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.
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…
She let go. She let go. Without a thought or a word, she let go. She let go of the fear. She let go of the judgments. She let go of the confluence of opinions swarming around her head. She let go of the committee of indecision within her. She let go of all the…
Oh do you have time to linger for just a little while out of your busy and very important day for the goldfinches that have gathered in a field of thistles for a musical battle, to see who can sing the highest note, or the lowest, or the most expressive of mirth, or the most…
Give up the fight For some other moment Some other life Than here, and now Give up the longing for some other world The wishing for other choices to make other songs to sing other bodies, other ages, other countries, other stakes Purge the past; forgive the future – for each come too soon. Surrender…
There is such beauty In the way that the grass Gracefully accepts the snow And the snow gracefully accepts The soft landing place of The grass They are entirely at ease With each other’s presence Outside the world Of weather warnings and Closed bridges There is a grace right here Right now each flake Whirling…
My friend and I snickered the first time we heard the meditation teacher, a grown man, call himself honey, with a hand placed over his heart to illustrate how we too might become more gentle with ourselves and our runaway minds. It’s been years since we sat with legs twisted on cushions, holding back our…
Everything is beautiful and I am so sad. This is how the heart makes a duet of wonder and grief. The light spraying through the lace of the fern is as delicate as the fibers of memory forming their web around the knot in my throat. The breeze makes the birds move from branch to…
And if it’s true we are alone, we are alone together, the way blades of grass are alone, but exist as a field. Sometimes I feel it, the green fuse that ignites us, the wild thrum that unites us, an inner hum that reminds us of our shared humanity. Just as thirty-five trillion red blood…
Now, In this time of times perhaps we have such need again, for a poultice placed gently and with kindness upon the rounded body of the earth where too long our self-sickness has burrowed deep within and brought the breaking and the burning of fever dream, of pain and sorrow become now a crown of…