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Apples by Danusha Laméris
One, tossed to Aphrodite,
begins a war. Eve, that fateful bite
into the crisp white skin.
Distracted by the sight of golden apples
a virgin huntress loses a race
and must marry. Each apple
a kind of failure. The body
calling our desire. Isn't there
always something we want
more than our own happiness?
A pull toward the Fall.
Haven't we all loved too much?
Snow White bit into the flesh
laced with poison.
Love is something we fall into.
Fall, the time of ripening apples.
In England one falls pregnant.
Life requires collapse
holds it out to us
sweet and fragrant.
You can find this poem in The Moons of August.
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Think of Othersby Mahmoud Darwish
As you prepare your breakfast — think of others.
Don’t forget to feed the pigeons.
As you conduct your wars — think of others.
Don’t forget those who want peace.
As you pay your water bill — think of others.
Think of those who have only the clouds to drink from.
As you go home, your own home — think of others — don’t forget those who live in tents.
As you sleep and count the stars, think of others — there are people who have no place to sleep.
As you liberate yourself with metaphors think of others — those who have lost their right to speak.
And as you think of distant others — think of yourself and say
"I wish I were a candle in the darkness".
You can find this poem inAlmond Blossoms and Beyond.
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Fall Song by Mary Oliver
Another year gone, leaving everywhere
its rich spiced residues: vines, leaves,
the uneaten fruits crumbling damply
in the shadows, unmattering back
from the particular island
of this summer, this NOW, that now is nowhere
except underfoot, moldering
in that black subterranean castle
of unobservable mysteries - roots and sealed seeds
and the wanderings of water. This
I try to remember when time's measure
painfully chafes, for instance when autumn
flares out at the last, boisterous and like us longing
to stay - how everything lives, shifting
from one bright vision to another, forever
in these momentary pastures.
You can find this poem in American Primitive: Poems.
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We Are of a Tribe
by ALBERTO RÍOS
We plant seeds in the ground
And dreams in the sky,
Hoping that, someday, the roots of one
Will meet the upstretched limbs of the other.
It has not happened yet.
We share the sky, all of us, the whole world:
Together, we are a tribe of eyes that look upward,
Even as we stand on uncertain ground.
The earth beneath us moves, quiet and wild,
Its boundaries shifting, its muscles wavering.
The dream of sky is indifferent to all this,
Impervious to borders, fences, reservations.
The sky is our common home, the place we all live.
There we are in the world together.
The dream of sky requires no passport.
Blue will not be fenced. Blue will not be a crime.
Look up. Stay awhile. Let your breathing slow.
Know that you always have a home here.
You can find this poem in Poetry of Presence: An Anthology of Mindfulness Poems.
The Empty House
BY WALTER DE LA MARE
See this house, how dark it is
Beneath its vast-boughed trees!
Not one trembling leaflet cries
To that Watcher in the skies—
‘Remove, remove thy searching gaze,
Innocent of heaven’s ways,
Brood not, Moon, so wildly bright,
On secrets hidden from sight.’
‘Secrets,’ sighs the night-wind,
‘Vacancy is all I find;
Every keyhole I have made
Wails a summons, faint and sad,
No voice ever answers me,
Only vacancy.’
‘Once, once … ’ the cricket shrills,
And far and near the quiet fills
With its tiny voice, and then
Hush falls again.
Mute shadows creeping slow
Mark how the hours go.
Every stone is mouldering slow.
And the least winds that blow
Some minutest atom shake,
Some fretting ruin make
In roof and walls. How black it is
Beneath these thick boughed trees!
Find this poem on the Poetry Foundation website.
A Reminiscence
BY RICHARD O. MOORE
Held in a late season
At a shifting of worlds,
In the golden balance of autumn,
Out of love and reason
We made our peace;
Stood still in October
In the failing light and sought,
Each in the other, ease
And release from silence,
From the slow damnation
Of speech that is weak
And falls from silence.
In the October sun
By the green river we spoke,
Late in October, the leaves
Of the water maples had fallen.
But whatever we said
In the bright leaves was lost,
Quick as the leaf-fall,
Brittle and blood red.
For Kenneth Rexroth, 1950
You can find this poem on the Poetry Foundation website.
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Kindnessby Anya Silver
Last week, a nurse pulled a warm blanket
from a magical cave of heated cotton
and lay it on my lap, even wrapping
my feet. She admired my red sandals.
Once, a friend brought me a chicken
she’d roasted and packed with whole lemons.
I ate it with my fingers while it was still warm.
Kindnesses appear, then disappear so quickly
that I forget their brief streaks: they vanish,
while cruelty pearls its durable shell.
