From "Cold Hills"

I have lived so long
On the cold hills alone ...
I loved the rock
And the lean pine trees,
Hated the life in the turfy meadow,
Hated the heavy, sensuous bees.
I have lived so long
Under the high monotony of starry skies,
I am so cased about
With the clean wind and the cold nights,
People will not let me in
To their warm gardens
Full of bees.
--Janet Loxley Lewis

The Poor Old Soul plods down the street,
Contented, and forgetting
How Youth was wild, and Spring was wild
And how her life is setting;

And you lean out to watch her there,
And pity, nor remember,
That Youth is hard, and Life is hard,
And quiet is December.
--Margaret Widdemer

It could happen any time, tornado,
earthquake, Armageddon. It could happen.
Or sunshine, love, salvation.

It could, you know. That's why we wake
and look out -- no guarantees
in this life.

But some bonuses, like morning,
like right now, like noon,
like evening.

~ William Stafford ~

A journey continues until it stops
A journey that stops is no longer a journey
A journey loses thing on its way
A journey passes through things, thing pass through it
When a journey is over, it loses itself to a place
When a journey remembers, it begins a journal
Which is a new journey about an old journey
A journey over time is different from a journey into time
An actual journey is into the future
A reflective journey is into the past

***
A journey always begins in a place called Here
Pack your bags and imagine your journey
Unpack your bags and imagine your journey is done

***
If you're afraid of a journey, don't buy shoes

~ Mark Strand ~

No, no, there is no going back.
Less and less you are
that possibility you were.
More and more you have become
those lives and deaths
that have belonged to you.
You have become a sort of grave
containing much that was
and is no more in time, beloved
then, now, and always.
And so you have become a sort of tree
standing over the grave.
Now more than ever you can be
generous toward each day
that comes, young, to disappear
forever, and yet remain
unaging in the mind.
Every day you have less reason
not to give yourself away.

~ Wendell Berry ~

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you,
If you leave it you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

~ David Wagoner ~

Think in ways you’ve never thought before

If the phone rings, think of it as carrying a message

Larger than anything you’ve ever heard,

Vaster than a hundred lines of Yeats.

Think that someone may bring a bear to your door,

Maybe wounded and deranged; or think that a moose

Has risen out of the lake, and he’s carrying on his antlers

A child of your own whom you’ve never seen.

When someone knocks on the door, think that he’s about

To give you something large: tell you you’re forgiven,

Or that it’s not necessary to work all the time, or that it’s

Been decided that if you lie down no one will die.

--Robert Bly

Chiho brushed for me
three Chinese characters.
She sent them to me in the mail.

I have her calligraphy framed on the wall
in my room above my little homemade
altar where I sit every day.

The characters from top to bottom say:
Shu, which means keep or obey,
as in obey the teacher.

The second one is ha, which means
break, rebel, try things out, other than
what the teacher said.

The third one is ri, which means
depart on your own path,
go your own way.

--David Budbill

It's a gift, this cloudless November morning

warm enough for you to walk without a jacket

along your favorite path. The rhythmic shushing

of your feet through fallen leaves should be 

enough to quiet the mind, so it surprises you 

when you catch yourself telling off your boss

for a decade of accumulated injustices,

all the things you've never said circling inside you.



It's the rising wind that pulls you out of it,

and you look up to see a cloud of leaves

swirling in sunlight, flickering against the blue

and rising above the treetops, as if the whole day

were sighing, Let it go, let it go,

for this moment at least, let it all go.

--Jeffrey Harrison

Books litter the bed,
leaves the lawn. It
lightly rains. Fall has
come: unpatterned, in
the shedding leaves.

The maple trees ripen. Apples
come home crisp in bags.
This pear tastes good.
It rains lightly on the
random leaf patterns.

The nimbus is spread
above our island. Rain
lightly patters on un-
shed leaves. The books
of fall litter the bed.
--James Schuyler (1923-1991)

I was born in the Moon of Falling Leaves,
that time when summer’s harvest
falls from every maple tree,
painting the forest trails
golden as sunlight
and crimson as Great Bear’s blood.

Each October brings back the scent
of fires burning on the hills,
the first etchings of frost
on my bedroom windows,
the departing wings
of a thousand geese
cutting the clear cold sky.

There is no time closer to my heart,
than this season of changes
when the balance tips between
darkness and light,
when the last flowers
nod in our garden,
when so many things
are about to end,
so many about to begin.

--by Joseph Bruchac