God got a dog

God got a dog
 by Cynthia Rylant

She never meant to
She liked dogs. She'd
liked them ever since She was a kid,
but She didn't think
She had time for a dog now.
She was always working
and dogs needed so
much attention.
God didn't know if She
could take being needed
by one more thing.
But She saw this dog
out by the tracks
and it was hungry
and cold
and lonely
and God realized
She'd made that dog
somehow,
somehow She was responsible
though She knew logically
that She had only set the
world on its course.
She couldn't be blamed
for everything.
But She saw this dog
and She felt bad
so She took it home
and named it Ernie
and now God....
has somebody
keeping Her feet warm at night.


buy the book here:
http://www.powells.com/book/god-got-a-dog-9781442465183

Brief for the Defense

A Brief for the Defense
by Jack Gilbert

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that’s what God wants.

Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.

If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.

If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.

We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.



I first saw this poem on Rob Breszny's facebook page, but you can read it here. 

God's Garden

by Robert Frost

God made a beateous garden
With lovely flowers strown,
But one straight, narrow pathway
That was not overgrown.
And to this beauteous garden
He brought mankind to live,
And said: "To you, my children,
These lovely flowers I give.
Prune ye my vines and fig trees,
With care my flowerets tend,
But keep the pathway open
Your home is at the end."

Then came another master,
Who did not love mankind,
And planted on the pathway
Gold flowers for them to find.
And mankind saw the bright flowers,
That, glitt'ring in the sun,
Quite hid the thorns of av'rice
That poison blood and bone;
And far off many wandered,
And when life's night came on,
They still were seeking gold flowers,
Lost, helpless and alone.


O, cease to heed the glamour
That blinds your foolish eyes,
Look upward to the glitter
Of stars in God's clear skies.
Their ways are pure and harmless
And will not lead astray,
Bid aid your erring footsteps
To keep the narrow way.
And when the sun shines brightly
Tend flowers that God has given
And keep the pathway open
That leads you on to heaven.

i thank You God for most this amazing

i thank You God for most this amazing

by e.e. cummings

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any—lifted from the no
of all nothing—human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)


Read it and hear Garrison Keillor recite it here. 

Why This Night

Why This Night
Or Maybe This Year, We’ll Read a Poem
by Esther Cohen

Why oh why
Is this evening
So long so similar
So often uninspired, disappointing
So hard to conceive?
Why does the word liberation
Sound too much like Liver Nation
Not enough like freedom?
Why can’t we
In the spirit of what
It might mean
To truly celebrate
Overcoming our tribal
Predispositions, telling stories
That make us bigger
Not smaller, reliving
Not the usual what he did
To me, or she, but
Imagining instead
What we might do
Could do, if we were able
Even for one night
To forgive whatever
Happened before
However big, however small,
If we could repeat
The word forgive five times
Or ten, maybe then
We could tell a good story.

What I never liked
About Passover (the holiday
Most of us celebrate) the whole we they part
Good guys and bad. Self righteous holy victim
Story they did this to us and now look.
I took the other side. It wasn’t the usual
I’m an underdog too. More
Personal than that. When I went
To Egypt the first time
In the 70’s I fell in love
With the place Oh My God
Is Egypt beautiful funny warm
Fragrant deeply aesthetic which
Is not to say
The impossible problems
Poverty prejudice religion
Frequent triumvirate did not
Play a part. Egypt was a place
I wanted to live, like Israel
Morocco all those Greek islands
Lemon countries, where deep smiles
Are part of the landscape and people love
With their arms wide open.

I thought about Passover
When I landed in the Cairo airport
So beautiful you could actually feel the colors
Pink yellow gold white and I wanted to write
A different Passover story, not
Of the we are all in this together
Variety more we aren’t ever sure
What truly happened, unless we are
Scientists and even science
Is a guess.

