PERMISSION

I have a wonderful book about poetry and healing, it’s square-ish,seven inches by nine inches, and at least an inch thick. When all else fails, I generally can find a poem or a paragraph that will fill the need of the moment.

This morning I turned to a new chapter, heading reading: Giving Yourself Permission To Be Wild and Magnificent. It was on the right page, facing a simple poem on the left page:

“Stand still. The trees ahead and the bushes beside you

Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,

and you must treat it as a powerful stranger,

Must ask permission to know it and be known.

The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,

I have made this place around you

If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.

No two trees are the same to Raven.

No two branches are the same to Wren.

If what a tree or bush does is lost to you,

You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows

Where you are. You must let it find you.”

………..DAVID WAGONER, from the book, Poetic Medicine,
by John Fox

Sometimes my room is my forest. I can suddenly stop, think,
what am I going to get —- and it finds me if I just stay still.

If I just stay still.

And then, it’s summer, maybe I will find that forest and
let it find me.

Meanwhile, I’m Here.

with love …
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

NO QUESTION

Do I dare, in this dark before the dawn, to ask the sun to wake me up?
Can mentioning it be to miss it altogether? Old wives tales, for sure.
So, here goes:

“T H E S U N

Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful

than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon

and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone —-
and how it slides again

out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower

streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance —
and have you ever felt for anything

such wild love —-
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure

that fills you, as the sun reaches out,’
as it warms you ”

(….and I would leave you there and not challenge
the gods to have a price to pay for this wonder.
I would deny the poet the comment to make us ponder
the infinity of possibility to miss the simplicity of such a gift.)

Well, here’s how the poem ends, starting from that line:

“as it warms you

as you stand there,
empty-handed —-
or have you too
turned from this world —-

have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?”
…………………MARY OLIVER,
New & Selected Poems, Volume One.1992

No, not you. Let’s see what’s up.

with love …
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

“SHE’S YAR”

That phrase, ‘She’s yar’ is an echo from when I was growing up,
and had a remarkable step-father who loved the old stories of
New England’s sailing ships, from clippers to dories, and those
words meant the vessel had fine, clean lines.

This morning, I looked up the word ‘yar’ in Webster’s dictionary,
and it’s not there. Curious. Did I make this up? Memory has a
way of recall that might be creative!

Along those lines, I have a poem for you:

“WORKING TOGETHER

We shape our self
to fit this world

and by the world
are shaped again.

The visible
and the invisible

working together
in common cause,

to produce
the miraculous.

I am thinking of the way
the intangible air

traveled at speed
round a shaped wing

easily
holds our weight.

So may we, in this life
trust

to those elements
we have yet to see

or imagine,
and look for the true

shape of our own self,
by forming it well

to the great
intangibles about us.”

……… DAVID WHYTE, written for the presentation
of the Collier Trophy to the Boeing Company marking
the introduction of the new 737 passenger jet.

‘Yar’, for sure.

always with love,
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette