angelbirdflies

The deed took all my heart. I did not think of you, Not ’til the thing was done. I put my sword away And then no more the cold And perfect fury ran Along my narrow bones And then no more the black And dripping corridors Hold anywhere the shape That I had come to slay. Then for the first time, I saw in the cave’s belly The dark and clotted webs, The green and sucking pools, The rank and crumbling walls, The maze of passages. And I thought then Of the far earth, Of the spring sun And the slow wind, And a young girl, And I looked then At the white thread. Hunting the minotaur I was no common man And had no need of love. I trailed the shining thread Behind me, for a vow, And did not think of you. It lay there, like a sign, Coiled on the bull’s great hoof. And back into the world, Half blind with weariness I touched the thread and wept. O, it was frail as air, And I turned then With the white spool Through the cold rocks, Through the black rocks. Through the long webs, And the mist fell, An...

When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, And look upon myself, and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featured like him, like him with friends possessed, Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope, With what I most enjoy contented least; Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising, Haply I think on thee, and then my state, Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;     For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings     That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

The Facts of Life  By Padraig O’ Tuama "That you were born and you will die. That you will sometimes love enough and sometimes not. That you will lie if only to yourself. That you will get tired. That you will learn most from the situations you did not choose. That there will be some things that move you more than you can say. That you will live that you must be loved. That you will avoid questions most urgently in need of your attention. That you began as the fusion of a sperm and an egg of two people who once were strangers and may well still be. That life isn’t fair. That life is sometimes good and sometimes better than good. That life is often not so good. That life is real and if you can survive it, well, survive it well with love and art and meaning given where meaning’s scarce. That you will learn to live with regret. That you will learn to live with respect. That the structures that constrict you may not be permanently constricting. That you will probably be okay. That you...

“Wishing Well” by Gregory Pardlo: “Outside the Met a man walks up sun tweaking the brim sticker on his Starter cap and he says pardon me  Old School  he says you know is this a wishing well? Yeah  Son  I say sideways over my shrug. Throw your bread on the water. I tighten my chest wheezy as Rockaway beach sand with a pull of faux smoke from my e-cig to cozy the truculence I hotbox alone and I am at the museum because it is not a bar. Because he appears not to have changed them in days I eye the heel-chewed hems of his pants and think probably he will ask me for fifty cents any minute now wait for it. A smoke or something. Central Park displays the frisking transparency of autumn. Tracing paper sky, leaves like eraser crumbs gum the pavement. As if deciphering celestial script I squint and purse off toward the roof line of the museum aloof as he fists two pennies from his pockets mumbling and then aloud my man he says hey my man I’m going to make a wish for you too. I...

  “A Blessing” by James Wright: “Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota, Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass. And the eyes of those two Indian ponies Darken with kindness. They have come gladly out of the willows To welcome my friend and me. We step over the barbed wire into the pasture Where they have been grazing all day, alone. They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness That we have come. They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other. There is no loneliness like theirs. At home once more, They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness. I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms, For she has walked over to me And nuzzled my left hand. She is black and white, Her mane falls wild on her forehead, And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist. Suddenly I realize That if I stepped out of my body I would break Into blossom.”

The Night Migrations Louise Glück - 1943- This is the moment when you see again the red berries of the mountain ash and in the dark sky the birds' night migrations. It grieves me to think the dead won't see them— these things we depend on, they disappear. What will the soul do for solace then? I tell myself maybe it won't need these pleasures anymore;  maybe just not being is simply enough, hard as that is to imagine.

The Red Poppy Louise Gluck The great thing is not having  a mind. Feelings: oh, I have those; they  govern me. I have  a lord in heaven  called the sun, and open  for him, showing him the fire of my own heart, fire  like his presence. What could such glory be if not a heart? Oh my brothers and sisters,  were you like me once, long ago,  before you were human? Did you  permit yourselves to open once, who would never  open again? Because in truth  I am speaking now  the way you do. I speak  because I am shattered.

THE BIG PICTURE by Ellen Bass I try to look at the big picture.  The sun, ardent tongue licking us like a mother besotted  with her new cub, will wear itself out.  Everything is transitory. Think of the meteor  that annihilated the dinosaurs. And before that, the volcanoes of the Permian period — all those burnt ferns  and reptiles, sharks and bony fish — that was extinction on a scale that makes our losses look like a bad day at the slots.  And perhaps we’re slated to ascend to some kind of intelligence that doesn’t need bodies, or clean water, or even air.  But I can’t shake my longing for the last six hundred Iberian lynx with their tufted ears,  Brazilian guitarfish, the 4 percent of them still cruising the seafloor, eyes staring straight up.  And all the newborn marsupials — red kangaroos, joeys the size of honeybees — steelhead trout, river dolphins, all we can save  so many species of frogs  breathing through their  damp...