For Passover this year
I’d like to invite
people I love
some I like well enough
some who are in the ok category
To imagine a word
And a world that is open and true,
Where we all imagine, in the course of the meal
That it is possible to forgive
Whatever happened to us:
Betrayal, lies, even annihilation. Some
Of life so terrible it’s hard to believe
What people can do to one another
All in the name of one god or another
Difference makes us all crazy
How could he Why did she
Different values religions races identities.
Close family friend for 30 years
Didn’t invite us to his wedding My husband’s
Relatives killed by Turks. Hurt is not
An abstraction an idea. There is always a why,
A reason. The unsatisfactory explanation. Weakness
Insanity priorities even personality
This Passover maybe not next year
Maybe I’ll feel differently than I do now
This Passover maybe we can liberate ourselves
From holding onto what happened
We don’t have to subscribe
To Be Here Now but we can try
Letting go of all that happened
That shouldn’t have that gets in the way
Of how pink Egypt is how much
We loved one another before
Life intervened. This Passover
We will pass over injustice
Not because it’s ok
But because we want to try a holiday experiment
Maybe just this year, we want
To see if we can liberate ourselves
By saying these words:
Forgive
Forgive
Forgive

Read more: http://blogs.forward.com/the-arty-semite/136986/national-poetry-month-the-unhagaddah/?#ixzz3WPYNYYH0

The Pulley

The Pulley

by George Herbert

 

   When God at first made man, 
Having a glass of blessings standing by, 
   “Let us," said he, “pour on him all we can. 
Let the world’s riches, which disperséd lie, 
   Contract into a span.”

   So strength first made a way; 
Then beauty flowed, then wisdom, honor, pleasure. 
   When almost all was out, God made a stay, 
Perceiving that, alone of all his treasure, 
   Rest in the bottom lay. 

   “For if I should," said he, 
“Bestow this jewel also on my creature, 
   He would adore my gifts instead of me, 
And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature; 
   So both should losers be. 

   “Yet let him keep the rest, 
But keep them with repining restlessness. 
   Let him be rich and weary, that at least, 
If goodness lead him not, yet weariness 
   May toss him to my breast.”  

Found on the Academy of American Poets here.  

Poem (the god of dirt)

Poem (the god of dirt)

 

by Mary Oliver

 

The god of dirt

came up to me many times and said

so many wise and delectable things, I lay

on the grass listening

 

to his dog voice,

crow voice,

frog voice; now,

he said, and now,

and never once mentioned forever,

 

which has nevertheless always been,

like a sharp iron hoof,

at the center of my mind.

 

One or two things are all you need

to travel over the blue pond, over the deep

roughage of the trees and through the stiff

flowers of lightning—some deep

memory of pleasure, some cutting

knowledge of pain.

 

But to lift the hoof !

For that you need

an idea.

 

 

 

found here at Morning Earth dot org

 

 

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

by Wendell Berry

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.

And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.

When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.

Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.

Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.

Listen to carrion — put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.

Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.

As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn't go.

Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.


Found here on Journey with Jesus dot net

An Hymn to the Evening

An Hymn to the Evening

by Phillis Wheatley

SOON as the sun forsook the eastern main
The pealing thunder shook the heav'nly plain;
Majestic grandeur! From the zephyr's wing,
Exhales the incense of the blooming spring.
Soft purl the streams, the birds renew their notes,
And through the air their mingled music floats.
Through all the heav'ns what beauteous dies are spread!
But the west glories in the deepest red:
So may our breasts with ev'ry virtue glow,
The living temples of our God below!
Fill'd with the praise of him who gives the light,
And draws the sable curtains of the night,
Let placid slumbers sooth each weary mind,
At morn to wake more heav'nly, more refin'd;
So shall the labours of the day begin
More pure, more guarded from the snares of sin.
Night's leaden sceptre seals my drowsy eyes,
Then cease, my song, till fair Aurora rise.


Found here on Lit2go from University of South Florida. 

