A Noiseless Patient Spider A noiseless patient spider, I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated, Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding, It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself, Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them. And you O my soul where you stand, Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space, Ceaselessly musing, …
No Amount
the choices You’ve spent too long agonizing over the menu. You've glanced, with equal parts envy and irritation, at your neighboring diners, appearing so at ease with their selection, fingers loose around their forks, a look of unfiltered pleasure on their lips as they bend into the fragrant steam of contentment. You've read through the choices so many times the hunger that brought you here …
Play!
A Ball Is For Throwing See it, the beautiful ball Poised in the toyshop window, Rounder than sun or moon. Is it red? is it blue? is it violet? It is everything we desire, And it does not exist at all. Non-existent and beautiful? Quite. In the rounding leap of our hands, In the longing hush of air, We know what that ball could be, How its blues and reds could spin To a headier …
Empty Field
I love the early morning hours—so fresh and pristinely quiet—right as nighttime is becoming day. Sometimes I go out for a walk, or a bike-ride, to enjoy the gentle light; and birdsong emerging from the uppermost branches of trees. On the streets downtown, delivery trucks park here and there—at efficiently odd angles—providing stores with what they'll need, for the day's business. A …
Driving By
Sitting at a Dharma talk at Plum Village—in south-central France in the summer of 1996—I gazed for a few long seconds out of the large community tent, allowing Thich Nhat's Hanh's words to drift into the background of my attention. In the foreground now was a country road—maybe a football field's distance away—upon which passed a series of slow-driving cars. I thought: How sweetly poignant and …
blessing the boats
blessing the boats may the tide that is entering even now the lip of our understanding carry you out beyond the face of fear may you kiss the wind then turn from it certain that it will love your back may you open your eyes to water water waving forever and may you in your innocence sail through this to that ~ Lucille Clifton * …