The Child’s Right to W onder By Angelina Lloyd, MEdPsy In the Autumn of 2009, I drove to school beneath a  canopy of sun dappled leaves turning orange, yellow and red.  I mentally prepped for my morning line time, eager to present a lesson on the changing seasons.  Imagine for a moment: the lights of the classroom dim and a single lamp, sans shade, stands bright at the center of the circle, the sun .  I theatrically raise a rainbow colored globe tilting on its metal axis, the earth .  I turn it ever so slowly, explaining that one rotation of the earth on its axis is a single day.  Together we watch light fall on globe, night and day .  I demonstrate the spinning of its axis as we make our year-long trek around the sun, 365 (and ¼) days . I point out how the northern hemisphere tilts away in the cooler months and toward the sun in the warmer months. Voila’, seasons explained.   I parked my car, ready to set things up before the children ar...

A beautiful poem of self loving forgiveness to self...  “Phase One” by Dilruba Ahmed: “For leaving the fridge open last night, I forgive you. For conjuring white curtains instead of living your life. For the seedlings that wilt, now, in tiny pots, I forgive you. For saying no first but yes as an afterthought. I forgive you for hideous visions after childbirth, brought on by loss of sleep. And when the baby woke repeatedly, for your silent rebuke in the dark, “What’s your beef?” I forgive your letting vines overtake the garden. For fearing your own propensity to love. For losing, again, your bag en route from San Francisco; for the equally heedless drive back on the caffeine-fueled return. I forgive you for leaving windows open in rain and soaking library books again. For putting forth only revisions of yourself, with punctuation worked over, instead of the disordered truth, I forgive you. For singing mostly when the shower drowns your voice. For so admiring the drummer you failed t...

Summer time and the living is easy, Fish are jumping and the cotton is high, Your mama is rich and your Daddy's good looking (this is dad's version) So hush now baby, Don't you cry. One of these mornings, You're gonna rise up singing, You’re gonna spread your wings and you'll take to the sky. But until that morning, There ain't nothing can harm you, With your daddy and your mammy standing by. This was my all-time favorite lullaby.  Sung in dad's gravely voice it carried me to sleep with visions of flight. By the time I was four I knew that my mammy and daddy weren't gonna keep standing by .  So I did what any rational four year old would do, I made up my mind to fly.  I asked Dad about it and he answered, "You can do anything you want if you believe in yourself enough kid."   Well okay then. Our house sat atop a steep hill with a concrete drive, sloping like the metal slides that once populated playgrou...

Some days I need the warmth of connection more than others and when I do it often arrives from unexpected sources: the flight of a cooper hawk low in the sky, a deer’s quiet contemplations, a bluebird on the trail ahead or a loved ones words returned to me.  Today was such a day and I welcomed each offering in turn.  So when a friend extended a story that had brightened her day, I wasn’t surprised to find my dads oft repeated wisdom contained within... As a kid I often worried about what to do and who I’d become in the topsy turvy landscape of human experience.  When I asked my dad about it he told me the story of the two wolves and finished saying, "Don't worry about what to do kid, feed the wolf you want to be and the rest will take care of itself.”  Two wolves  A member of the community goes to an elder: “I am trying to find my way, but I am struggling with the path and within myself.” The elder explains, “Inside each of us, there are two wolves which fight a...

This has been a year of farewells. Dad dying. Son number one off to college. Son number too growing up fast. A body being quirky. But through it all I've had a friend, a ponderosa pine tree. Odd? Maybe.  But I visited it as frequently as any bestie would, walking the requisite three miles up apex trail to sit in its low branches, breathing in the vanilla-orange-pine scent of its bark beneath an umbrella of cones and needles.  Today I bundled up and hiked an hour for our visit only to discover that a fire had blazed along a small stretch of trail in my absence, taking my tree with it.  I stood beneath blackened branches with tears on my face.  Tears for my tree, for my dad and all the changes in a life. Not because there’s anything wrong with change or unnatural about fires, both are necessary and contribute to the health of the system. No I grieved because my friend was gone and I would miss it. Because this tree of all the trees on the trail had become dear to me. W...

