Rearranged

by Erin from here: http://togetherforgood.wordpress.com/2010/12/09/rearranged/

I find the baby Jesus

Stuck to His plastic manger

On the floor by the toy bins,

Squashed down between the couch cushions,

Next to an empty purple sippy cup,

inside a shoe.

His face doesn't change --

Uncanny perfect peace on a newborn--

Though He is far from His stable

And His little plastic mother,

Found this time stranded on the third stair

Behind the gate.

I guess this is the Savior's reality

Since taking flesh to dwell among us--

Spending time in our deep, hidden places,

Lost amid our messes,

Forgotten in the middle of all our busy lives.

And His face shining grace always

Never changes toward us.

Once again I put Him back where He belongs.

Truer gifts

Truer gifts

by Lisa Leafstrand

from A Widening Light, Regent College Publishing, 1984

The whole world (it seems)

is soaring into Christmas

meeting the cold with such proper spirit

hanging up pines with bulbs and best wishes,

meaningless to minds set in tradition

and premature weariness for celebrating routine.

(I never understood it either):

Being fond of dolls then

I got a new one every year

packaged in paper and parent-love.

I ripped away wrappings

and months of anticipation

to touch my own just born babies,

more real than any mangered child

mysteriously coming in the very olden days.

They cried faucet water tears

(not salty but still strong)

I laughed at their damp faces

sometimes.

No one ever told me that santa made money

by stuffing himself in a red rented suit

or that the cookies I left hot for him

were munched by the dog

as I buried my head in a pillow

white with dreams.

It always ended too soon:

hopes flickered away as colored lights blinked

into black

brittle needles left trails behind the retreating tree

and the nativity surrendered the TV top to magazines.

Songs fled the streets and people forgot to smile

snow melted

and dolls lay broken on a closet shelf.

I shall make no neat list this year

(carefully itemized from Sears' catalog);

needing nothing in the way of plastic infants

I ask for truer gifts:

that I might glow sharper than any tinselled star

showing God's good love to every inkeeper

and all astonished shepherds.

The risk of birth

The risk of birth

by Madeline L'Engle

from A Widening Light, Regent College Publishing, 1984

This is no time for a child to be born,

With the earth betrayed by war & hate

And a nova lighting the sky to warn

That time runs out & the sun burns late.

That was no time for a child to be born,

In a land in the crushing grip of Rome;

Honour & truth were trampled by scorn--

Yet here did the Savior make his home.

When is the time for love to be born?

The inn is full on the planet earth,

And by greed & pride the sky is torn--

Yet love still takes the risk of birth.

Housekeeper

Housekeeper

by Elizabeth Rooney

from A Widening Light, Regent College Publishing, 1984

This is my little town,

My Bethlehem,

And here, if anywhere,

My Christ Child

Will be born.

I must begin

To go about my day--

Sweep out the inn,

Get fresh hay for the manger

And be sure

To leave my heart ajar

In case there may be travelers

From afar.

Shine in the dark

Shine in the dark

by Luci Shaw

from A Widening Light, Regent College Publishing, 1984

I From a dark dust of stars

kindled one, a prick of light.

Burn! small candle star,

burn in the black night.

In the still hushed heart

(dark as black night)

shine! Savior newly born,

shine, till the heart's light!

II Into blackness breached with white

the star shivers like a bell.

God of birth and brightness

bless the cool carillion

singing into sight!

Plot its poised pointing flight!

Dark has its victories

tonight, in David's town.

But the star bell's tongue

trembles silver still

in your felicity.

III The stars look out on

roofs of snow.

They see the night,

a velvet glow

with amber lanterns

shining so.

God searches through

the sweep of night.

Is there a heart that burns

warm and bright

to warm God's own heart

at the sight?

Rilke - 11.2

11.2

by Rainer Maria Rilke

from Rilke's Book of Hours, 2005

I am a city by the sea

sinking into a toxic tide.

