We are the guardians of His Beauty

We are the protector
Of the Sun.

There is only one reason
We have followed God into this world:

To encourage laughter, freedom, dance
And love.

Let a noble cry inside of you speak to me
Saying,

"Hafiz,
Don't just sit there on the moon tonight
Doing nothing -

Help unfurl my heart into the Friend's Mind,
Help, Old Man, to heal my wounded wings!"

We are the companions of His Beauty.
We are the guardians
Of Truth.

Every man, plant and creature in Existence,
Every woman, child, vein and note
Is a servant of our Beloved -
A harbinger of Joy,
The harbinger of Light.

~Hafiz

The air smells good

Lord, the air smells good today, straight from the mysteries
within the inner courts of God.
A grace like new clothes thrown
across the garden, free medicine for everybody.
The trees in their prayer, the birds in praise,
the first blue violets kneeling.
Whatever came from Being is caught up in being, drunkenly
forgetting the way back.

~Rumi

I want

Tent tethered among the jackpine and blue-bells. Lacewings rise from rock
incubators. Wild geese fying north. And I can't remember who I'm supposed to be.

I want to learn how to purr. Abandon myself, have mistresses in maidenhair fern, own no tomorrow nor yesterday: a blank shimmering space forward and back.

I want to think with my belly. I want to name all the stars animals flowers birds rocks in order to forget them, start over again.

I want to wear the seasons, harlequin, become ancient and etched by weather. I want to be snow pulse, ruminating ungulate, pebble at the bottom of the abyss, candle burning darkness rather than flame.

I want to peer at things shameless, observe the unfastening, that stripping of shape by dusk. I want to sit in the meadow a rotten stump pungent with slimemold, home for pupae and grubs, concentric rings collapsing into the passacaglia of time.

I want to crawl inside someone and hibernate one entire night with no clocks to wake me, thighs fragrant loam. I want to melt. I want to swim naked with an otter. I want to turn insideout, exchange nuclei with the sun.

Toward the mythic kingdom of summer I want to make blind motion, using my ribs as a raft, following the spiders as they set sail on their tasselled shining silk. Sometimes even a single feather's enough to fly.

~Robert Maclean

O Lady

O Lady
the hem of whose garment
is the sky, whose grace
falls from her glance, who gives
life from the touch of one finger
O Lady
whose hair is the willow, whose breath
is the riversong, who lopes
thru the milky way, baying, stars
going out,
O Lady whose deathshead holds a thousand eyes
eye sockets black imploded stars, who trails
frail as a northern virgin on the mist,
O lady fling your bright drops to us, emblems
of your love, throw
your green scarf on the battered earth once more
O smile, disrobe for us, unveil
your eyes.

~Diane Di Prima

O Lord

O Lord,
I am caught in that moment of half-light,
the breathless point of balance between sun and moon.
As I bid farewell to the cold purification of the night,
in that same movement, I fling wide my arms
to be embraced by the warmth and glory of the sun,
knowing that in due time I will bow to the receding light
and open my arms to darkness once again.

Thus, O Lord, You come into our lives,
in the blaze of splendour, the certainty of Your presence,
in the times of aridity and isolation, even to the point of despair.

Throught this continuing journeying, from the zenith of midday to the depths of midnight
and back to the blinding noontide, we grow towards You,
the true light, that shines like the sun beyond darkness, forever.

~Ishpriya R S C J

We are Nature

We are Nature, long have we been absent, but now we return,
We become plants, trunks, foliage, roots, bark,
We are bedded in the ground, we are rocks,
We are oaks, we grow in the openings side by side,
We browse, we are two among the wild herds, spontaneous as any,
We are two fishes swimming in the sea together,
We are what locust blossoms are, we drop scent around lanes mornings and evenings,
We are also the coarse smut of beasts, vebetables, minerals,
We are two predatory hawks, we soar above and look down,
We are two resplendent suns, we it is who balance ourselves orbic and stellar, we are as two comets,
We prowl fang'd and four-footed in the woods, we spring on prey,
We are two clouds forenoons and afternoons driving overhead,
We are seas mingling, we are two of those cheerful waves rolling over each other and interwetting each other.
We are what the atmosphere is, transparent, receptive, pervious, impervious,
We are snow, rain, cold, darkness, we are each product and influence of the globe,
We have circled and circled till we have arrived home again, we too,
We have voided all but freedom and all but our own joy.

~Walt Whitman

No Words

Tired of all who come with words, words but no language

I went to the snow-covered island.

The wild does not have words.

The unwritten pages spread themselves out in all directions!

I come across the marks of roe-deer's hooves in the snow.

Language but no words.

~Tomas Transtromer

I've known rivers

I've known rivers:
I've know rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

~Langston Hughes

To see the greatness of a mountain

To see the greatness of a mountain, one must keep one's distance;
To understand its form, one must move around it;
To experience its moods, one must see it at sunrise and sunset,
At noon and at midnight, in sun and in rain,
In snow and in storm, in summer and in winter
And in all the other seasons
He who can see the mountain like this comes near to the life of the mountain.