i thank You God for most this amazing day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes (i who have died am alive again today, and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth day of life and love and wings:and of the gay great happening illimitably earth) how should tasting touching hearing seeing breathing any-lifted from the no of all nothing-human merely being doubt unimaginable You? (now the ears of my ears awake and now the eyes of my eyes are opened) e.e. Cummings

Another day has begun.  I have lit my candles and incense.  Sat in silence. Worked up a sweat at the gym.  Eaten breakfast.  Straightened house.  Answered mail and dropped my man off at the airport. It is eight in the morning and the world stirs with wakefulness.  The sun climbs in the sky.  The birds sing.  The squirrels chip and chur in tree branches.  A dog barks.  And I look with dull eyes at the long day ahead, contemplating a single phrase, "My father is dead." What strange words. My father is dead. The man has been leaving for as long as I can remember and yet his death robs the wind from my lungs.  My chest throbs and throat tightens.  He isn't coming back. My mom and dad had slipped out of one another's lives before I'd barely begun mine.  Two weekends a month my brothers and I stood on a saggy porch, bags packed, eager for our hero to arrive in his old blue Ford to pick us up.  We vibrated with hope...

“There are no shortcuts to wholeness. The only way to become whole is to put our arms lovingly around everything we’ve shown ourselves to be: self-serving and generous, spiteful and compassionate, cowardly and courageous, treacherous and trustworthy. We must be able to say to ourselves and to the world at large, ‘I am all of the above.’”  Parker Palmer 

Back when I was guru hopping, I went to see yet another visiting, living saint in my hair-on-fire pursuit of... what was I pursuing? I don't even remember. Enlightenment? Freedom from suffering?  Some hoped for supreme good-enoughness. When I arrived the sanctuary was draped in flowers and shrouded in silence.  All the devotees were gnawing on greens and clad in white with a sort of pained, trying-hard-to-be-spiritual expression that looked more like constipation combined with penitent guilt and sadness, overlaid with a thin smile.  In a very short time I realized I needed to leave before I began stripping down to sexy nothingness, swigging whiskey and cursing like a sailor in some existential rant to balance the multitudes. For all the seekers out there, I have a gentle and groundbreaking reminder... there is no spiritual journey... no far shore on which to arrive... T H I S   I S   I T. I know that pisses the mind off. F**k you Angelina! Minds are con...

“I’m concerned about a better world. I’m concerned about justice; I’m concerned about brotherhood and sisterhood; I’m concerned about truth. And when one is concerned about that, he can never advocate violence. For through violence you may murder a murderer, but you can’t murder murder. Through violence you may murder a liar, but you can’t establish truth. Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can’t murder hate through violence. Darkness cannot put out darkness; only light can do that. And I say to you, I have also decided to stick with love, for I know that love is ultimately the only answer to humankind’s problems. And I’m going to talk about it everywhere I go. I know it isn’t popular to talk about it in some circles today. And I’m not talking about emotional bosh when I talk about love; I’m talking about a strong, demanding love. For I have seen too much hate. [...] and I say to myself that hate is too great a burden to bear. I have decided to love. If you are seeking th...

Tell  me, love, what I need right now so that I  might sing, and be alive, as my every cell craves. Tell me, dear, what I need right now, but in a manner I won’t soon forget. Then the world began to sway, its hips invited my arms, its feet placed mine upon them, that made all my effort easy. A father’s toes lifting a child’s in dance caused God to pull out a drum. The Beloved belted out a tune, that went, “Nothing to follow . . . for I will move you. You need not do a damn thing . . . just laugh.” Hafiz, “In a Manner I Won’t Forget,” from  A Year with Hafiz , translation by Daniel Ladinsky

A Gift Of Gratitude  by Brother David Steindl-Rast    You think this is just another day in your  life?  It’s not just another day; it’s the one day that is given to you… today It’s  given  to you. It’s a gift. It’s the only gift that you have right now, and the one appropriate response is gratefulness. If you do nothing else but to cultivate that response to the great gift that this unique day is, if you learn to respond as if it were the first day of your life, and the very last day, then you will have spent this day  very well. Begin by  opening  your eyes and be surprised that you have eyes you can open, that incredible array of colors that is constantly offered to us for pure enjoyment. Look  at the sky. We so rarely look at the sky. We so rarely note how different it is from  moment to moment  with clouds coming and going. We just think of the weather, and even of the weather we don’t think of all the many nuances of...