I am strange to myself, as though someone unknown

had poisoned my mother as she carried me.

It's here in all the pieces of my shame

that I now find myself again.

I yearn to belong to something, to be contained

in an all-embracing mind that sees me

as a single thing.

I yearn to be held

in the great hands of your heart --

oh let them take me now.

Into them I place these fragments, my life,

and you, God -- spend them however you want.

Continuities

Continuities

by Walt Whitman

(from a talk I had lately with a German spiritualist)

Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost,

No birth, identity, form--no object of the world.

Nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing;

Appearance must not foil, nor shifted sphere confuse thy brain.

Ample are time and space--ample the fields of Nature.

The body, sluggish, aged, cold--the embers left from earlier fires,

The light in the eyes grown dim, shall duly flame again;

The sun now low in the west rises for mornings and for noons continual;

To frozen clods ever the spring's invisible law returns,

With grass and flowers and summer fruits and corn.

Bulbs

Bulbs

by Susan Minot

from Poems, 4 a.m., 2002

Even in the dead of winter

he is talking about bulbs.

Walking after dinner with my father.

There is snow, moonlight everywhere.

Cold. The loop is short.

We pass where he planted a hill

in the fall.

Above us stars

in the dark seed sky.

Their scattered pattern is something

we might discuss--

something he knows

from navigating boats.

I look up. It's like breathing ice.

Glitter.

My father's attention, though,

is on the knotty

wooden claws he's pressed in.

He knows where they are

below a packed layer of earth,

then all that snow above.

The tree shadows crisscross

and humps push up more sparkling white

and all he can think of,

walking with his daughter,

is bulbs.

Daffodils? I ask.

Yes, he says, this father of seven.

I planted them in clusers.

On a Tuesday Leaving

On a Tuesday Leaving

by L.L. Barkat

from here: Seedlings in Stone: The Color of Things

You think you know

the color of things-- a maple

in the back yard is gray rivers

where gray squirrels go boating

towards a blue bay...

then the world turns,

you want to run into the house,

pull somebody off the couch,

drag him (her) to see that the maple

isn't gray at all, and red squirrels

are racing to tips of bright arteries,

bleeding towards the end of day.

The Clearing

The Clearing

by Annie Dillard

from Tickets for a Prayer Wheel, 1974

They came to the forest and made a clearing,

blasted the stumps, split the wood,

and built the woodshed.

Too tired

to build the house, they bought a roller,

white paint, some asphalt,

and made a tennis court in the clearing.

They forgot the fence. They played tennis

that summer till all the balls were lost

in the forest;

and when the woodshed

caught fire, it was almost as pretty

as the blaze the sparkler factory made

when it burned outside of Wheeling, West Virginia.

Evaporation Poems

Evaporation Poems

by Kathleen Norris

from Journey, 2001

1.

I would like to be as mobile as my mind

I had a religious aunt who was

(she flew out a window

into the Ideal).

So much noise:

the water in stems,

the workings of teeth,

intestines. Such

foolishness, she said,

wanting to be free

of breath's rise and fall,

wanting to be

no body.

2.

Transformation

has is price.

Do not dare to say that the water's need

is a simple one,

or that we shall all be changed.

3.

All summer I have watched the water

take whatever shape it can,

whispering "there is the past,

and the future, and between the two of them

you must be careful not to disappear."

Now I see so clearly on the days

when rain turns to snow,

how wind passes quickly

along the surfaces of things,

how calmly it probes this chilly place

where I have moved

with everything I own.

Farmer's Daughter

Farmer's Daughter

by Annie Dillard

from Tickets for a Prayer Wheel, 1974

There's always unseasonable weather.

Remember the flood that killed father:

when the water went down, the chickens

lay muddy and drowned. Oh we watch

the weather here on earth; we don't forget

the winter days when girls wear cotton dresses,

the Aprils when the bushes sag with snow.

