a kiss we want with our whole lives

There is some kiss we want
with our whole lives,
the touch of Spirit on the body.

Seawater begs the pearl
to break its shell.

And the lily, how passionately
it needs some wild Darling!

At night, I open the window
and ask the moon to come
and press its face into mine.
Breathe into me.

Close the language-door,
and open the love-window.

The moon won't use the door,
only the window.

--Jelaluddin Rumi, 13th century

a cracker in a Wisconsin wood

My first car was, when I bought it for $300, an antique blue VW Bug. I called her Helen after Helen Hayes from the Love Bug movies. I loved Helen even tho the floor under one of the back seats was totally rusted to the outside, with a board over the hole. I knew Helen's days were numbered but I just had to own a VW Bug once in my life.

On my drive from Chicago to Minneapolis for law school, in my new old beater,  I had car trouble in no-where Wisconsin. A state trooper helped me get my car to a very remote, rural car repair place run by such a strange man. I believe the trooper chose the car repair place solely because it was very where my car broke down. There was no repair garage. Just a junk-filled piece of land with a rusting trailer home in the back.  It did not appear to be a thriving business. He fixed my car quickly but as he worked, he chatted me up. When I said I was from Chicago, he said "I should go to Chicago, find me a new woman, this one I got now," and he jerked his head towards the trailer where he lived with some unfortunate woman before he went on "This one I got now aint no good no more, gotta get me a new, young one." Only he said 'young'un' and spit some of his chew out as he said it, as if he wanted to emphasize his contempt for the unfortunate woman he already seemed to believe he owned. I vaguely suspected he thought he was flirting with me. I believed he had no idea I found him repugnant.

The woman inside the old, shabby trailer kept peeking out behind curtains, rustling a bit, so I knew she was not only there but heard what her man said to me about her. I wondered if she was jealous of 24 year old, 'young un', me. She had no worries where I was concerned.  And she probably knew that.

I felt safe because that state trooper had delivered me to that strange, tobacco chewing and spitting man. Pig would be a more appropriate way to refer to him. A part of me kept expecting to hear twangy banjo music and see a gaggle of creepy neanderthals, or cross-eyed children with six fingers on one hand,  appear from the surrounding woods.  I had gone to college in Wisconsin and thought of it as a very civilized place. I was quite surprised to find that creepy guy, his creepy house trailer and his creepy-seeming life in my beloved Wisconsin.

I had an impulse to invite the woman cowering in the trailer to get in and drive away with me but I did not act on it.  I kept thinking "I am just imagining how weird this man is" and "He can't be violent, the state trooper wouldn't have left me here if he were". And I also thought "Maybe he buries his victims behind the trailer, in them there woods and no one has figured out he is a serial killer." And, finally, "How long until you are done?" That question I said aloud. He did the repair quickly. He obviously had no other business and was very eager to earn some money. He charged me very little, an amount so low it surprised me. He was probably just a poorly educated, damaged man. His line about getting a good woman down Chicagey-way, which is how he said Chicago, had creeped me out and tipped me that he had probably never been to Chicago. I almost suggested that Milwaukee or Madison might be closer to find a new good woman but my saner self kept all my thoughts to myself.

Perhaps he had noted that my car was packed to the gills with all my worldly goods and wondered if I were seeking a new life, a new man. Nope. I was just headed to law school and I told him that but I don't think he got what that meant. Once, while in law school, a man delivered a dozen roses to me and asked how I was home during the day. I said I was on Christmas break from law school and he said "Oh, like a program to be a legal secretary."  I did not say, only thought, "No, like a program to become a fucking lawyer, you nitwit."  I did not tip him, my revenge for the legal secretary chauvism.

I also had an impulse, which I also successfully suppressed, to express my revulsion for the man. That car repair experience was so much like a scene out of the early part of the movie 'Deliverance'.

I drove from Minneapolis to Chicago and back a few times every year for the next twenty years or so, on the same interstate that gently banks through the soft rolling hills of Western Wisconsin. I love that drive. For many years, I always took note when I was near where I had that car repair. I sometimes thought I might pull off the interstate, drive along the frontage road to see if the trailer was still there but I never did. Instead, I usually stopped at the original Norske Nook in Osseo. The Norske Nook was famous for its many, many kinds of pie.  In this part of the world, any good pie shop will sell you half slices of pie so you can try two kinds of pie. It was fun slowly making our selections, for my daughter eventually joined me on these road trips. She loved the Norse Nook.

I sometimes had hopeful thoughts about the woman in that trailer, as I rushed through that part of the WI intersate, recalling how she had peeked at me behind her curtains, trying to convince myself she was happy.

Neither of those people were happy. That semi-toothless, chewing tobacco spitting man was never going to Chicago-way and was never gonna get a better woman than the one over in the run down trailer.

That trailer wasn't even properly mounted. Its tires had been removed and it was just plopped on the ground. It must have had running water, for I saw no outhouse.  I had spent my college years in Wisconsin but that trailer was my first glimpse of poverty in WI. My first up close glimpse of poverty in America, even though I grew up in Chicago. I did not know poor people growing up, although Chicago had its share of them.

