I want a word that means okay and not okay, a word that means devastated and stunned with joy. I want the word that says I feel it all, all at once. The heart is not like a songbird singing only one note at a time, more like a Tuvan throat singer able to sing…
I know, you never intended to be in this world. But you’re in it all the same. So why not get started immediately. I mean, belonging to it. There is so much to admire, to weep over. And to write music or poems about. Bless the feet that take you to and fro. Bless the…
Giving thanks for abundance is sweeter than the abundance itself: Should one who is absorbed with the Generous One be distracted by the gift? Thankfulness is the soul of beneficence; abundance is but the husk, for thankfulness brings you to the place where the Beloved lives. Abundance yields heedlessness; thankfulness brings alertness: hunt for bounty…
Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably fell down there. And the Drano won’t work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes have piled up waiting for the plumber I still haven’t called. This is the everyday we spoke of. It’s winter again: the sky’s a deep, headstrong blue, and…
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. by Raymond Carver This was the last poem in Raymond Carver’s last book, written while he was dying of cancer. It is also the…
Beneath the masks, beneath the names, beneath ideals, beneath the shoulds is a thrumming, ecstatic atomic swirl, unseen and omnipresent, inescapable and holy—a divine blurring of being, a realm of charge and energy— most of it empty space. Sometimes, I remember this. Perhaps walking in the woods or standing in the midst of a city’s…
It was spring and finally I heard him among the first leaves – then I saw him clutching the limb in an island of shade with his red-brown feathers all trim and neat for the new year. First, I stood still and thought of nothing. Then I began to listen. Then I was filled with…
The optometrist says my eyes are getting better each year. Soon he’ll have to lower my prescription. What’s next? The light step I had at six? All the gray hairs back to brown? Skin taut as a drum? My improved eyes and I walked around town and celebrated. We took in the letters of the…
1. Understand, I am always trying to figure out what the soul is, and where hidden, and what shape — and so, last week, when I found on the beach the ear bone of a pilot whale that may have died hundreds of years ago, I thought maybe I was close to discovering something —…