What We Need Is Here, poem by Wendell Berry

WHAT WE NEED IS HERE
by Wendell Berry

Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. What we need is here.

SOURCE: “What We Need Is Here” appears in The Collected Poems of Wendell Berry, 1957-1982 (North Point Press, 1987), available at Amazon.com.

PHOTO: “Geese in Flight, Oregon” by Catia Juliana. Prints available at fineartamerica.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Wendell Berry is a novelist, poet, environmental activist, cultural critic, and farmer. A prolific author, he has written dozens of novels, short stories, poems, and essays. He is an elected member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, a recipient of The National Humanities Medal, and the Jefferson Lecturer for 2012. He is also a 2013 Fellow of The American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Berry has been named the recipient of the 2013 Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award.

The Geese, poem by Jane Mead

THE GEESE
by Jane Mead

slicing this frozen sky know
where they are going—
and want to get there.

Their call, both strange
and familiar, calls
to the strange and familiar

heart, and the landscape
becomes the landscape
of being, which becomes

the bright silos and snowy
fields over which the nuanced
and muscular geese

are calling—while time
and the heart take measure.

PHOTO: “Snow Geese over New Melle, Missouri” by Bill Tiepelman. Prints available at fineartamerica.com.

 ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jane Mead is the author of four poetry collections. Her poems have been published widely in anthologies and journals and she is the recipient of grants and awards from the Whiting, Guggenheim, and Lannan Foundations. For many years, she served as Poet-in-Residence at Wake Forest University. She now farms in Northern California and teaches in the Drew University low-residency MFA program in Poetry and Poetry in Translation. Her latest collection is Money Money Money Water Water Water (Alice James Books, 2014), available at Amazon.com.

The sublime, quote by Immanuel Kant

“Whereas the beautiful is limited, the sublime is limitless, so that the mind in the presence of the sublime, attempting to imagine what it cannot, has pain in the failure but pleasure in contemplating the immensity of the attempt” IMMANUEL KANT, A Critique of Pure Reason

Photo: “Lake McDonald, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1942″ by Ansel Adams

Herons in Winter in the Frozen Marsh, poem by Mary Oliver

HERONS IN WINTER IN THE FROZEN MARSH

by Mary Oliver

All winter
two blue herons
hunkered in the frozen marsh,
like two columns of blue smoke.

What they ate
I can’t imagine,
unless it was the small laces
of snow that settled

in the ruckus of the cattails,
or the glazed windows of ice
under the tired
pitchforks of their feet—

so the answer is
they ate nothing,
and nothing good could come of that.
They were mired in nature, and starving.

Still, every morning
they shrugged the rime from their shoulders,
and all day they
stood to attention

in the stubbled desolation.
I was filled with admiration,
sympathy,
and, of course, empathy.

It called for a miracle.
Finally the marsh softened,
and their wings cranked open
revealing the old blue light,

so that I thought: how could this possibly be
the blunt, dark finish?
First one, then the other, vanished
into the ditches and upheavals.

All spring, I watched the rising blue-green grass,
above its gleaming and substantial shadows,
toss in the breeze,
like wings.

“Herons in Winter in the Frozen Marsh” by Mary Oliver, from Owls and other Fantasies: Poems and Essays. © Beacon Press, 2003, available on Amazon.com.

Photo: Ulanawa Foote, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

I made a snowman, quote by Dylan Thomas

“I made a snowman and my brother knocked it down and I knocked my brother down and then we had tea.” DYLAN THOMAS, A Child’s Christmas in Wales.

Photo: “Zensnowman” by Kyle Miron, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Solitude Late at Night in the Woods, poem by Robert Bly

SOLITUDE LATE AT NIGHT IN THE WOODS
by Robert Bly

The body is like a November birch facing the full moon
And reaching into the cold heavens.
In these trees there is no ambition, no sodden body, no leaves,
Nothing but bare trunks climbing like cold fire!
 
My last walk in the trees has come.  At dawn
I must return to the trapped fields,
To the obedient earth.
The trees shall be reaching all the winter.
 
It is a joy to walk in the bare woods.
The moonlight is not broken by the heavy leaves.
The leaves are down, and touching the soaked earth,
Giving off the odor that partridges love.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Robert Bly (born1926) is an American poet, author, activist and leader of the mythopoetic men’s movement. His most commercially successful book to date was Iron John: A Book About Men (1990), a key text of the mythopoetic men’s movement, which spent 62 weeks on the The New York Times Best Seller list. He won the 1968National Book Award for Poetry for his book The Light Around the Body. (Read more at wikipedia.org.)

PHOTO: “Full moon rising through birch tree forest” by Paul Pluskwik, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Magpie’s Song, poem by Gary Snyder

MAGPIE’S SONG
 by Gary Snyder

Six A.M.,
Sat down on excavation gravel
by juniper and desert S.P. tracks
interstate 80 not far off
between trucks
Coyotes—maybe three
howling and yapping from a rise.
Magpie on a bough
Tipped his head and said,
“Here in the mind, brother
Turquoise blue.
I wouldn’t fool you.
Smell the breeze
It came through all the trees
No need to fear
What’s ahead
Snow up on the hills west
Will be there every year
be at rest.
A feather on the ground–
The wind sound—
Here in the Mind, Brother,
Turquoise Blue”

Photo: “Magpie in the Sky,” shot with pinhole camera by Gwen Deanne, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

“Magpie’s Song” by Gary Snyder is included in BRIGHT WINGS: An Illustrated Anthology of Poems About Birds, Edited by Billy Collins with Paintings by David Allen Sibley. This inspiring book is available at Amazon.com. Highly recommended!

“Rarely has poetry and art been so deftly partnered….A truly impressive anthology.” THE MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW

 

Simple Arithmetic, poem by Billy Collins

SIMPLE ARITHMETIC
by Billy Collins

I spend a little time every day
on a gray wooden dock
on the edge of a wide lake, thinly curtained by reeds.

And if there is nothing on my mind
but the motion of the wavelets
and the high shape-shifting of clouds,

I look out at the whole picture
and divide the scene into what was here
five hundred years ago and what was not.

Then I subtract all that was not here
and multiply everything that was by ten,
so when my calculations are complete,

all that remains is water and sky,
the dry sound of wind in the reeds,
and the sight of an unflappable heron on the shore.

All the houses are gone, and the boats
as well as the hedges and the walls,
the curving brick paths, and the distant siren.

The plane crossing the sky is no more
and the same goes for the swimming pools,
the furniture and the pastel umbrellas on the decks,

And the binoculars around my neck are also gone,
and so is the little painted dock itself–
according to my figuring–

and gone are my notebook and my pencil
and there I go, too,
erased by my own eraser and blown like shavings off the page.

Photo: ”Morning light on rock patterns, North Saskatchewan River, Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada” From the postcard book: Sierra Club Nature in Close-Up. ©Ron Thomas,1988, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Find the 160-page book at Amazon here.

Floating World, poem by Taigu Ryōkan

FLOATING WORLD
by Taigu Ryōkan

If the sleeves
of my black robe
were more ample
I’d shelter everyone
in this floating world. 

Photo: ”Gull feather & midnight sun, Nome, Alaska” from the postcard book: Sierra Club Nature in Close-Up. ©David Cavagnaro,1988, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Find the 160-page book at Amazon here.

Morning, haiku by Matsuo Bashō

MORNING 
by Matsuo Bashō (1644-1694)

I like to wash
the dust of this world
in the droplets of dew.

Photo: “Morning Dew” by Ashley Whitmoyer, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED