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.
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…