Books

Evening Poetry, July 29

KimLeave a comment

The Garden By Moonlight

by Amy Lowell

A black cat among roses, 
Phlox, lilac-misted under a first-quarter moon, 
The sweet smells of heliotrope and night-scented stock. 
The garden is very still,   
It is dazed with moonlight, 
Contented with perfume, 
Dreaming the opium dreams of its folded poppies. 
Firefly lights open and vanish   
High as the tip buds of the golden glow 
Low as the sweet alyssum flowers at my feet. 
Moon-shimmer on leaves and trellises, 
Moon-spikes shafting through the snow ball bush.   
Only the little faces of the ladies’ delight are alert and staring, 
Only the cat, padding between the roses, 
Shakes a branch and breaks the chequered pattern 
As water is broken by the falling of a leaf. 
Then you come, 
And you are quiet like the garden, 
And white like the alyssum flowers,   
And beautiful as the silent sparks of the fireflies. 
Ah, Beloved, do you see those orange lilies? 
They knew my mother, 
But who belonging to me will they know 
When I am gone.

You can find this poem in Pictures of a Floating World.

Evening Poetry, July 28

KimLeave a comment

You can find this poem in The Essential Rumi.

There is a way between voice and presence

where information flows.

In disciplined silence it opens.

With wandering talk it closes.

Evening Poetry, July 27

KimLeave a comment

Summer at North Farm

by Stephen Kuusisto

Finnish rural life, ca. 1910

Fires, always fires after midnight,
the sun depending in the purple birches

and gleaming like a copper kettle.
By the solstice they’d burned everything,

the bad-luck sleigh, a twisted rocker,
things “possessed” and not-quite-right.

The bonfire coils and lurches,
big as a house, and then it settles.

The dancers come, dressed like rainbows
(if rainbows could be spun),

and linking hands they turn
to the melancholy fiddles.

A red bird spreads its wings now
and in the darker days to come.

You can find this poem in Only Bread, Only Light.

Evening Poetry, July 26

KimLeave a comment

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

by William Butler Yeats

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

You can find this poem in The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats.

Evening Poetry, July 25

KimLeave a comment

Charlotte Brontë’s Grave

by Emily Dickinson

All overgrown by cunning moss,

All interspersed with weed,

The little cage of “Currer Bell”,

In quiet Haworth laid.

This bird, observing others,

When frosts too sharp became,

Retire to other latitudes,

Quietly did the same.

But differed in returning;

Since Yorkshire hills are green,

Yet not in all the nests I meet

Can nightingale be seen.

Gathered from many wanderings,

Gethsemane can tell

Through what transporting anguish

She reached the asphodel!

Soft fall the sounds of Eden

Upon her puzzled ear;

Oh, what an afternoon for heaven,

When Bronte entered there!

You can find this poem in Hope Is the Thing With Feathers: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson.

Evening Poetry, July 24

KimLeave a comment

You might be asking why I’d have a morning poem as an evening poetry selection. It’s because it is too good to resist sharing, and the last stanza in particular has become a life prayer over the past few years.

Morning Offering

by John O’ Donohue

I bless the night that nourished my heart
To set the ghosts of longing free
Into the flow and figure of dream
That went to harvest from the dark
Bread for the hunger no one sees.

All that is eternal in me
Welcomes the wonder of this day,
The field of brightness it creates
Offering time for each thing
To arise and illuminate.

I place on the altar of dawn:
The quiet loyalty of breath,
The tent of thought where I shelter,
Waves of desire I am shore to
And all beauty drawn to the eye.

May my mind come alive today
To the invisible geography
That invites me to new frontiers,
To break the dead shell of yesterdays,
To risk being disturbed and changed.

May I have the courage today
To live the life that I would love,
To postpone my dream no longer
But do at last what I came here for
And waste my heart on fear no more.

You can find this poem in To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings.

Evening Poetry, June 23

KimLeave a comment

This sweet, old poem was a favorite of both of my children when they were little. My daughter especially loved it and would recite it in her lisping baby voice along with me. Happy memories are wrapped up in this poem!

My Shadow

by Robert Louis Stevenson

I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me, 
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see. 
He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head; 
And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed. 

The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow— 
Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow; 
For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball, 
And he sometimes gets so little that there’s none of him at all. 

He hasn’t got a notion of how children ought to play, 
And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way. 
He stays so close beside me, he’s a coward you can see; 
I’d think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me! 

One morning, very early, before the sun was up, 
I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup; 
But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head, 
Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.

This was the picture book version of My Shadow that I read to my kids; the illustrations are absolutely charming. Although it’s no longer in print, you can read it as a Kindle book or get a used copy.

Evening Poetry, July 22

KimLeave a comment

The Guest House

by Rumi

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing,

and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.

You can find this poem in The Essential Rumi.

Evening Poetry, July 21

KimLeave a comment

You can find this poem in The Book of A Monastic Life in Rilke’s Book of Hours.

I,51

Only in our doing can we grasp you.

Only with our hands can we illuminate you.

The mind is but a visitor:

it thinks us out of our world.

Each mind fabricates itself.

We sense its limits, for we have made them.

And just when we would flee them, you come

and make yourself an offering.

I don’t want to think a place for you.

Speak to me from everywhere.

Your Gospel can be comprehended

without looking for its source.

When I go toward you

it is with my whole life.

Evening Poetry, July 19

KimLeave a comment

Evening

by Emily Dickinson

The cricket sang,

And set the sun,

And workmen finished, one by one,

Their seam the day upon.

The low grass loaded with dew,

The twilight stood as strangers do

With hat in hand, polite and new,

To stay as if, or go.

A vastness, as a neighbor, came,–

A wisdom with face or name,

A peace, as hemispheres at home,–

And so the night became.

You can find this poem in Hope is the Thing With Feathers.