We were cutting the apple trees back

when he said, "Look, it's snowing";

but I'd seen a winter of snow

and knew that more were coming.

Still, what do we know of a season?

Only father could say

when the rain would stop at the mountain

or ruin the hay. I'd try to watch

the hawks or lick a finger,

and the crops were still a failure;

there was frost all over the valley,

south as far as Twin Hills.

He kissed me when the shadows were long

on the path to the orchard; he promised

to meet me again when the apples were in;

now when the wind parts the curtains,

now in the city when the cat won't come,

I sleep with only one eye shut,

keeping a weather eye out.

The Summer Day

by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean-

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

To Autumn

by John Keats

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,

Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

Steady thy laden head across a brook;

Or by a cider-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, --

While barred clouds bloom the soft-tying day,

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

To Autumn

by William Blake

O Autumn, lade with fruit, and stained

With the blood of the grape, pass not, but sit

Beneath my shady roof; there thou mayst rest,

And tune thy jolly voice to my fresh pipe,

And all the daughters of the year shall dance!

Sing now the lusty song of fruits and flowers.

"The narrow bud opens her beauties to

The sun, and love runs in her thrilling veins;

Blossoms hang round the brows of Morning, and

Flourish down the bright cheek of modest Eve,

Till clust'ring Summer breaks forth in singing,

And feather'd clouds strew flowers round her head.

"The spirits of the air live on the smells

Of fruit; and Joy, with pinions light, roves round

The gardens, or sits singing in the trees."

Thus sang the jolly Autumn as he sat;

The rose, girded himself, and o'er the bleak

Hills fled from our sight; but left his golden load.

What I Believe

by Michael Blumenthal

I believe there is no justice,

but that cottongrass and bunchberry

grow on the mountain.

I believe that a scorpion's sting

will kill a man,

but that his wife will remarry.

I believe that, the older we get,

the weaker the body,

but the stronger the soul.

I believe that if you roll over at night

in an empty bed,

the air consoles you.

I believe that no one is spared

the darkness,

and no one gets all of it.

I believe we all drown eventually

in a sea of our making,

but that the land belongs to someone else.

I believe in destiny.

And I believe in free will.

I believe that, when all

the clocks break,

time goes on without them.

And I believe that whatever

pulls us under,

will do so gently,

so as not to disturb anyone,

so as not to interfere

with what we believe in.

Fog

by Carl Sandburg

The fog comes

on little cat feet.

It sits looking

over harbor and city

on silent haunches

and then moves on.

Sunset

by L.L. Barkat

posted by the author here.

This is the golden hour,

when I can play out my life

in hot pink,

purple,

cherry red,

and instead of giving me

that look, you will

love me for it, ache

for tomorrow, ask me

to do it all over

again.

The Sowing of Meanings

by Thomas Merton

See the high birds! Is theirs the song

That flies among the wood-light

Wounding the listener with such bright arrows?

Or do they play in wheeling silences

Defining in the perfect sky

The bounds of (here below) our solitude,

Where spring has generated lights of green

To glow in clouds upon the sombre branches?

Ponds full of sky and stillness

What heavy summer songs still sleep

Under the tawny rushes at your brim?

More than a season will be born here, nature,

In your world of gravid mirrors!

The quiet air awaits one note,

One light, one ray and it will be the angels' spring:

One flash, one glance upon the shiny pond, and then

Asperges me! sweet wilderness, and lo! we are redeemed!

For, like a grain of fire

Smouldering in the heart of every living essence

God plants His undivided power--

Buries His thoughts too vast for worlds

In seed and root and blade and flower.

Until, in the amazing light of April,

Surcharging the religious silence of the spring,

Creation finds the pressure of His everlasting secret

Too terrible to bear.

Then every way we look, lo! rocks and trees

Pastures and hills and streams and birds and firmament

And our own souls within us flash, and shower us with light,

While the wild countryside, unknown, unvisited of men,

Bears sheaves of clean, transforming fire.

