Poems for you

A few selected poems to inspire and delight.

As an English major in college, I would often take breaks from having to read boring texts by reading poetry instead. The distilled language found in a poem’s form startled me awake from sleepiness and stasis, and touched me deeply. I’ve read and given these poems to many clients over the years and hope that you enjoy them, too.

further note to clark - Lucille Clifton

do you know how hard this is for me?
do you know what you’re asking?

what i can promise is to be water,
water plain and direct as Niagara.
unsparing of myself, unsparing of
the cliff i batter, but also unsparing
of you, tourist. the question for me is
how long can i cling to this edge?
the question for you is
what have you ever traveled toward
more than your own safety?

Love after Love - Derek Walcott

The time will com
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Wild Geese - Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

T.S. Elliot - from Four Quartets

I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God. As, in a theatre,
The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed
With a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of darkness on darkness,
And we know that the hills and the trees, the distant panorama
And the bold imposing facade are all being rolled away--
Or as, when an underground train, in the tube, stops too long between stations
And the conversation rises and slowly fades into silence
And you see behind every face the mental emptiness deepen
Leaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about;
Or when, under ether, the mind is conscious but conscious of nothing--
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

Sonnets to Orpheus (#55) - Rainer Maria Rilke

Silent friend of the many distances, Feel how your every breath enlarges space. Amid the rafters of dark belfries, let yourself peal. Whatever feeds on you is taking strength from such fare.

Know every path through transformation. That one experience at the core of your sorrow? If drinking is bitter, become wine.

Now in this night of fire and excess, Be magic power at your senses’ crossroads, The meaning of their strange encounter.

And if the earthly should forget you, Say to the silent loam: I flow. To the rushing water, speak: I am.

You are stardust.

You See This - Octavia Butler

You see this
This is what is in you
What makes you
What connects you
You are more than flesh and bone
More than blood and sinew
More than tendon and cartilage
You are forever
You are everything everywhere
All at once
You are universes and galaxies
Still undiscovered
You are star dust
Quasar
Nebula
Light and light and light
Even if you feel like a black hole
Even if you feel the world crumbling
Even if you feel the cold of void
Of evil
Of hatred
Of ignorance
They can not box you
They are rooted
In capitalism
In greed
In the lies of their own supremacy
They are dirt
nutrients stripped
Dry
Nothing
Dust
You are seed
You are universe
You are power
You are the soul of the constellations
You are time without end
Infinite infinite infinite
You are creation
before creation
begetting creation
You are change
God is change
You are GOD
If
and
when
you forget this
Look to the heavens
See your destiny
“to take root among the stars.”

Your Grief - Rumi

Your grief for what you’ve lost holds a mirror
up to where you're bravely working.
Expecting the worst, you look and instead,
here's the joyful face youve been wanting to see.
Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes.
If it were always a fist or always stretched open,
you would be paralyzed.
Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expand
the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated
as birdwings.

New beginning.

FOR A NEW BEGINNING- John O'Donohue

In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the gray promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Wondered would you always live like this.

Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plenitude opening before you.

Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life’s desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.