On the World

On the World

 from Discourses of Rumi, translation by Fatemeh Keshavarz

The world is a mountain
Whatever you say, good or bad, it will echo it back to you
Don't say I sang nicely and mountain echoed an ugly voice…
That is not possible The human intellect is a place where hesitation and uncertainty take root
There is no way to overcome this hesitation…except by falling in love
To reach the sea and be happy with a jug water is a waste
The sea that has pearls…
And a hundred thousand other precious things.




Found here on the On Being website. Go listen to it read in English and Persian!

A Potted Plant

A Potted Plant

from The Subject Tonight is Love by Hafiz, translation by Daniel Ladinsky

I pull a sun from my coin purse each day.

And at night I let my pet the moon

Run freely into the sky meadow.

If I whistled,

She would turn her head and look at me.

If I then waved my arms,

She would come back wagging a marvelous tail

Of stars.

There are always a few men like me

In this world

Who are house-sitting for God.

We share His royal duties:

I water each day a favorite potted plant

Of His--

This earth.

Ask the Friend for love.

Ask Him again.

For I have learned that every heart will get

What it prays for

Most.



found here on the Peaceful Rivers website

They Have Threatened Us With Resurrection

They Have Threatened Us With Resurrection

by Julia Esquivel; translated by Ann Woehrle

It isn’t the noise in the streets
that keeps us from resting, my friend,
nor is it the shouts of the young people
coming out drunk from the “St. Pauli,”
nor is it the tumult of those who pass by excitedly
on their way to the mountains.

It is something within us that doesn’t let us sleep,
that doesn’t let us rest,
that won’t stop pounding
deep inside,
it is the silent, warm weeping
of Indian women without their husbands,
it is the sad gaze of the children
fixed somewhere beyond memory,
precious in our eyes
which during sleep,
though closed, keep watch,
systole,
diastole,
awake.

Now six have left us,
and nine in Rabinal,* and two, plus two, plus two,
and ten, a hundred, a thousand,
a whole army
witness to our pain,
our fear,
our courage,
our hope!

What keeps us from sleeping
is that they have threatened us with Resurrection!
Because every evening
though weary of killings,
an endless inventory since 1954,**
yet we go on loving life
and do not accept their death!

They have threatened us with Resurrection
Because we have felt their inert bodies,
and their souls penetrated ours
doubly fortified,
because in this marathon of Hope,
there are always others to relieve us
who carry the strength
to reach the finish line
which lies beyond death.

They have threatened us with Resurrection
because they will not be able to take away from us
their bodies,
their souls,
their strength,
their spirit,
nor even their death
and least of all their life.
Because they live
today, tomorrow, and always
in the streets baptized with their blood,
in the air that absorbed their cry,
in the jungle that hid their shadows,
in the river that gathered up their laughter,
in the ocean that holds their secrets,
in the craters of the volcanoes,
Pyramids of the New Day,
which swallowed up their ashes.

They have threatened us with Resurrection
because they are more alive than ever before,
because they transform our agonies
and fertilize our struggle,
because they pick us up when we fall,
because they loom like giants
before the crazed gorillas’ fear.

They have threatened us with Resurrection,
because they do not know life (poor things!).

That is the whirlwind
which does not let us sleep,
the reason why sleeping, we keep watch,
and awake, we dream.

No, its not the street noises,
nor the shouts from the drunks in the “St. Pauli,”
nor the noise from the fans at the ball park.

It is the internal cyclone of kaleidoscopic struggle
which will heal that wound of the quetzal***
fallen in Ixcan,
it is the earthquake soon to come
that will shake the world
and put everything in its place.

No, brother,
it is not the noise in the streets
which does not let us sleep.

Join us in this vigil
and you will know what it is to dream!
Then you will know how marvelous it is
to live threatened with Resurrection!

To dream awake,
to keep watch asleep,
to live while dying,
and to know ourselves already
resurrected!