And then, oh then the written image, schooled in sacrifice,

The deep united threeness printed in our being,

Shot by the brilliant syllable of such an institution, turns within,

And plants that light far down into the heart of darkness and oblivion,

Dives after, and discovers flame.

The Peace of Wild Things

by Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

The Thought of Something Else

by Wendell Berry

1.

A spring wind blowing

the smell of the ground

through the intersections of traffic,

the mind turn, seeks a new

nativity--another place,

simpler, less weighted

by what has already been.

Another place!

it's enough to grieve me--

that old dream of going,

of becoming a better man

just by getting up and going to a better place.

2.

The mystery. The old

unaccountable folding.

The iron trees in the park

suddenly remember forests.

It becomes possible to think of going.

3.

--a place where thought

can take its shape

as quietly in the mind

as water in a pitcher,

or a man can be

safely without thought

--see the day begin

and lean back,

a simple wakefulness filling

perfectly

the spaces among the leaves.

Seed

by Luci Shaw

God dug his seed

into dry dark earth.

After a pushing up

in hopeful birth

and healing bloom

and garland grace

he buried it again

in a darker place

Twice rudely-planted seed,

root, rise in me

and grow your green again,

your fruited tree

I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud

by William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed--and gazed--but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

Bread and Butter

by Billy Collins

You could hear the ocean from my room

in the guesthouse where I often stayed,

that constant, distant, washy rumbling under the world.

I would sometimes slide back the glass door

and stand on the deck in a thin robe

just to be under the stars again under the clouds

and to hear more clearly the dogs

on the property barking--the brave mother and her pups,

all white, bearded, and low to the ground.

And now something tells me I should make

more out of all that,

moving down and inward where a poem is meant to go.

But this time I want to leave it be,

the sea, the stars, the dogs, and the clouds--

just written down, folded in fours, and handed to my host.

To Go By Singing

by Wendell Berry

He comes along the street, singing,

a rag of a man, with his game foot and bum's clothes.

He's asking for nothing--his hands

aren't even help out. His song

is the gift of singing, to him

and to all who will listen.

To hear him, you'd think the engines

would all stop, and the flower vendor would stand

with her hands full of flowers and not move.

You'd think somebody would have hired him

and provided him a clean quiet stage to sing on.

But there's no special occasion or place

for his singing--that's why it needs

to be strong. His song doesn't impede the morning

or change it, except by freely adding itself.

Evening

by Thomas Merton

Now, in the middle of the limpid evening,

The moon speaks clearly to the hill,

The wheatfields make their simple music,

Praise the quiet sky.

And down the road, the way the stars come home,

The cries of children

Play on the empty air, a mile or more,

and fall on our deserted hearing,

Clear as water.

They say the sky is made of glass,

They say the smiling moon's a bride.

They say they love the orchards and apple trees,

The trees, their innocent sisters, dressed in blossoms,

Still wearing, in the blurring dusk,

White dresses them from that morning's first communion.

And where blue heaven's fading fire last shines

They name the new come planets

With words that flower

On little voices, light as stems of lilies.

And where blue heaven's fading fire last shines,

Reflected in the poplar's ripple,

One little, wakeful bird

Sings like a shower.

I would like to say something

about the images of buildings lying
flat on top of people, of survivors
sleeping in the streets because
roofs no longer symbolize safety;

about those who sit snugly in
studios and speak for God with
ungodly arrogance and ignorance,
and those who are helping quietly;

about the helplessness that haunts
my heart on nights like this, when
the best I can do is write and wonder
why that’s the best I can do.

by Milton. Via High Calling Blogs.

the party

by nAncY, via High Calling Blogs

ape

brought an

apricot

camel

brought a pear

zebra

brought

a bagpipe

and walrus

brought a chair

the party started

right at noon

singing

began at three

dancing came

along with the moon

then camel

read poetry