Michael Coleman

'Well then, I'll take the withered petals
and the yellow leaves and the waters of the fountain.'

the wind left. And I wept. And I said to myself:
'What have you done with the garden that was entrusted to you?'

~Antonio Machado
Translation: Robert Bly 2/2

The wind, one brilliant day, called
to my soul with an odor of jasmine.

'In return for the odor of my jasmine,
I'd like all the odor of your roses.'

'I have no roses; all the flowers
in my garden are dead.'
1/2

But don’t give in, insist on arguments and act this way, watchful and consistent, every single time, and the day will arrive when from a destroyer it will become one of your best workers — perhaps the cleverest of all that are building at your life.”

~ Rainer Maria Rilke
Letters to a Young Poet
2/2

“Your doubt may become a good quality if you train it. It must become knowing, it must become critical. Ask it, whenever it wants to spoil something for you, why something is ugly, demand proofs from it, test it, and you will find it perplexed and embarrassed perhaps, or perhaps rebellious.
1/2

We're not going to be able
to live in this world
if we're not willing to do what he's doing
with one another.

The road will only be wide.
The rain will never stop falling.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye

This man carries the world's most sensitive cargo
but he's not marked.
Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE,
HANDLE WITH CARE.

His ear fills up with breathing.
He hears the hum of a boy's dream
deep inside him.
2/3

A man crosses the street in rain,
stepping gently, looking two times north and south,
because his son is asleep on his shoulder.

No car must splash him.
No car drive too near to his shadow.
1/3

I was thinking of a flowery meadow at the end of a road,
and I found myself in the slough.
I was thinking of the greatness of what was human,
and I found myself in the divine.

~Juan Ramon Jimenez
Translation: Robert Bly
2/2 #poetry

Who knows what is going on on the other side of each hour?
How many times the sunrise was
there, behind the mountain!
How many times the brilliant cloud piling up far off was already a golden body full of thunder!
The rose was poison.
The sword gave life.
1/2

you are enough
your work is enough
you are needed
your work is sacred
you are here
and i am grateful
.
~adrienne maree brown. "radical gratitude spell to cast upon meeting a stranger, comrade or friend working for social and/or environmental justice and liberation."
Pic: M.C. Escher "Liberation"
3/3

i want you to know
i honor the choices you made in solitude
and i honor the work you have done to belong
i honor your commitment to that which is larger than yourself
and your journey
to love the particular container of life
that is you
.
2/3

you are a miracle in motion
i greet you with wonder
in a world which seeks to own
your joy and your imagination
you have chosen to be free,
every day, as a practice.
i can never know
the struggles you went through to get here,
but i know you have swum upstream
and at times it has been lonely
.
1/3

I want them to water-ski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

~ Billy Collins

Introduction to Poetry

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say, drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.
1/2

Hafiz, who can you tell in this world
That when a dog runs up to you
wagging its ecstatic tail,
you bend down and whisper in its ear
"Beloved, I am so glad that you are happy to see me,
Beloved, I am so glad, so very glad, that you have come."

~ Ladinsky, inspired by Hafiz
2/2 #poetry

Start seeing everything as God
But keep it a secret
Become like one who is awestruck
and nourished, listening to a golden nightingale
sing in a beautiful foreign language
while God nests invisibly upon its tongue.
1/2

- I need you to breathe.-

Don’t tell me to calm
when there are so many reasons
to be angry, so much cause for despair!

- I didn’t say to be calm, said the wind,-
- I said to breathe.-

- We’re going to need a lot of air -
- to make this hurricane together.-

~ Lynn Unger

2/2

-Breathe, said the wind.-

How can I breathe at a time like this,
when the air is full of the smoke
of burning tires, burning lives?

-Just breathe, the wind insisted.-

Easy for you to say, if the weight of
injustice is not wrapped around
your throat, cutting off air.

-I need you to breathe.-

1/2

… And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”

~ Howard Zinn
3/3

…the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places –and there are so many – where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. …
2/3

“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only …
1/3

Be the cup that holds
the candle. Be the wax,
the wick, the flip of the
wrist that lights the match.
Most of all, be the flame.

Draw on the source
of light, acknowledging
that without darkness
candles would be
useless things indeed.

~Danna Faulds, "Without Darkness"

Be the cup that holds
the candle. Be the wax,
the wick, the flip of the
wrist that lights the match.
Most of all, be the flame.

Draw on the source
of light, acknowledging
that without darkness
candles would be
useless things indeed.

~Danna Faulds, "Without Darkness"

just to be alive
on this fresh morning
in the broken world.
I beg of you,

do not walk by
without pausing
to attend to this
rather ridiculous performance.

It could mean something.
It could mean everything.
It could be what Rilke meant, when he wrote:
You must change your life.

~Mary Oliver
3/3

or the most expressive of mirth,
or the most tender?
Their strong, blunt beaks
drink the air

as they strive
melodiously
not for your sake
and not for mine

and not for the sake of winning
but for sheer delight and gratitude –
believe us, they say,
it is a serious thing
2/3

Oh do you have time
to linger
for just a little while
out of your busy

and very important day
for the goldfinches
that have gathered
in a field of thistles

for a musical battle,
to see who can sing
the highest note,
or the lowest,
1/3

Whether in daytime or in nighttime
I always carry inside
a light.
In the middle of noise and turmoil
I carry silence.
Always
I carry light and silence.

~ Anna Swir
#poetry

but grow wise
with such teachings
as these -
the untrimmable light

of the world,
the ocean's shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?

~Mary Oliver "Mindful" from "Why I Wake Early"
photo: Tom Wray

3/3 #poetry

in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant -
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,

the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help

2/3 #poetry

Every day
I see or hear
something
that more or less

kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle

in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for -
to look, to listen,

to lose myself
inside this soft world -
to instruct myself
over and over

1/3 #poetry