 Found here on Gathering in Light

Easter Exultet

Easter Exultet

by James Broughton

Shake out your qualms.
Shake up your dreams.
Deepen your roots.
Extend your branches.
Trust deep water
and head for the open,
even if your vision
shipwrecks you.
Quit your addiction
to sneer and complain.
Open a lookout.
Dance on a brink.
Run with your wildfire.
You are closer to glory
leaping an abyss
than upholstering a rut.
Not dawdling.
Not doubting.
Intrepid all the way
Walk toward clarity.
At every crossroad
Be prepared
to bump into wonder.
Only love prevails.
En route to disaster
insist on canticles.
Lift your ineffable
out of the mundane.
Nothing perishes;
nothing survives;
everything transforms!
Honeymoon with Big Joy!


Found here on Poetry Chaikhana

Resurrection

Resurrection

by Mary Ann Bernard

Long, long, long ago;
Way before this winter’s snow
First fell upon these weathered fields;
I used to sit and watch and feel
And dream of how the spring would be,
When through the winter’s stormy sea
She’d raise her green and growing head,
Her warmth would resurrect the dead.

Long before this winter’s snow
I dreamt of this day’s sunny glow
And thought somehow my pain would pass
With winter’s pain, and peace like grass
Would simply grow.  (But) The pain’s not gone.
It’s still as cold and hard and long
As lonely pain has ever been,
It cuts so deep and fear within.

Long before this winter’s snow
I ran from pain, looked high and low
For some fast way to get around
Its hurt and cold.  I’d have found,
If I had looked at what was there,
That things don’t follow fast or fair.
That life goes on, and times do change,
And grass does grow despite life’s pains.

Long before this winter’s snow
I thought that this day’s sunny glow,
The smiling children and growing things
And flowers bright were brought by spring.
Now, I know the sun does shine,
That children smile, and from the dark, cold, grime
A flower comes.  It groans, yet sings,
And through its pain, its peace begins.



Found here on Journey with Jesus

Poem (the spirit likes to dress up)

Poem (the spirit likes to dress up)

by Mary Oliver

The spirit

  likes to dress up like this:

   ten fingers,

   ten toes,

shoulders, and all the rest

  at night

   in the black branches,

     in the morning

in the blue branches

  of the world.

   It could float, of course,

     but would rather

plumb rough matter.

  Airy and shapeless thing,

   it needs

     the metaphor of the body,

lime and appetite,

  the oceanic fluids;

   it needs the body's world,

     instinct

and imagination

  and the dark hug of time,

   sweetness

     and tangibility,

to be understood,

  to be more than pure light

   that burns

     where no one is --

so it enters us --

  in the morning

   shines from brute comfort

     like a stitch of lightning;

and at night

  lights up the deep and wondrous

   drownings of the body

     like a star.

 

 

 

Found here on Peaceful Rivers

Psalm 51

Psalm 51, verses 7-15

from the Message Bible, a translation by Eugene H. Peterson


Soak me in your laundry and I’ll come out clean,
    scrub me and I’ll have a snow-white life.
Tune me in to foot-tapping songs,
    set these once-broken bones to dancing.
Don’t look too close for blemishes,
    give me a clean bill of health.
God, make a fresh start in me,
    shape a Genesis week from the chaos of my life.
Don’t throw me out with the trash,
    or fail to breathe holiness in me.
Bring me back from gray exile,
    put a fresh wind in my sails!
Give me a job teaching rebels your ways
    so the lost can find their way home.
Commute my death sentence, God, my salvation God,
    and I’ll sing anthems to your life-giving ways.
Unbutton my lips, dear God;
    I’ll let loose with your praise.



Found here on Bible Gateway

The Woodcarver

THE WOODCARVER

- Chuang Tzu from The Way of Chuang Tzu by Thomas Merton

Khing, the master carver, made a bell stand
Of precious wood. When it was finished,
All who saw it were astounded. They said it must be
The work of spirits.
The Prince of Lu said to the master carver:
"What is your secret?"

Khing replied: "I am only a workman:
I have no secret. There is only this:
When I began to think about the work you commanded
I guarded my spirit, did not expend it
On trifles, that were not to the point.
I fasted in order to set
My heart at rest.
After three days fasting,
I had forgotten gain and success.
After five days
I had forgotten praise or criticism.
After seven days
I had forgotten my body
With all its limbs.

