Forget resolutions, let go

i am running into a new year

i am running into a new year
and the old years blow back
like a wind
that i catch in my hair
like strong fingers like
all my old promises and
it will be hard to let go
of what i said to myself
about myself
when i was sixteen and
twenty-six and thirty-six
even forty-six but
i am running into a new year
and i beg what i love and
i leave to forgive me

—Lucille Clifton

published in Good Woman: Poems and A Memoir 1969-1980

My favorite lines are the last ones. When we undertake change, there seems to be some necessary apologies, regret, or  second guessing. The general consensus, with those I have discussed this, seems to be that such change is  a step in the right direction. Hopefully we will have the courage to let go of those old, self-limiting beliefs.

Present in the Moment

I was blessed to take a walk in the snow today, across smooth white fields broken by meandering tracks of deer, squirrels, and birds. I love the snow, I love walking in it..  I have not the words to describe the beauty, but this poem does. I snapped a few photos today and earlier. I hope you enjoy the snow while it lasts.

Shoveling Snow

Kirsten Dierking

If day after day I was caught inside
this muffle and hush

I would notice how birches
move with a lovely hum of spirits,

how falling snow is a privacy
warm as the space for sleeping,

how radiant snow is a dream
like leaving behind the body

and rising into that luminous place
where sometimes you meet

the people you've lost. How
silver branches scrawl their names

in tangled script against the white.
How the curves and cheekbones

of all my loved ones appear
in the polished marble of drifts. 

"Shoveling Snow" by Kirsten Dierking, from Northern Oracle. © Spout Press, 2007

 

 

animal wisdom

Each of these poets recognizes the beauty of animals and the advantage they have over humans, the "superior" species. It is interesting to see how differently each communicates this message. The photos are all from National Geographic. Don't miss the video near the bottom!

THE ANIMALS SPEAK

Mary Carvell Bragg

When we stopped listening

they stopped talking

and we lost the wisdom

the animal were gifting us

We became drunk

with the power of language

even believed we had

all the answers

But we couldn’t learn

while we were talking

and our other half withered

like a dried up snakeskin

The animals agreed long ago

there is no point in talking to the deaf

So now through looks and body language

they speak, hoping we will finally get it

             

To Learn From Animal Beings

John O’Donohue

Nearer to the earth’s heart
Deeper within it’s silence
Animals know this world
In a way we never will.

We who are ever
Distanced and distracted
By the parade of bright
Windows thought opens:
Their seamless presence
Is not fractured thus.

Stranded between time
Gone and time emerging,
We manage seldom
To be where we are:
Whereas they are always
Looking out from
The here and now.

May we learn to return
And rest in the beauty
Of animal being,
Learn to lean low,
Leave our locked minds

And with freed senses

Feel the earth

Breathing with us.

May we enter
Into lightness of spirit,
And slip frequently into
The feel of the wild.

Let the clear silence
Of our animal being
Cleanse our hearts
Of corrosive words.

May we learn to walk
Upon the earth
With all their confidence
And clear-eyed stillness
So that our minds
Might be baptized
In the name of the wind
And the light of the rain.

THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS

Wendell Berry

 

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

 Please watch this video about Samburu Elephants 
from  National Geographic. Poetry in video!

I can see treetops

A Daily Joy to be Alive Jimmy Santiago Baca

No matter how serene things may be in my life, how well things are going, my body and soul are two cliff peaks from which a dream of who I can be falls, and I must learn to fly again each day, or die. Death draws respect and fear from the living. Death offers no false starts. It is not a referee with a pop-gun at the startling of a hundred yard dash. I do not live to retrieve or multiply what my father lost or gained. I continually find myself in the ruins of new beginnings, uncoiling the rope of my life to descend ever deeper into unknown abysses, tying my heart into a knot round a tree or boulder, to insure I have something that will hold me, that will not let me fall. My heart has many thorn-studded slits of flame springing from the red candle jars. My dreams flicker and twist on the altar of this earth, light wrestling with darkness, light radiating into darkness, to widen my day blue, and all that is wax melts in the flame- I can see treetops

Empty and Filled

Standing Deer

As the house of a person
in age sometimes grows cluttered
with what is
too loved or too heavy to part with,
the heart may grow cluttered.
And still the house will be emptied,
and still the heart.

As the thoughts of a person
in age sometimes grow sparer,
like a great cleanness come into a room,
the soul may grow sparer;
one sparrow song carves it completely.
And still the room is full,
and still the heart.

Empty and filled,
like the curling half-light of morning,
in which everything is still possible and so why not.

Filled and empty,
like the curling half-light of evening,
in which everything now is finished and so why not.

Beloved, what can be, what was,
will be taken from us.
I have disappointed.
I am sorry. I knew no better.

A root seeks water.
Tenderness only breaks open the earth.
This morning, out the window,
the deer stood like a blessing, then vanished.

~ Jane Hirshfield ~

(The Lives of the Heart)

I am moved by so many portions of this poem, it is filled with so much to think about.... it is a bit overwhelming. For example, "tenderness only breaks open the earth." I think the point is that something as delicate as a root can break rocks by simply doing what it is intended to do. So what does that mean for me and how I approach life? 

I feel the idea of yin and yang made obvious in this poem where balance is maintained in everything.  I see the bittersweet irony in how life can be so painfully sweet and so perfectly tragic. How the beginning and end of each day is like a complete lifetime in some ways. Those are a few seeds of thought I took from it.