A Ritual to Read to Each Other

If you don't know the kind of person I am

And I don't know the kind of person you are

A pattern that others made may prevail in the world

And following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,

a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break

sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood

storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,

but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,

I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty

to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,

a remote important region in all who talk:

though we could fool each other, we should consider--

lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,

or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;

the signals we give--yes or no, or maybe--

should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

~ William Stafford

Fifth annual cyberspace poetry slam for Brigid

A lovely tradition, now in its fifth year:

WHAT: A Bloggers (Silent) Poetry Reading

WHEN: Anytime February 2, 2010

WHERE: Your blog

WHY: To celebrate the Feast of Brigid, aka Groundhog Day

HOW: Select a poem you like - by a favorite poet or one of your own - to
post February 2nd.

Participate and help to weave the web.

A poem for Brigid

(Venus at the Forge of Vulcan, Louis Le Nain, 1641)

Dare you see a Soul at the White Heat?
Then crouch within the door--
Red--is the Fire's common tint--
But when the vivid Ore
Has vanquished Flame's conditions,
It quivers from the Forge
Without a color, but the light
Of unanointed Blaze.
Least Village has its Blacksmith
Whose Anvil's even ring
Stands symbol for the finer Forge
That soundless tugs--within--
Refining these impatient Ores
With Hammer, and with Blaze
Until the Designated Light
Repudiate the Forge--

(Emily Dickinson)

Doggerel

I found this in my in-box from Adonis this morning:

I love pit bulls!

And I love you!

Therefore, you are a pit bull!

My response: oy, logic in the hands of amateurs.

His response: I prefer to think of it as poetry in the hands of amateurs.

Hence the pun that titles this post.

ETA: The occasion for this bit of doggerel was Adonis's purchasing for us the 2009 The Unexpected Pit Bull calendar. 100% of proceeds from this sweet, beautifully photographed calendar go to support pit bull rescue and advocacy groups.

An interlude on desire and coming back

I.

I'm bound by the fire.
I'm bound by the beauty.
I'm bound by desire.
I'm bound by the duty.

I'm coming back in 500 years,
and the first thing I'm gonna do
when I get back here
is to see these things I love.
And they'd better be here.

First I'm going to find a forest,
and stand there in the trees,
and kiss the fragrant forest floor,
and lie down in the leaves,
and listen to the birds sing
the sweetest song you'll ever hear.

And everything the dappled,
everything the birds,
everything the earthness,
everything the verdant,
the verdant green.
(Jane Siberry)

II.

A thousand years from now, everyone you know will be long dead and forgotten. There'll be nothing left of the life you love, no evidence that you ever walked this planet. That, at least, is what the fundamentalist materialists would have you believe. But suppose the truth is very different? What if in fact every little thing you do subtly alters the course of world history? What if your day-to-day decisions will actually help determine how the human species navigates its way through the epic turning point we're living through? And finally, what if you will be alive in a thousand years, reincarnated into a fresh body and in possession of the memories of the person you were back in this era? These are my hypotheses. These are my prophecies. Which is why I say: Live as if your soul is eternal.

(Rob Brezny)

A prayer for Ostara

i'm clear that this world belongs to no one in particular and everyone deserves bread, and quiet, breath, and water. i'm clear that those who order death and those who steal and dominate with bad policy have sold out their humanity. i'm clear the only thing which appeases the most crucial witness (the innerself of conscience) is contrition for oppression, renunciation of excess, avowal against a lethal apathy.

the work is to be alive for the living. to foster growth. to make again a garden of this place.

(Elizabeth Roberts, We'Moon '08, p. 64)

Brigid in Cyberspace

Deborah Oak put out the call; Reya Mellicker started the trad: poetry 'round the Pagan 'net for Imbolc.

Two from Mawlana, Rumi:

I.

Come, come, whoever you are!
This caravan is not of despair.

Even though you have broken your vows
perhaps ten thousand times.

Come again, come!
This caravan has no despair.
Wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving,
Come.

II.

Keep walking, though there is no place to get to.
Don't try to see through
the distances.
That's not for
human beings.

Move within.
But don't move the way fear
makes you move.

Today, like every other day,
we wake up empty
and frightened.
Don't open the door to the study
and begin reading.
Take down a musical instrument.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

Divination

Three of us sat
in the early summer, our instruments
cared for, our bodies dark

and one stirred the stones on
the earthen platter, till the salt
veins aligned, and she read the cast:

Whatever is past
and has come to an end
cannot be brought back by sorrow.

(From "Triple Muse" by Olga Broumas, Beginning with O)

For Scriv

"Fear defeated me. And yet,
not in faith and not in madness
but with the courage I thought
my dream deserved,
I stepped outside. It was gone.
Then I whirled at the sound of some
shambling tonnage.
Did I see a black haunch slipping
back through the trees? Did I see
the moonlight shining on it? Did I actually reach out my arms
toward it, toward paradise falling, like
the fading of the dearest, wildest hope ---
the dark heart of the story that is all
the reason for its telling?"

—Mary Oliver, from The Chance to Love Everything

(With thanks to Kim, who has impeccable timing)

A poem for Brigid

On the mountain we'd sleep in the heavy shade - green figs like
testicles and the leaf palms cracking with pungent milk - delib-
erately, having been told of the vaporous harm to the dreamer.
Donkeys shifting their fly-beseiged, sundazed gaze met and held
ours; the goats would stop because of the short hobble they bore,
their slitted eyes in suggestive seduction fixing us blackly every
few feet of film, those stills of them every few feet of hill an-
nointed now as if memory were a kind of solution. We pile rocks
on our bodies partly unearthed and sweat the weight wet. The air
is still and imagining it through the labyrinth of rock and
moisture against the skin in a breeze stiffens the nipple. Starfish,
colossal under mounds seen from above, the bleached soft-colored
rocks look too much like breasts, and the trouble you took for the
angle and height makes it obvious. We get up heavy with stone
shadow, each muscle rising like a sea-cow, and fall into the green
cove, afloat like the three tomatoes we cool and swim around,
lazily pushing one back if it should stray, too intimate now you
said to eat for lunch, so you sucked on the salty skin, you did,
even though you were posing. Then there are mermaids, and
other riffraff and dross.

(Olga Broumas and Jane Miller)

My poem for Brigid is inspired by an Old Mermaid Sanctuary. To see a list of those blogs offering poems for Brigid today, go here.