DO NOT ASK YOUR CHILDREN TO STRIVE

Do not ask your children
to strive for extraordinary lives.
Such striving may seem admirable,
but it is the way of foolishness.
Help them instead to find the wonder
and the marvel of an ordinary life.
Show them the joy of tasting
tomatoes, apples and pears.
Show them how to cry
when pets and people die.
Show them the infinite pleasure
in the touch of a hand.
And make the ordinary come alive for them.
The extraordinary will take care of itself.

William Martin
The Parent's Tao Te Ching: Ancient Advice for Modern Parents

LOGOS

Why wonder about the loaves and the fishes
If you say the right words, the wine expands.
If you say them with love
And the felt ferocity of that love
And the felt necessity of that love
The fish explode into many.
Imagine him speaking,
And don’t worry about what is reality,
Or what is plain, or what is mysterious.
If you were there, it was all those things.
If you can imagine it, it is all those things.
Eat, drink be happy.
Accept the miracle.
Accept, too, each spoken word
Spoken with love.

Mary Oliver

4 HOURS

4 hours.
An introduction,
a conversation,
a shared moment,
a shared meal.

40 hours.
An opportunity in my mind,
a possibly in my heart,
an future in my life.

That does
not come.
I am again, 
learning.

Receive 4.
Reel not for 40.
Live in reality.
Do not long in reverie.

Let 4 hours be,
what 4 hours is.
4 hours.

CLEARING

Do not try to save
the whole world
or do anything grandiose.

Instead, create
a clearing
in the dense forest
of your life
and wait there
patiently,
until the song
that is your life
falls into your own cupped hands
and you recognize and greet it.

Only then will you know
how to give yourself
to this world
so worth of rescue.

Martha Postlewaite

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