Mind Wind

"I've been a dweller on the plains, have sighed when summer days were gone; No more I'll sigh; for winter here Hath gladsome gardens of his own." ~ Dorothy Wordsworth

The rustling of the silk is discontinued, Dust drifts over the court-yard, There is no sound of foot-fall, and the leaves Scurry into heaps and lie still, And she the rejoicer of the heart is beneath them: A wet leaf that clings to the threshold. "Liu Ch'e" ~ Ezra Pound

The end, elusive and afar, Still lures us with its beckoning flight, And all our mortal moments are A session of the Infinite. How shall we reach the great, unknown Nirvana of thy Lotus-throne? Excerpt: "To A Buddha Seated On A Lotus" ~ Sarojini Naidu

Don’t do it, the guidebook says, if you’re lost. Then it goes on to talk about something else, taking the easy way out, which of course is what water does as a matter of course always taking whatever turn the earth has told it to while and since it was born, including flowing over the edge of a waterfall or simply disappearing underground for a long dark time before it reappears as a spring so far away from where you thought you were it might never occur to you to imagine where that could be as you go downhill. ~ David Wagoner

I am not a person I am a succession of persons Held together by memory. When the string breaks, The beads are scattered. "Waka" - Lindley Williams Hubbel

It will not hurt me when I am old, A running tide where moonlight burned Will not sting me like silver snakes; The years will make me sad and cold, It is the happy heart that breaks. The heart asks more than life can give, When that is learned, then all is learned; The waves break fold on jewelled fold, But beauty itself is fugitive, It will not hurt me when I am old. - Sara Teasdale

That place that does contain My books, the best companions, is to me A glorious court, where hourly I converse With the old sages and philosophers; And sometimes, for variety, I confer With kings and emperors, and weigh their counsels; Calling their victories, if unjustly got, Unto a strict account, and, in my fancy, Deface their ill-placed statues. ~Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

The sky is melting. Me too. Who hasn’t seen it this way? Pink between the castlework of buildings. Pensive syrup drizzled over clouds. It is almost catastrophic how heavenly. A million poets, at least, have stood in this very spot, groceries in hand, wondering: "Can I witness the Rapture and still make it home in time for dinner?" ~ Elaine Equi

In winter all the singing is in the tops of the trees where the wind-bird with its white eyes shoves and pushes among the branches. Like any of us he wants to go to sleep, but he's restless— he has an idea, and slowly it unfolds from under his beating wings as long as he stays awake. But his big, round music, after all, is too breathy to last. So, it's over. In the pine-crown he makes his nest, he's done all he can. I don't know the name of this bird, I only imagine his glittering beak tucked in a white wing while the clouds— which he has summoned from the north— which he has taught to be mild, and silent— thicken, and begin to fall into the world below like stars, or the feathers of some unimaginable bird that loves us, that is asleep now, and silent— that has turned itself into snow. ~ Mary Oliver

Let the light of late afternoon shine through chinks in the barn, moving up the bales as the sun moves down. Let the cricket take up chafing as a woman takes up her needles and her yarn. Let evening come. Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned in long grass. Let the stars appear and the moon disclose her silver horn. Let the fox go back to its sandy den. Let the wind die down. Let the shed go black inside. Let evening come. To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop in the oats, to air in the lung let evening come. ................. Excerpt; Jane Kenyon

Lost in the forest, I broke off a dark twig and lifted its whisper to my thirsty lips: maybe it was the voice of the rain crying, a cracked bell, or a torn heart. Something from far off it seemed deep and secret to me, hidden by the earth, a shout muffled by huge autumns, by the moist half-open darkness of the leaves. Wakening from the dreaming forest there, the hazel-sprig sang under my tongue, its drifting fragrance climbed up through my conscious mind as if suddenly the roots I had left behind cried out to me, the land I had lost with my childhood--- and I stopped, wounded by the wandering scent. "Lost in the Forest" ~ Pablo Neruda

How valuable it is in these short days, threading through empty maple branches, the lacy-needled sugar pines. Its glint off sheets of ice tells the story of Death’s brightness, her bitter cold. We can make do with so little, just the hint of warmth, the slanted light. The way we stand there, soaking in it, mittened fingers reaching. And how carefully we gather what we can to offer later, in darkness, one body to another. "Winter Sun" ~ Molly Fisk

In the spring of joy, when even the mud chuckles, my soul runs rabid, snaps at its own bleeding heels, and barks: “What is happiness?” ~ Philip Appleman HBM ye all, & Best wishes

www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/172844 The world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams. Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain, And we are here as on a darkling plain; Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night ~ Mathew Arnold, “Dover Beach,” 1867

Baudelaire considers you his brother, and Fielding calls out to you every few paragraphs as if to make sure you have not closed the book, and now I am summoning you up again, attentive ghost, dark silent figure standing in the doorway of these words. Pope welcomes you into the glow of his study, takes down a leather-bound Ovid to show you. Tennyson lifts the latch to a moated garden, and with Yeats you lean against a broken pear tree, the day hooded by low clouds. But now you are here with me, composed in the open field of this page, no room or manicured garden to enclose us, no Zeitgeist marching in the background, no heavy ethos thrown over us like a cloak. Instead, our meeting is so brief and accidental, unnoticed by the monocled eye of History, you could be the man I held the door for this morning at the bank or post office or the one who wrapped my speckled fish. You could be someone I passed on the street or the face behind the wheel of an oncoming car. The sunlight flashes off your windshield, and when I look up into the small, posted mirror, I watch you diminish—my echo, my twin— and vanish around a curve in this whip of a road we can't help traveling together. ~ Billy Collins

The sun shone, All was still. The sun made one sparkle in one drop Before it fell Down into the mossy green That was the grass. It lay there silent A long time. The sun went, the moon came, Again one sparkle in the grass! Day then night, sun then moon, Year in, year out, So it went on with its life For several years Until at last it was never heard of Any more. Hilda Conking

The grass is covered with a brittle frost, As customers line up At the clapboard house, Under the painted sign of a mortor And the club for crushing powders In the bay window display Apothecary bottles One of the old fashioned scales With its outspread pans Like the arms of a crucifix, Jars of Bromo-seltzer. Folded up wheelchairs A brested dummy’s mastectomy bra. Now the door opens with a cattail Of jingles, the vintage cash register Rings up its penny change, And inside the coughs and sneezes, The addicts slumped in their niches Trying to hoodwink the pharmacist By tapping their counterfeit canes And from isles, the fishy smell Of vitamins and ointments Where heavy feet pace The cracked wooden floor Wearing a path down to dust Looking for something “Pharmacy” ~ Judith Harris

This is the way water thinks about the desert. The way the thought of water gives you something to stumble on. A ghost river. A sentence trailing off toward lower ground. A finger pointing at the rest of the show. I wanted to read it. I wanted to write a poem and call it “Ephemeral Stream” and dedicate it to you because you made of this imaginary creek a hole so deep it looked like a green eye taking in the storm, a poem interrupted by forgiveness. Excerpt: "Ephemeral Stream" ~ Elizabeth Ellis