifts--
with slippery bits,
weed,
white
shells
fish
as bright as
wisps
of moon.
Hear how her voice
lifts,
falls,
lifts
while she sings our
life.
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New poems posted on Earth Day, April 22, 2013
Birth
Oh, fields of wonder
Out of which
Stars are born,
And moon and sun
And me as well,
Like stroke
of lightning
In the night
Some mark
To make
Some word
To tell.
Langston Hughes
"Atom from Atom"
Atom from atom yawns as far
As moon from Earth, as star from star.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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poem, posted on April 1, 2013
La Grande
For six days I haven't shaved
and behind me, inside the pharmacy,
my wife's in line with bubblegum
and a pregnancy test.
Skilled masonry lines this main road,
Old buildings with details
now seen only for profit.
Eighty years ago the population peaked
and these works of art
no longer house man's necessities,
just coffee and dumbbells.
Some years ago my hair ran down
past my shoulders. Before I met her,
my wife was pierced in more places
than one can mention in this town.
We'll stay here longer than we should.
We understand how easy it is to change,
yet how hard it is to grow.
from, Dot-To-Dot Oregon
Poems by Sid Miller
Ooligan Press
Portland State University, English Dept.
2009
