past the borders of happiness and unhappiness
a rim of fire oaks bid me on the blue horizon

smooth hand like leaves held me there
while the first hard rain fell

I kneeled and leaned into the heady fragrance
of an ancient wisdom revealed
beneath the old rough timber

it spoke of the delicate balance in being
at once firmly rooted while gently yielding
whenever the fall winds swept through

I heard of the necessity of winter’s annual arrival
for stillness is the silent cathedral of the earth

I learned that what drops away gives rise to rich black loam
so that nothing that is cherished ever perishes

listening intently now, the old knowing timber whispered
how it never seeks to contain what cuts deep

no, you give it up to the low slung clouds overhead
to be carried on the wings of the air

©heartsdeesire

]]> http://simplyblessed.heartsdeesire.com/2010/02/23/wisdom-of-trees/feed/ 5 Beth/Bethie trees_at_Woods_Canyon_Lake http://simplyblessed.heartsdeesire.com/2010/02/17/letters-to-a-young-poet/ http://simplyblessed.heartsdeesire.com/2010/02/17/letters-to-a-young-poet/#comments Wed, 17 Feb 2010 23:19:00 +0000 heartsdeesire http://simplyblessed.heartsdeesire.com/?p=2485 ]]>

If a sadness rises in front of you,
larger than any you have ever seen;
if an anxiety like light and cloud-shadows
moves over your hands and over everything you do.
You must realize that something is happening to you,
that life has not forgotten you,
that it holds you in its hand
and will not let you fall.

~Rainer Maria Rilke~
Letters to a Young Poet

the beauty of the trees

the softness of the air

the fragrance of the grass

speaks to me

and my heart soars

~Chief Dan George~
Opening Ceremonies Vancouver Olympics 2010

Here is another “found” poem I have created.  This time I’ve brought Rumi and Rilke together.  No small task!  Great poets they were but not contemporaries as are Mary Oliver and Wendell Berry in my previous found poem.  This particular found poem starts with two lines from a Rumi poem and then alternates with Rilke’s words on the next two lines. This pattern is repeated with Rumi’s words then Rilke’s. No more than 1-3 lines from any one poem is used. There are many ways to create a found poem – this is one way. Below I list the eight poems that were used to accomplish this.

At first I thought: I really can’t do this.  This could be tantamount to blasphemy on some level.  However I’ve recently discovered that God is a cat lover.  When I get to the pearly gates, I’ve got extra credit as well as he’s grading on a curve, so blasphemy I can do a little and still not risk the fantasy suite and hot tub that awaits me.  :)

And now without further adieu, I bring you Rumi and Rilke, together at last.

There’s a surge up from the surface
into what is beyond dying

Like dew from the morning grass,
what is ours floats into the air

It is sunlight slicing the dark
The way the night knows itself with the moon.

Then the knowing comes: I can open
to another’s life that’s wide and timeless

If each of us held a candle there,
and if we went in together,
we could see it.

Through the empty branches the sky remains.
It is what you have.

Inside this new love, die
Your way begins on the other side.
Become the sky.

The Vigil – Rumi
The Second Elegy – Rilke
All Rivers at Once – Rumi (note: “I am” replaced with “It is”)
In the Arc of Your Mallet – Rumi (note: it is sunlight… and the way the night…, two separate Rumi poems put together in this one verse)
The Book of Monastic Life I,5 – Rilke
Elephant in the Dark – Rumi
The Book of Pilgrimage, II,1 – Rilke
Quietness – Rumi

almost entirely hidden
we carry this
a little pocket of pain

the one that time didn’t heal

tucked where it can’t easily be seen
something trivial and you bump into it
unexpected, it’s still tender

sometimes pieces tumble out
“it’s been ten years since …”
“I haven’t forgetten the moment when …”

the lyrics of our wounds differ
but that we are inevitably moved upon
by them is what we share

for what breaks us, shapes us
into something more

and sensing this in each other
we silently walk together on the street
where there are no strangers

©heartsdeesire

Half the day lost, staring
at this window. I wanted to know
just one true thing

about the soul, but I left thinking
for thought, and now —
two inches of snow have fallen

over the meadow. Where did I go,
how long was I out looking
for you?, who would never leave me,
my withness, my here.

~Kate Knapp Johnson~
Wind Somewhere, And Shade

Truth is
when the heart grows cold enough
everything disappears. Even the self

is invisible (though the mind
would prefer a word like “detained”).

If you can’t feel anything
the whole world is “detained” —
our lives happening and unhappening
at what seems a safe distance.

But that
is all a seeming, an apparition.
There is only one
distance, which is love, one real
choice, and if we consent to it,

the one we were
is lost forever. “Abandonment,”
we call it. As in: wild, or perfect.
We abandon ourselves
to love.

~Kate Knapp Johnson~
Wind Somewhere and Shade

photograph: Ansel Adams, “The Black Sun, Owens Valley, California,” 1939

Forget The Museum of Natural History,
The Metropolitan or The Smithsonian.
The collection I want to wander in
I call the Valhalla of Lost Things.

The Venus de Milo’s arms are here,
she’s grown quite attached to them.
I circle Leonardo’s sixteen-foot-tall
equestrian statue, never cast, browse

all five-hundred-thousand volumes
of The Alexandrian Library, handle
artifacts of Atlantis. Here are all
the ballades and rondeaux of Villon,

the finished score of The Unfinished
Symphony, I read all of Edwin Drood
and Answered Prayers. I’ll screen ten
missing reels of Von Stroheim’s Greed,

hear the famous gap in Nixon’s tapes.
There are lost things here so lost,
no one knows they were lost—manuscripts
by the unknown Kafka, far greater

than Kafka’s; his best friend obeyed,
shredded every sheet. The cure for cancer
is here: The inventor didn’t recognize,
the potion went unpatented . . .

In my museum no guard shushes me
for talking, there are no closing times,
it’s always free. Here I can see
what no one living has seen, I satisy

that within me which is not whole.
Here I am curator not of what is,
but of what should have been,
and what should be.

~Robert Phillips~
what have you lost?
Poems selected by Naomi Shihab Nye

Yes, I’ve gone and done it again.  Another found poem.  This time instead of contrasting two poets together, I have taken one poet: Mary Oliver and pulled pieces from 8 different poems to bring together a brand new poem.  I’ve taken no more than two to four lines from each poem.  Each verse is from a different poem and in a few cases a pronoun has been changed.  After this found poem, I cite the poems that were used to create it.

Every morning I walk softly and with forward glances
down to the ponds and through the pinewoods.

I have gone every day to the same woods,
not waiting, exactly, just lingering.

I have thought sometimes that
something – I can’t name it -
watches as I walk

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”

Later, lying half-asleep under
the blankets, I watch
while the doe, glittering with rain, steps
under the wet slabs of the pines

These are the woods I love,
where the secret name
of every death is life again – a miracle

Someday I’ll live in the sky.
Meanwhile the house of my life is this green world.

In the book of the earth it is written:
nothing can die.

~Mary Oliver~

One
The Place I Want to Get Back To
Beans
When I Am Among the Trees
Clapp’s Pond
Skunk Cabbage
Boundaries
Ghosts