Since the tiny yellow rose
In the vase beside the candles
And the single drop of water
Upon this leafs uppermost tip
—Proof of mystery? or just
Two meaningless occurrences from
A meaningless physical world?
And your lovely fingers lifting a cup,
Or smoothing a crease in the table cloth
—To me so beautiful that my heart cries
With joy and pride at their nearness
American poet
What There Is by Kenneth Patchen
In this my green world
Flowers birds are hands
They hold me
I am loved all day
All this pleases me
I am amused
I have to laugh from crying
Trees mountains are arms
I am loved all day
Children grass are tears
I cry
I am loved all day
Everything
Pompous makes me laugh
I am amused often enough
In this
My beautiful green world
O there’s love all day
“Hope” is the thing with feathers by Emily Dickinson
“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without words –
And never stops – at all –
And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –
And sore must be the storm –
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm –
I’ve heard it in the chillest land –
And on the strangest Sea –
Yet, never, in Extremity,
It asked a crumb – of Me.
This Couldn’t Happen Again by Paul Blackburn
the heavy pressure
of the presence of your body in the room
moving
O love,
is the end of my
imaginings
this late afternoon
feeling again at this window
the sensation of weight received
in that displacement
the small waves
lapping against me
constantly
from Echoes by Robert Creeley
Body sits single,
waiting–
but for what
it knows not.
Old words
echoing what
the physical
can’t–
“Leave love,
leave day,
come
with me.”
from Later (9) by Robert Creeley
But now–
but now the wonder of life is
that it is at all,
this sticky sentimental
warm enclosure,
feels place in the physical
with others,
lets mind wander
to wondering thought,
then lets go of itself,
finds a home
on earth.
A Homecoming by Wendell Berry
One faith is bondage. Two
are free. In the trust
of old love, cultivation shows
a dark graceful wilderness
at its heart. Wild
in that wilderness, we roam
the distances of our faith,
safe beyond the bounds
of what we know. O love,
open. Show me
my country. Take me home.
Planting Trees by Wendell Berry
In the mating of trees,
the pollen grain entering invisible
the doomed room of the winds, survives
the ghost of the old forest
that stood here when we came. The ground
invites it, and it will not be gone.
I become the familiar of that ghost
and its ally, carrying in a bucket
twenty trees smaller than weeds,
and I plant them along the way
of the departure of the ancient host.
I return to the ground its original music.
It will rise out of the horizon
of the grass, and over the heads
of the weeds, and it will rise over
the horizon of men’s heads. As I age
in the world it will rise and spread,
and be for this place horizon
and orison, the voice of its wİnds.
I have made myself a dream to dream
of its rising, that has gentled my nights.
Let me desire and wish well the life
these trees may live when I
no longer rise in the mornings
to be pleased by the green of them
shining, and their shadows on the ground,
and the sound of the wind in them.
A Poem of Thanks by Wendell Berry
I have been spared another day
to come into this night
as though there is a mercy in things
mindful of me. Love, cast all
thought aside. I cast aside
all thought. Our bodies enter
their brief precedence,
surrounded by their sleep.
Through you I rise, and you
through me, into the joy
we make, but may not keep.
The Third Dimension by Denise Levertov
Who’d believe me if
I said, “They took and
split me open from
scalp to crotch, and
still I’m alive, and
walk around pleased with
the sun and all
the world’s bounty.” Honesty
isn’t so simple:
a simple honesty is
nothing but a lie.
Don’t the trees
hide the wind between
their leaves and
speak in whispers?
The third dimension
hides itself.
If the roadmen
crack stones, the
stones are stones;
but love
cracked me open
and I’m
alive
to tell the tale–but not
honestly:
the words
change it. Let it be–
here in the sweet sun
–a fiction, while I
breathe and
change pace.
Leonard Durso 