The Peace of Wild Things

[young-werther.livejournal.com]

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wendell Berry

I've just recently rediscovered Wendell Berry and this poem in particular. It's both comforting and energizing. As the title implies, I suppose. Enjoy.

Lost In The Forest . . .

[anima.livejournal.com]

Lost in the forest, I broke off a dark twig
and lifted its whisper to my thirsty lips:
maybe it was the voice of the rain crying,
a cracked bell, or a torn heart.

Something from far off it seemed
deep and secret to me, hidden by the earth,
a shout muffled by huge autumns,
by the moist half-open darkness of the leaves.

Wakening from the dreaming forest there, the hazel-sprig
sang under my tongue, its drifting fragrance
climbed up through my conscious mind

as if suddenly the roots I had left behind
cried out to me, the land I had lost with my childhood---
and I stopped, wounded by the wandering scent.

~ Pablo Neruda

Entrance

[skylightdance.livejournal.com]

Whoever you are: in the evening step out
of your room, where you know everything;
yours is the last house before the far-off:
whoever you are.
With your eyes, which in their weariness
barely free themselves from the worn-out threshold,
you lift very slowly one black tree
and place it against the sky: slender, alone.
And you have made the world. And it is huge
and like a word which grows ripe in silence.
And as your will seizes on its meaning,
tenderly your eyes let it go ...

~Rainer Maria Rilke

I feel this sometimes when I paint or select a thing out of the landscape to photograph.

It can get you through a bad day.

(no subject)

[2much-estrogen.livejournal.com]

From the Adult Drive In
Gabrielle Calvocoressi

VIII.

As the hushed crowd pushes into the night
          What night? It was never dark in that town.

the concession stand is swept by the boy
          White shirt, those ribs like branches of broom.

who is too young to work there, who lives
          I never knew any children. Where did they live?

in a motel on the turnpike; abandoned
          O the poverty of my splayed legs.

cars, topless bars and salesmen littering
          How I wanted the freeway to save me

his vision like Kleenex that covers the pasture
          from myself, fallen in the razed fields

like snow, feathers, thrush in the virgin's mouth.


I, II, III, IV, V, VI (favorite), VII

"White Dog" by Carl Phillips

[beatpoet79.livejournal.com]

First snow—I release her into it—
I know, released, she won't come back.
This is different from letting what,

already, we count as lost go. It is nothing
like that. Also, it is not like wanting to learn what
losing a thing we love feels like. Oh yes:

I love her.
Released, she seems for a moment as if
some part of me, almost,

I wouldn't mind
understanding better, is that
not love? She seems a part of me,

and then she seems entirely like what she is:
a white dog,
less white suddenly, against the snow,

who won't come back. I know that; and, knowing it,
I release her. It's as if I release her
because I know.

--from The Rest of Love by Carl Phillips