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
Evening Poetry, July 27
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
Evening Poetry, July 18
For Courage
by John O’Donohue
When the light around lessens
And your thoughts darken until
Your body feels fear turn
Cold as a stone inside,
When you find yourself bereft
Of any belief in yourself
And all you unknowingly
Leaned on has fallen,
When one voice commands
Your whole heart,
And it is raven dark,
Steady yourself and see
That it is your own thinking
That darkens your world.
Search and you will find
A diamond-thought of light,
Know that you are not alone,
And that this darkness has purpose;
Gradually it will school your eyes,
To find the one gift your life requires
Hidden within this night-corner.
Invoke the learning
Of every suffering
You have suffered.
Close your eyes.
Gather all the kindling
About your heart
To create one spark
That is all you need
To nourish the flame
That will cleanse the dark
Of its weight of festered fear.
A new confidence will come alive
To urge you towards higher ground
Where your imagination
will learn to engage difficulty
As its most rewarding threshold!
You can find this poem in To Bless The Space Between Us.
Life of Kim 