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Posts Tagged ‘divine’

How

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on December 16, 2023| 13 Comments »


 
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.
            —Rainer Maria Rilke, from “Sonnets to Orpheus 2, 29,” trans. Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows
 
 
When so much is bitter,
it is hard to believe in patience,
hard to trust transformation,
the goodness of time.
How to turn the self
into something it’s not?
The ripest, sweetest grapes
make the strongest wine.
Whatever is sweetest in me
is not me—
is whatever shines through me.
That. I am learning to trust
the sweetness, the ripening
of that.
 

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Street Corner Disciple

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on March 20, 2022| 10 Comments »




And there on the corner
of 43rd and 8th, while sirens
wailed past us and the sun
played hide and seek
behind theaters and high rise hotels,
she told me how, five years
after her husband’s death,
grief has unfolded
into profound tenderness,
how loss has helped her feel
a sense of home in the divine—
and I wished every street corner
in every city
might be so blessed
by conversation,
words that float like incense
through the wailing morning air,
something heady as sweet amber,
sensual as rosemary,
something that infuses
the urban drive
with the woody scent of peace,
something so true it proves
every inch of this scarred earth
is host for the sacred,
and that no matter where we are,
we might find another
who helps us blossom wider
into the shocking flower
of gifts so much greater
than our selves.

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