Poems can be a doorway into another world. Each one, a simple arrangement of otherwise ordinary words, that together evoke presence, wonder, possibility. So here is an invitation to pause, let the words wash over you and glimpse the world they offer you…
It’s a growing collection, and we’d love to hear which ones resonate with you and why, and find out about your favourites. Here is an index of our Words of Wonder.
Breathe, said the wind How can I breathe at a time like this, when the air is full of the smoke of burning tires, burning lives? Just breathe, the wind insisted. Easy for you to say, if the weight of injustice is not wrapped around your throat, cutting off all air. I need you to…
today I am breathing through fatigue, fear, and feeling overwhelmed. I breathe because when I breathe, I am reminded that I am alive. I am reminded that to be able to fill my body with air means that I have the ability to keep going. I am reminded that my time on earth may be…
I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers flow in the right direction, will the earth turn as it was taught, and if not how shall I correct it? Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven, can I do better? Will I ever be able to sing, even the…
Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away; Lengthen night and shorten day; Every leaf speaks bliss to me Fluttering from the autumn tree. I shall smile when wreaths of snow Blossom where the rose should grow; I shall sing when night’s decay Ushers in a drearier day. Emily Brontë As I look out of my window,…
In the land of words, I stand as still as a tree and let the words rain down on me. Come, rain, bring your knowledge and your music. Sing while I grow green and full. I’ll stand as still as a tree, and let your blessings fall on me. by Eloise Greenfield During these…
Happiness cannot be found through great effort and willpower, but is already here, right now, in relaxation and letting go. Don’t strain yourself, there is nothing to do. Whatever arises in the mind has no importance at all, because it has no reality whatsoever. Don’t become attached to it. Don’t pass judgement. Let the game…
Willing to experience aloneness, I discover connection everywhere; Turning to face my fear, I meet the warrior who lives within; Opening to my loss, I gain the embrace of the universe; Surrendering into emptiness, I find fullness without end. Each condition I flee from pursues me, Each condition I welcome transforms me And becomes itself…
At the ruins of the Seven Churches Inishmore Pick a crevice, a homey gap between stones and make it your own. Grow a life here from wind rain and the memories of ancients embedded in limestone. The bees will use you for their sweet honey. The rock will soften under your touch. You will draw…
We have a soul at times. No one’s got it non-stop, for keeps. Day after day, year after year may pass without it. Sometimes it will settle for awhile only in childhood’s fears and raptures. Sometimes only in astonishment that we are old. It rarely lends a hand in uphill tasks, like moving furniture, or…
And why not be flagrantly happy, really. The moon is full and rakish and spring keeps teasing the morning into taking off its sweater. By noon, everyone is blushing. In the garden, strawberries come up on their own, their fearless white flowers pre-wired for sweetness. Who cares the weeds are already releasing their onslaught of…
I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you” when someone sneezes, a leftover from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying. And sometimes, when you spill lemons from your grocery bag, someone else…
One morningwe will wake upand forget to buildthat wall we’ve been building,the one between usthe one we’ve been buildingfor years, perhapsout of some senseof right and boundary,perhaps out of habit. One morningwe will wake upand let our empty handshang empty at our sides.Perhaps they will rise,as empty thingssometimes dowhen blownby the wind.Perhaps they simplywill not rememberhow…
Who turns this into that? Sound into noise? Aroma into odor? Taste into pleasure or disgust? Who turns yes into no? Grace into disgrace? Who turns the present into the past? Who turns the now into the not-now? As-it-is into as-it-should-be? Silence into restlessness? Stillness into boredom? The ordinary into the menial? Who turns pain…
Benedicto: May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your rivers flow without end, meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells, past temples and castles and poets’ towers into a dark primeval forest where tigers belch and monkeys howl, through miasmal and mysterious swamps and down into a…
It is said that before entering the sea a river trembles with fear. She looks back at the path she has traveled, from the peaks of the mountains, the long winding road crossing forests and villages. And in front of her, she sees an ocean so vast, that to enter there seems nothing more than…
Last night as I was sleeping, I dreamt—marvelous error!— that I had a beehive here inside my heart. And the golden bees were making white combs and sweet honey from my old failures. by Antonio Machado This is a part of the longer poem by Antonio Machado, who is seen by many as one…
Earth, I thank you for the pleasure of your language You’ve had a hard time bringing it to me from the ground to grunt thru the noun To all the way feeling seeing smelling touching —awareness I am here! by Anne Spencer I was touched by this little poem, with its gratitude and emerging…
I I walk down the street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk I fall in. I am lost … I am helpless. It isn’t my fault. It takes me forever to find a way out. II I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I pretend I…
Though the air is full of singing my head is loud with the labor of words. Though the season is rich with fruit, my tongue hungers for the sweet of speech. Though the beech is golden I cannot stand beside it mute, but must say ‘It is golden,’ while the leaves stir and fall with…
This morning as I walked along the lakeshore, I fell in love with a wren and later in the day with a mouse the cat had dropped under the dining room table. In the shadows of an autumn evening, I fell for a seamstress still at her machine in the tailor’s window, and later for…
In all ten directions of the universe, there is only one truth. When we see clearly, the great teachings are the same. What can ever be lost? What can be obtained? If we attain something, it was there from the beginning of time. If we lost something, it is hiding somewhere near us. Look: this…
It is possible, I suppose that sometime we will learn everything there is to learn: what the world is, for example, and what it means. I think this as I am crossing from one field to another, in summer, and the mockingbird is mocking me, as one who either knows enough already or knows enough…
Within the body you are wearing, now inside the bones and beating in the heart, lives the one you have been searching for so long. But you must stop running away and shake hands, the meeting doesn’t happen without your presence . . . your participation. The same one waiting for you there is moving…
The washing never gets done. The furnace never gets heated. Books never get read. Life is never completed. Life is like a ball which one must continually catch and hit so that it won’t fall. When the fence is repaired at one end, it collapses at the other. The roof leaks, the kitchen door won’t…
Don’t say that I will depart tomorrow — even today I am still arriving. Look deeply: every second I am arriving to be a bud on a Spring branch, to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings, learning to sing in my new nest, to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower, to…
Letting go, in order to let in releasing, in order to receive nature’s coded messages become clearer the less we try to see. Trying hard, trying harder and harder trying so very hard is not the way. We need commitment, yes and focus and hope and faith and trust but most of all we need…
(to hear this poem spoken by the poet with images from the land around him, click here) Solace A poem for the time I met an old man on the path that runs above the sea, And as we passed I saw him smile and lift his eyes to me. There was such peace…
That day I saw beneath dark clouds, the passing light over the water and I heard the voice of the world speak out, I knew then, as I had before, life is no passing memory of what has been nor the remaining pages in a great book waiting to be read. It is the opening…
Don’t surrender your loneliness So quickly. Let it cut more deep. Let it ferment and season you As few human Or even divine ingredients can. Something missing in my heart tonight Has made my eyes so soft My voice So tender, My need of God Absolutely Clear. by Daniel Ladinsky, a rendition of Hafiz …
After Derek Mahon Your great mistake is to act the drama as if you were alone. As if life were a progressive and cunning crime with no witness to the tiny hidden transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely, even you, at times, have felt the grand array; the…