AT THE POOL WE'VE ALL GOT BODIES

At the pool we’ve all got bodies.
Elsewhere we’ve got brands
we’ve got fabrications
we’ve got lulu lemon butt lifting pants.

At the pool we’ve all got bodies
in trunks and clam shells—
some working with flaps and pleats pleading
to conceal, others an experiment in Swiss minimalism

and risk management—
all of us dealing with the unalterable fact
that we’ve all got what we’ve got, that
at the pool

we’ve all got bodies:
bouncy bodies
bodies that need brushing
fluorescent white, white bodies
energized child bodies
hot-tubbed tired bodies
bodies

all of them absorbed in being here!—
not spiritual ghosts,
not online avatars,
but us, at the pool
with splashing, floating,
leaping bodies.

Lance Odegard

THESE DAYS

whatever you have to say, leave
the roots on, let them
dangle

And the dirt

Just to make clear
where they come from

Charles Olson

LOVE AFTER LOVE

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Derek Walcott

ARRIVE WHERE WE STARTED

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

T.S. Eloit

WHEN DEATH COMES

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it’s over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

Mary Oliver

TO KNOW THE DARK

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.

Wendell Berry

COVENANT

The Father
knocks at my door,
seeking a home for his son: 

Rent is cheap, I say 

I don’t want to rent. I want to buy, says God. 

I’m not sure I want to sell, 
but you might come in to look around. 

I think I will, says God. 

I might let you have a room or two. 

I like it, says God. I’ll take the two. 
You might decide to give me more some day. 
I can wait, says God. 

I’d like to give you more, 
but it’s a bit difficult. I need some space for me. 

I know, says God, but I’ll wait. I like what I see. 

Hm, maybe I can let you have another room. 
I really don’t need that much. 

Thanks, says God, I’ll take it. I like what I see. 

I’d like to give you the whole house 
But I’m not sure – 

Think on it, says God. I wouldn’t put you out. 
Your house would be mine and my son would live in it. 
You’d have more space than you’d ever had before. 

I don’t understand at all. 

I know, says God, but I can’t tell you about that. 
You’ll have to discover it for yourself. 
That can only happen if you let him have the whole house. 

A bit risky, I say. 

Yes, says God, but try me.

I’m not sure – 
I’ll let you know.

I can wait, says God. I like what I see.

Sr. Margaret Halaska

FOR THE ONE WHO HOLDS POWER

May the gift of leadership awaken in you as a vocation,
Keep you mindful of the providence that calls you to serve.
As high over the mountains the eagle spreads its wings,
May your perspective be larger than the view from the foothills.

When the way is flat and dull in times of gray endurance,
May your imagination continue to evoke horizons.
When thirst burns in times of drought,
May you be blessed to find the wells.
May you have the wisdom to read time clearly
And know when the seed of change will flourish.

In your heart may there be a sanctuary
For the stillness where clarity is born.
May your work be infused with passion and creativity
And have the wisdom to balance compassion and challenge.

May your soul find the graciousness
To rise above the fester of small mediocrities.
May your power never become a shell
Wherein your heart would silently atrophy.
May you welcome your own vulnerability
As the ground where healing and truth join.

May integrity of soul be your first ideal.
The source that will guide and bless your work.

John O’Donohue

FOR THE TME OF NECESSARY DECISION

The mind of time is hard to read.
We can never predict what it will bring,
Nor even from all that is already gone
Can we say what form it finally takes;
For time gathers its moments secretly.
Often we only know it’s time to change
When a force has built inside the heart
That leaves us uneasy as we are.

Perhaps the work we do has lost its soul
Or the love where we once belonged
Calls nothing alive in us anymore.

We drift through this gray, increasing nowhere
Until we stand before a threshold we know
We have to cross to come alive once more.

May we have the courage to take the step
Into the unknown that beckons us;
Trust that a richer life awaits us there,
That we will lose nothing
But what has already died;
Feel the deeper knowing in us sure
Of all that is about to be born beyond
The pale frames where we stayed confined,
Not realizing how such vacant endurance
Was bleaching our soul’s desire.

John O’Donohue

EXIT INTERVIEW

We sit across this desk,
but outside the office window 
stands a tree doing what all trees do 
and have done, many times each October.

We have no way of knowing 
if its limbs had grown weary, or what it heard 
to signal that now was the time, or whether 
there was any internal decision making 
that brought about the arrival of this moment.

We just have a tree out there on a grey wednesday 
co-operating, releasing yesterday’s 
prolific profusions, allowing the only life it has 
to be ordered by the ending of a season—willing 
now to no longer be laden, willing 
now to be latent.

We know this will keep happening every year, 
which has never once been strange 
for those living things who are always dying 
and living and letting go.

Lance Odegard

DON’T WORRY

Things take the time they take. Don’t
worry.
How many roads did St. Augustine follow
before he became St. Augustine?

Mary Oliver