Category Archives: Poetry
The Angel ~ Rilke
The Angel
With a slight tilt of his forehead he rejects
everything that hems in and obliges;
for the wide circles of the eternal Coming
move hugely erected through his heart.
The deep heavens stand before him full of shapes,
and each may call to him: … Continue reading
FollowI Will Not Die an Unlived Life ~ Dawn Markova
I will not die an unlived life.
I will not live in fear
of falling or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open me,
to make me less afraid,
more accessible;
to loosen my heart
until it becomes a wing,
a torch, … Continue reading
Imagine ~ John Lennon
Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people living for today
Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life … Continue reading
Beannacht / Blessing ~ John Donahue
Thank you Michelle Murton for this beautiful John O’Donahue blessing for my pilgrimage:
On the day when
The weight deadens
On your shoulders
And you stumble,
May the clay dance
To balance you.
And when your eyes
Freeze behind
The grey window
And the ghost of loss
Gets into you,
May a … Continue reading
Sometimes a Man ~ Rilke
Sometimes a man stands up during supper
and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking,
because of a church that stands somewhere in the East.
And his children say blessings on him as if he were dead.
And another man, who remains inside his own … Continue reading
The Gift ~ Hafiz
Even after all this time
The sun never says to the earth,
“You owe Me.”
Look what happens
with a love like that,
It lights the Whole Sky.
~ Hafiz*
* There is some dispute whether this poem is truly from Hafiz. Regardless who wrote it, … Continue reading
Out Beyond ~ Rumi
Out Beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn’t make any sense.
~ Rumi
The Knight ~ Rilke
The knight rides forth in coal-black steel
into the teeming world.
Outside his armor everything is there: sunlight and valley,
friend and foe and feast,
May, maiden, forest and grail,
and God himself in a thousand forms to be found along every road.
But inside the … Continue reading
The Breeze at Dawn ~ Rumi
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and … Continue reading
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The Swan ~ Rilke
This laboring of ours with all that remains undone,
as if still bound to it,
is like the lumbering gait of the swan.
And then our dying — releasing ourselves
from the very ground on which we stood –
is like the way he … Continue reading