"By this time all thought of your Highness
And of the court had faded away.
All that might distract me from the work
Had vanished.
I was collected in the single thought
Of the bell stand.

"Then I went to the forest
To see the trees in their own natural state.
When the right tree appeared before my eyes,
The bell stand also appeared in it, clearly, beyond doubt.
All I had to do was to put forth my hand
and begin.

"If I had not met this particular tree
There would have been
No bell stand at all.

"What happened?
My own collected thought
Encountered the hidden potential in the wood;
From this live encounter came the work
Which you ascribe to the spirits."


Found here on Watershed Online

To Earthward

To Earthward

by Robert Frost

Love at the lips was touch
As sweet as I could bear;
And once that seemed too much;
I lived on air

That crossed me from sweet things,
The flow of--was it musk
From hidden grapevine springs
Downhill at dusk?

I had the swirl and ache
From sprays of honeysuckle
That when they're gathered shake
Dew on the knuckle.

I craved strong sweets, but those
Seemed strong when I was young;
The petal of the rose
It was that stung.

Now no joy but lacks salt,
That is not dashed with pain
And weariness and fault;
I crave the stain

Of tears, the aftermark
Of almost too much love,
The sweet of bitter bark
And burning clove.

When stiff and sore and scarred
I take away my hand
From leaning on it hard
In grass and sand,

The hurt is not enough:
I long for weight and strength
To feel the earth as rough
To all my length.


Found here on Writing and Ruminating


Also, check out my other blog, The Wheel and the Disk, with thoughts about this poem.

One Place to Begin

One Place to Begin

by John Daniel

You need a reason, any reason—skiing, a job in movies,
      the Golden Gate Bridge.
Take your reason and drive west, past the Rockies.
When you're bored with bare hills, dry flats, and distance,
      stop anywhere.
Forget where you thought you were going.

Rattle through the beer cans in the ditch.
If there's a fence, try your luck—they don't stop cows.
Follow the first hawk you see, and when the sagebrush
      trips you, take a good look before you get up.
The desert gets by without government.

Crush juniper berries, breathe the smell, smear your face.
When you wonder why you're here, yell as loud
      as you can and don't look behind.
Walk. Your feet are learning.

Admit you're afraid of the dark.
Soak the warmth from scabrock, cheek to lichen.
The wind isn't talking to you. Listen anyway.
Let the cries of coyotes light a fire in your heart.
Remember the terrible song of stars—you knew it once,
      before you were born.

Tell a story about why the sun comes back.
Sit still until the itches give up, lizards ignore you,
      a mule deer holds you in her eyes.
Explain yourself over and over. Forget it all
      when a scrub jay shrieks.
Imagine sun, sky, and wind the same, over your
      scattered white bones.



Found here on the Writer's Almanac. Go listen to Garrison Keillor read it to you, it's worth it!

Under the Vulture Tree

Under the Vulture-Tree

by David Bottoms

We have all seen them circling pastures,

have looked up from the mouth of a barn, a pine clearing,   

the fences of our own backyards, and have stood   

amazed by the one slow wing beat, the endless dihedral drift.

But I had never seen so many so close, hundreds,   

every limb of the dead oak feathered black,

and I cut the engine, let the river grab the jon boat   

and pull it toward the tree.

The black leaves shined, the pink fruit blossomed   

red, ugly as a human heart.

Then, as I passed under their dream, I saw for the first time   

its soft countenance, the raw fleshy jowls

wrinkled and generous, like the faces of the very old   

who have grown to empathize with everything.

And I drifted away from them, slow, on the pull of the river,   

reluctant, looking back at their roost,   

calling them what I'd never called them, what they are,

those dwarfed transfiguring angels,

who flock to the side of the poisoned fox, the mud turtle

crushed on the shoulder of the road,

who pray over the leaf-graves of the anonymous lost,

with mercy enough to consume us all and give us wings. 

 

 

Found on Poetry Out Loud here.