The Practice

 

Remember, says my friend, to look

for beauty every day. And immediately

 

I think of the blue heron I saw this afternoon

as it flew upriver, its elegant neck tucked

 

into its body in flight, its deep, slow wing beats

guiding it through the curves of the wide canyon.

 

In my chest, I felt it, the rising urge to fly,

the pulsing, the thrill of blue heron.

 

In that instant, I did not wonder

if a moment of beauty is enough

 

to sustain us through difficult times.

I knew only that I had to remind my eyes

 

to watch the highway instead of following

the great blue weight as it wove

 

through the empty cottonwood tops,

its silhouette charged with improbable grace,

 

its long legs dangling behind,

a reminder we all must land sometime.

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, ahundredfallingveils.com March 26, 2017

"Do You Have Any Advice for Those of Us Just Starting Out?"

 

Give up sitting dutifully at your desk. Leave

your house or apartment. Go out into the world.

 

It's all right to carry a notebook but a cheap

one is best, with pages the color of weak tea

and on the front a kitten or a space ship.

 

Avoid any enclosed space where more than

three people are wearing turtlenecks. Beware

any snow-covered chalet with deer tracks

across the muffled tennis courts.

 

Not surprisingly, libraries are a good place to write.

And the perfect place in a library is near an aisle

where a child a year or two old is playing as his

mother browses the ranks of the dead.

 

Often he will pull books from the bottom shelf.

The title, the author's name, the brooding photo

on the flap mean nothing. Red book on black, gray

book on brown, he builds a tower. And the higher

it gets, the wider he grins.

 

You who asked for advice, listen: When the tower

falls, be like that child. Laugh so loud everybody

in the world frowns and says, "Shhhh."

 

Then start again.

Ron Koertge, Fever (Red Hen Press, 2006)

The Constellation Orion

 

I'm delighted to see you.

old friend.

lying there in your hammock

over the next town.

You were the first person

my son was to meet in the heavens.

He's sleeping now.

his head like a small sun in my lap.

Our car whizzes along in the night.

If he were awake, he'd say.

"Look, Daddy, there's Old Ryan!"

but I won't wake him.

He's mine for the weekend,

Old Ryan, not yours.

Ted Kooser, Sure Signs: New and Selected Poems (Pitt Poetry Series, 1980)

How I Go to the Woods Alone

 Ordinarily I go to the woods alone, with not

a single
friend, for they are all smilers and talkers
and therefore unsuitable.

I don’t really want to be witnessed talking to
the catbirds
or hugging the old black oak tree. I have
my way of
praying, as you no doubt have yours.

Besides, when I am alone I can become
invisible, I can sit
on the top of a dune as motionless as an
uprise of weeds,
until the foxes run by unconcerned. I can
hear the almost
unhearable sound of the roses singing.

If you have ever gone to the woods with me,
I must love
you very much.

Mary Oliver, shoreacres.wordpress.com, March 22, 2020

Almanac Birds: April 23

 

How do they do it,

the broad-tailed hummingbirds,

arriving at my window

the same day every year,

welcome as spring,

reliable as moon.

 

And what part of me

thrills in their predictability?

And what part says,

a tad too triumphantly,

See, here’s proof,

things come back.

 

I hear the small birds

before I see them,

their wingtips trilling,

I’ve read how the feathers

that make the sound wear down

from use. By midwinter,

 

you can barely hear

their bright hum at all until,

preparing to breed,

they grow new feathers again.

How do they do it,

grow feathers at just the right time?

 

I want to linger in the small

miracle of it, these ears still learning

how to hear and this heart still

astonished at the timing

of the world, how life just knows

when to return, when to grow.

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, ahundredfallingveils.com April 23, 2018

Questions to Ask When Waking

 

What would you do if you really knew
that life was wanting to sing through you?

What would you say if your words could convey
prayers that the world was waiting to pray?

What would you be if your being could free
some piece of the world’s un-whispered beauty?

What would you stop to bless and caress
if you believed that blessing could address
our painful illusions of brokenness?

What would you harvest from heartache and pain
if you understood loss as a way to regain
the never-forsaken terrain of belonging?

What would you love if your love could ignite
a sea full of stars on the darkest night?

Bernadette Miller, janicefalls.wordpress.com/blog April 2, 2021

a girl named jack

 

Good enough name for me, my father said

the day I was born.

Don't see why

she can't have it, too.

 

But the women said no.

My mother first.

Then each aunt, pulling my pink blanket back

patting the crop of thick curls

tugging at my new toes

touching my cheeks.

 

We won't have a girl named Jack, my mother said.

 

And my father's sisters whispered,

A boy named Jack was bad enough.

But only so my mother could hear.

Name a girl Jack, my father said,

and she can't help but

grow up strong.

Raise her right, my father said,

and she'll make that name her own.

Name a girl Jack

and people will look at her twice, my father said.

 

For no good reason but to ask if her parents

were crazy, my mother said.

 

And back and forth it went until I was Jackie

and my father left the hospital mad.

 

My mother said to my aunts,

Hand me that pen, wrote

Jacqueline where it asked for a name.

Jacqueline, just in case

someone thought to drop the ie.

 

Jacqueline,  just in case

I grew up and wanted something a little bit longer

and further away from

Jack.

Jacqueline Woodson, Brown Girl Dreaming (Nancy Paulson Books, 2014)