Mountains grow and decay, they breathe and pulsate with life.
They attract and collect invisible energies from their surroundings
The forces of the air, of the water, of electricity and magnetism;
They create winds, clouds, thunderstorms, rains, waterfalls
And rivers. They fill their surroundings with active life and give shelter and food to innumerable beings.

Such is the greatness of mighty mountains.

~ Lama Govinda

I am the one

I am the one whose praise echoes on
I adorn all the earth.
I am the breeze that nurtures all things green.
I encourage blossoms to flourish with ripening fruits.
I am led by the spirit to feed the purest streams.
I am the rain coming from the dew
that causes the grasses to laugh with the joy of life.
I am the yearning for good.

~Hildegard of Bingen

One Leaf

One leaf left on a branch
and not a sound of sadness
or despair. One leaf left
on a branch and no unhappiness.
One leaf left all by itself
in the air and it does not speak
of loneliness or death.
One leaf and it spends itself
in swaying mildly in the breeze.

~David Ignatow

Woman of Stone

The man of wood sings,
The woman of stone
Gets up and dances,
This cannot be done
By passion or learning,
It cannot be done
By reasoning.

~Tung-shan

Changes

Green leaves
That dawn after dawn
Grow yellow;
Red cheeks
That fade
With the passing days -
If our world
Is made up
Of such changes
As these,
Is it strange
that my heart
Is so sad?

~Hsiao Kang

O Sacred Season

O sacred season of Autumn, be my teacher
For I wish to learn the virtue of contentment.
As I gaze upon hour full-colored beauty,
I sense all about you
An at-homeness with your amber riches.

You are the season of retirement,
Of full barns and harvested fields.
The cycle of growth has ceased,
And the busy work of giving life
Is now completed.
I sense in you no regrets:
You’ve lived a full life.

I live in a society that is ever-restless,
Always eager for more mountains to climb,
Seeking happiness through more and more possessions.
As a child of my culture,
I am seldom truly at peace with what I have.
Teach me to take stock of what I have given and received;
May I know that it’s enough,
That my striving can cease
In the abundance of God’s grace.
May I know the contentment
That allows the totality of my energies
To come full flower.
May I know that like you I am rich beyond measure.

As you, O autumn, take pleasure in your great bounty,
Let me also take delight
In the abundance of the simple things in life
Which are the true source of joy.
With the golden glow of peaceful contentment
May I truly appreciate this autumn day.

~Edward Hays

Standing up

Standing up on lifted, folded rock
looking out and down -

The creek falls to a far valley,
hills beyond that
facing, half-forested , dry
- clear sky
strong wind in the
stiff glittering needle clusters
of the pine - their brown
round trunk bodies
straight, still,
rustling trembling limbs and twigs

listen.

This living flowing land
is all there is,
forever

We are it
it sings through us -

We could live on this Earth
without clothes or tools!

~Gary Snyder

Out of his heart

Out of his heart God shall not pass

His image stamped is on every grass.

~W. H. Hudson

Jerusalem Is Walking in This World

This is great happiness.
The air is silk.
There is milk in the looks
That come from strangers.
I could not be happier
If I were bread and
you could eat me.
Joy is dangerous.
It fills me with secrets.
"Yes" hisses in my veins.
The pains I take to hide myself
Are sheer as glass.
Surely this will pass,
The wind like kisses,
The music in the soup,
The group of trees,
Laughing as I say their names.

It is all hosanna
It is all prayer.

Jerusalem is walking in this world.
Jerusalem is walking in this world.

~Julia Cameron

You do not have to be good

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the praries and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

~Mary Oliver

The fiery light

I, the fiery light of divine wisdom,
I ignite the beauty of the plains,
I sparkle the waters.
I burn the sun and the moon and the stars,
With wisdom I order all rightly.
I adorn the earth.
I am the breeze that nurtures all things green.
I am the rain coming from the dew
That causes the grasses to laugh
With the joy of life.
I call forth tears, the aroma of holy work.
I am the yearning for good.

~Hildegard of Bingen

I lie alone

I lie alone
remembering changes
how sudden crystals grew
from water falling
in a cup in a rock
suprising forms
acids in a cup in a rock
receiving lightning
a cup in a rock receiving lightning
I am here
I lie alone
no one completes me
after lightning
I bide my time
I hold my forms beyond surprising islands
I lie alone
remembering changes
how grinding ice came down
the slide of earth
rub of rivers
knuckles of trees cracking rocks
receiving ice surprising
cracking rocks receiving ice
a tree of rivers sprang inside me
I am here
I lie alone
no one completes me
after water
I bide my time
I hold my face beyond surprising rains

~W.E.R La Farge