Goodness streams like hot water through my hair
and down my skin, and I’m able to live
again with the ache. Love wakens the world.
Kindness is my mother, sending me a yellow dress in the mail
for no reason other than to watch me twirl.
You can find this poem inHealing the Divide: Poems of Kindness & Connection.
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Here’s a very short list of three books I finished reading in the past week. Enjoy!
No Mud, No Lotus: The Art of Transforming Suffering by Thich Nhat Hanh is one of the late teacher’s most-read books. When I was in my 200-hr yoga teacher training, our teacher had a shirt that said “Yes Mud, Yes Lotus”. It became something of a trend and other women in the training were seen wearing them soon after.
I started reading this book when I was feeling a particularly strong wave of grief this summer after my son moved out West. It had been sitting in the stack near my bed for a year or more and it called to me. If you’ve ever read a book by Thich Nhat Hanh, you know how gentle, direct, and simple yet deep his writings are. They are practical and get right to the heart of human suffering and he shows you how to access peace through the simple act of breathing, through slowing down and living with mindfulness. He encourages love, peacefulness, gratitude for what we have, paying attention to our lives, and not waiting to be happy while we go through suffering. And there are many practices to try, at the end of the book.
The Raging Storm by Ann Cleeves is the third mystery in the Two Rivers (Detective Matthew Venn series). It started out with a murder in a coastal town, a storm with lashing rain, impossible waves, a treacherous coastal path. I loved the feel for Fall reading. And it was good for about halfway through and then I began to lose interest. I think it’s that the people who were being killed off weren’t loathsome enough to be glad they got their just desserts and they weren’t innocent and nice enough to feel sorry for. I just didn’t care. I do recommend Ann Cleeves Vera Stanhope series (set in Northumberland, England) and her Shetland series (set in the–you guessed it–Shetland Islands in Scotland), so if you want great British mysteries definitely give either or both of those a read.
The Enchanted Life: Reclaiming the Magic and Wisdom of the Natural World by Sharon Blackie was one I started last year. Her books are dense with myth, fairytale, poetry, and many personal stories from many different creative people from around the world. She is such a richly storied author, and she’s lived all over the British Isles, so I thoroughly enjoy reading about her experiences. This book was no different. And she had reflection questions interspersed throughout to help the reader take what we were reading and make it part of us. Her chapters on “The Mythic Imagination”, “Coming Home to Ourselves”, and “An Ear to the Ground” were my favorites. She is an advocate for rooting in and learning to know the place we live, for however long we are there., and for living a slower, creative, and more imaginative life. If any of these themes spark something in you, you’ll enjoy this book.
I hope you enjoyed a little glimpse into my current reading life. If you enjoyed this post, you will also like reading my Substack. Here’s my latest post. You can subscribe for free to read one free post a week, or subscribe for $5 per month for access to all my posts, plus the archive. Why become a paid Substack subscriber? To support my writing on Substack plus this blog which is a gift to you: an ad-free, restful, and quiet place among increasingly busy, loud, and frenetic blogs and websites.
I’d love to know what you’re reading right now. Share in comments below!
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The Autumnby Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Go, sit upon the lofty hill,
And turn your eyes around,
Where waving woods and waters wild
Do hymn an autumn sound.
The summer sun is faint on them —
The summer flowers depart —
Sit still — as all transform'd to stone,
Except your musing heart.
How there you sat in summer-time,
May yet be in your mind;
And how you heard the green woods sing
Beneath the freshening wind.
Though the same wind now blows around,
You would its blast recall;
For every breath that stirs the trees,
Doth cause a leaf to fall.
Oh! like that wind, is all the mirth
That flesh and dust impart:
We cannot bear its visitings,
When change is on the heart.
Gay words and jests may make us smile,
When Sorrow is asleep;
But other things must make us smile,
When Sorrow bids us weep!
The dearest hands that clasp our hands, —
Their presence may be o'er;
The dearest voice that meets our ear,
That tone may come no more!
Youth fades; and then, the joys of youth,
Which once refresh'd our mind,
Shall come — as, on those sighing woods,
The chilling autumn wind.
Hear not the wind — view not the woods;
Look out o'er vale and hill-
In spring, the sky encircled them —
The sky is round them still.
Come autumn's scathe — come winter's cold —
Come change — and human fate!
Whatever prospect Heaven doth bound,
Can ne'er be desolate.
You can find this poem in The Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
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October
BY ROBERT FROST
O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
Tomorrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know.
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away.
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—
For the grapes’ sake along the wall.
You can find this poem inThe Poetry of Robert Frost: The Collected Poems, Complete and Unabridged.
Life of Kim 