Invitation

If you find yourself orbiting
And would like to remember
“Why” and “What for” –

Come home 
to this, our old house,
these four walls that hold
the life we are building together.

Each item carries the weight of our being with it.
Placed for laughter, for courage, for stillness,
- peace.

For we have not cherished too many things
But gathered and made, out of love.

Here you can touch, smell, taste.
Breathe deep –
Pause.

Listen to the soft creak of wood beneath you.
Watch the trees dance in the wind at the windows.

Here
You may feel the weight of what is real
You may lie down
and be at rest.

For in this place, we move together and apart
Without breaking.

Your feet will find the earth again.
Your heart, a faithful friend.



© 2012 Elisa Flynn, All Rights Reserved.

patience.

went for a walk this morning and saw that my neighbor's yard, filled with an ivy groundcover, had bloomed beautiful purple blossoms everywhere. this reminded me of hopkins' poem below: "patience." it came as a much needed reminder at this time as my grandmother's health has been up and down and all i want is to be across the country in north dakota with her and the rest of my family... but she took a turn for the better this morning so we are waiting...

PATIENCE, hard thing! the hard thing but to pray,
But bid for, Patience is! Patience who asks
Wants war, wants wounds; weary his times, his tasks;
To do without, take tosses, and obey.
Rare patience roots in these, and, these away,
Nowhere. Natural heart’s ivy, Patience masks
Our ruins of wrecked past purpose. There she basks
Purple eyes and seas of liquid leaves all day.
We hear our hearts grate on themselves: it kills
To bruise them dearer. Yet the rebellious wills
Of us we do bid God bend to him even so.
And where is he who more and more distils
Delicious kindness?—He is patient. Patience fills
His crisp combs, and that comes those ways we know.

I am not a grid.

I am not a grid.

I am an old dirt road, overgrown,

And the bicycle hurtling down it.

I am the sun-kissed grass that I am lying in

And the earth, round and whole,

Holding me up.

I am a stream, rushing and singing,

Reaching always for the deep blue sea.

I am the stars: twinkling fire storms in the night.

I am a marshmallow, a cup of tea,

An insect and a big bumbling bear.

I am not a grid.

I am a human being.

A wild hair.

the love of God

light falls slowly,
carefully
in this room
inching toward the corners,
the closets
and under the bed,
unhurried and lovely.
waterfalls are welcomed
the dirt rising on the waves
don't worry,
it is okay.
we can open the door sometimes
the window more often
the trees let their leaved branches
sway closer.
the birds sing.

Mary Karr

For a Dying Tomcat Who's Relinquished
His Former Hissing and Predatory Nature

I remember the long orange carp you once scooped
from the neighbor’s pond, bounding beyond
her swung broom, across summer lawns

to lay the fish on my stoop. Thanks
for that. I’m not one to whom offerings
often get made. You let me feel

how Christ might when I kneel,
weeping in the dark
over the usual maladies: love and its lack.

Only in tears do I speak
directly to him and with such
conviction. And only once you grew frail

did you finally slacken into me,
dozing against my ribs like a child.
You gave up the predatory flinch

that snapped the necks of so many
birds and slow-moving rodents.
Now your once powerful jaw

is malformed by black malignancies.
It hurts to eat. So you surrender in the way
I pray for: Lord, before my own death,

let me learn from this animal’s deep release
into my arms. Let me cease to fear
the embrace that seeks to still me.


from: http://kingdompoets.blogspot.com/

The Format. On Your Porch.

Go Outside - The Cults

i like this song.

Poetry Myth

Where is my bottle of wine? My café,

My parchment, bloody ink and pen -

Certainly I need them to write

this scratch of words

Painstakingly caught and forcibly held down

From the wild dark birds of emotion.

Wait for the Lord - Taize

Wait for the Lord, his day is near
Wait for the Lord, be strong take heart.

pablo neruda

{found this poem today, loved it, wanted to share...}

los nacimientos (births)

we will never have any memory of dying.
we were so patient
about our being,
noting down
numbers, days,
years and months,
hair, and the mouths we kiss,
and that moment of dying
we let pass without a note -
we leave it to others as memory,
or we leave it simply to water,
to water, to air, to time.
nor do we even keep
the memory of being born,
although to come into being was tumultuous and new;
and now you don’t remember a single detail
and haven’t kept even a trace
of your first light.
it’s well known that we are born.
it’s well known that in the room
or in the wood
or in the shelter in the fishermen’s quarter
or in the rustling canefields
there is a quite unusual silence,
a grave and wooden moment as
a woman prepares to give birth.
it’s well known that we were all born.
but if that abrupt translation
from not being to existing, to having hands,
to seeing, to having eyes,
to eating and weeping and overflowing
and loving and loving and suffering and suffering,
of that transition, that quivering
of an electric presence, raising up
one body more, like a living cup,
and of that woman left empty,
the mother who is left there in her blood
and her lacerated fullness,
and its end and its beginning, and disorder
tumbling the pulse, the floor, the covers
till everything comes together and adds
one knot more to the thread of life,
nothing, nothing remains in your memory
of the savage sea which summoned up a wave
and plucked a shrouded apple from the tree.
the only thing you remember is your life.

-pablo neruda