May 2017 ~ Late Fragment

And what if what we want is already given.  What then? (Image: Little Child in the Grass, Bernt Gronvold) And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so? I did. And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth. Raymond Carver (1938-1988) from A New Path [...]

By |2021-02-16T12:49:59+00:00May 1st, 2017|Poem of the Month|

July 2015 ~ Love

Love means to learn to look at yourself The way one looks at distant things For you are only one thing among many. And whoever sees that way heals his heart. Without knowing it, from various ills— A bird and a tree say to him: Friend. Then he wants to use himself and things So [...]

By |2018-08-24T18:21:36+00:00July 1st, 2015|Poem of the Month|

July 2014 ~ How to Regain Your Soul

Come down Canyon Creek trail on a summer afternoon that one place where the valley floor opens out. You will see the white butterflies. Because of the way shadows come off those vertical rocks in the west, there are shafts of sunlight hitting the river and a deep long purple gorge straight ahead. Put down [...]

By |2018-08-24T18:25:12+00:00July 1st, 2014|Poem of the Month|

March 2014 ~ I Go Among the Trees

I go among trees and sit still. All my stirring becomes quiet around me like circles on water. My tasks lie in their places where I left them, asleep like cattle. Then what is afraid of me comes and lives a while in my sight. What it fears in me leaves me, and the fear [...]

By |2018-08-24T18:26:11+00:00March 1st, 2014|Poem of the Month|

May 2013 ~ One Place to Begin

You need a reason, any reason—skiing, a job in movies, the Golden Gate Bridge. Take your reason and drive west, past the Rockies. When you're bored with bare hills, dry flats, and distance, stop anywhere. Forget where you thought you were going. Rattle through the beer cans in the ditch. If there's a fence, try [...]

By |2018-08-24T18:29:25+00:00May 1st, 2013|Poem of the Month|

June 2011 ~ Gift

A day so happy. Fog lifted early. I worked in the garden. Hummingbirds were stopping over the honeysuckle flowers. There was no thing on earth I wanted to possess. I knew no one worth my envying him. Whatever evil I had suffered, I forgot. To think that once I was the same man did not [...]

By |2018-08-24T18:40:08+00:00June 1st, 2011|Poem of the Month|

March 2010 ~ Diagnosis

Diagnosis By the time I was six months old, she knew something was wrong with me. I got looks on my face she had not seen on any child in the family, or the extended family, or the neighborhood. My mother took me in to the pediatrician with the kind hands, a doctor with a [...]

By |2018-08-27T15:37:38+00:00March 1st, 2010|Poem of the Month|

January 2010 ~ Holy Spirit

Untitled Holy Spirit, Giving life to all life, Moving all creatures, Root of all things, Washing them clean, Wiping out their mistakes, Healing their wounds, You are our true life, Luminous, wonderful, Awakening the heart from its ancient sleep. Hildegarde of Bingen (1098 – 17 September 1179) was a German Benedictine abbess, writer, composer, philosopher, [...]

By |2021-02-16T12:50:00+00:00January 1st, 2010|Poem of the Month|
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