The Bud
By Galway Kinnell
The bud
stands for all things
even for those things
that don't flower,
for everything flowers,
from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again
from within,
of self-blessing.
+ + + + + + + +
The Wind
One brilliant day
Called to my Soul
With an odor of Jasmine
“In return for the Odor of my Jasmine,
I’d like all the Odor of your Roses.”
“I have no Roses. All the Flowers
In my garden are dead”
Well then I’ll take the withered petals,
And the yellow leaves, and the waters
Of the fountain.”
The Wind left .......and I wept,
And I said to myself, “what have you done
With the garden that was entrusted to you?”
-- A. Machado
I said to my soul
T.S. Eliot
I said to my soul,
be still, and wait
without hope
For hope would be hope
for the wrong thing;
wait without love,
For love would be
love of the wrong thing;
there is yet faith but the faith
and the love and the hope
are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought,
for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light,
and the stillness
the dancing.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
The Breathing
Denise Levertov
An absolute
patience.
Trees stand
up to their knees in
fog. The fog
slowly flows
uphill.
White
cobwebs, the grass
leaning where deer
having looked for apples.
The woods
from brook to where
the top of the hills looks
over the fog, send up
not one bird.
So absolute, it is
no other than
happiness itself, a breathing
too quiet to hear.