I spent a lot of time abroad as an undergrad, living in Mexico, then Colombia, then Spain.  I saw the most poverty in Colombia. As near as I, and the other American students in my program could tell, Colombia offered no social support for the poor, disabled and elderly.

So I had seen lots of poverty up close during the year I lived in Bogotá, and I met that car repair trailer living man post-Colombia. That car repair trailer man seemed more impoverished, of mind, soul, heart and money, than the hordes of beggars I saw daily in Bogotá.  He was so creepy.

I keep hearing that jangling banjo music from the beginning of the movie Deliverance.Creepy.

your silence does not protect you

As Audre Lorde said, 'Your silence will not protect you.' You deserve your own love directed toward you.

when you weren't very lovable

If anyone has loved me when I wasn't being very lovable, they hid that love well. No one loves me like this.

everything you want . . .

Everything you want
is on the other side of fear
There is only love and fear
And fear is not real
It is a projection of your doubt

a projection of your lack of trust

you meet your destiny

6 exercises to open heart

This is a beautiful summary of core work.

fear is suppressed hate

Two things must be completely avoided during occult training.
We should never harm anyone through deeds, thoughts or words
intentionally or not.Secondly, the feeling of hate must disappear
in us, otherwise it reappears as a feeling of fear; for fear is suppressed hate.

We must transform the hate into a feeling of love, the love of wisdom.
Rudolf Steiner

 I am a lonely traveler. I have harmed people I love and they abandon me. I am weak. I am flawed. But I feel no hate and no fear. I forgive myself even if any I have harmed cannot. In doing so, I transform my flawed self into a loving one.

true love will find you

True love will find you in the end
But only if you are looking
Can it find you
Don't give up until
True love will find you in the end
This is a promise with a catch
Only if you are are looking
Can it find you
True love is searching too
But how can it recognize you
Unless you step out into the light
Don't be sad
I know you will
Don't give up until

True love will find you in the end

salute the love ability, summon endearment

every heart sings incomplete until . . ..

Every heart sings a song, incomplete,until another heart whispers back. - Plato

The Golden Tunnel

I have been living in a golden light in recent months, steadily imbued with a deep sense of feeling loved and loving. But right now, I've stumbled and fumbled into a bit of a black hole. I feel like all the nonsense I've been spouting about love is pure, unadulterated baloney and I'm an idiot. But still, I am also thinking maybe I can be in the golden light and in the black hole simultaneously.

w/the wings of a wren

This stanza from Sexton's poem, Words, floated through me all last evening:

Sometimes I fly like an eagle
but with the wings of a wren

This morning, as every morning, I am flying with the wings of a wren. But, still, flying, so that counts for something.

an uncommon bond

waiting for when we are needed

 To whoever keeps trying to use feedburner to follow my blog:  you will keep getting the same posts from this date because I have cancelled the feedburner option. You have to look at my blog in real time. You can no longer use a feed to read my blog.

WAITING TO GO ON
…It must be
we are waiting
for the perfect moment.
It must be
under all the struggle
we want to go on.
It must be,
that deep down,
we are creatures
getting ready
for when we are needed.
It must be that waiting
for the listening ear
or the appreciative word,
for the right
woman or the right man
or the right moment
just to ourselves,
we are getting ready
just to be ready
and nothing else.
Like this moment
just before the guests arrive
working
alone in the kitchen
sensing a deep
down symmetry
in every blessed thing.
The way
that everything
unbeknownst
to us
is preparing
to meet us too.
Just on the other
side of the door
someone
is about to knock
and our life
is just
about to change
and finally
after all these
years rehearsing,
behind
the curtain,
we might
just be
ready
to go on.
...
From ‘Waiting to Go On’: in ‘River Flow:
New and Selected Poems’
©David Whyte and Many Rivers Press

I saw the bud-crowned spring go forth

this is a very long poem.  I think of Emerson as a political philosopher. I tend to forget he was a poet.

May-Day

by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Daughter of Heaven and Earth, coy Spring,
With sudden passion languishing,
Teaching Barren moors to smile,
Painting pictures mile on mile,
Holds a cup with cowslip-wreaths,
Whence a smokeless incense breathes.
The air is full of whistlings bland;
What was that I heard
Out of the hazy land?
Harp of the wind, or song of bird,
Or vagrant booming of the air,
Voice of a meteor lost in day?
Such tidings of the starry sphere
Can this elastic air convey.
Or haply 'twas the cannonade
Of the pent and darkened lake,
Cooled by the pendent mountain's shade,
Whose deeps, till beams of noonday break,
Afflicted moan, and latest hold
Even into May the iceberg cold.
Was it a squirrel's pettish bark,
Or clarionet of jay? or hark
Where yon wedged line the Nestor leads,
Steering north with raucous cry
Through tracts and provinces of sky,
Every night alighting down
In new landscapes of romance,
Where darkling feed the clamorous clans
By lonely lakes to men unknown.
Come the tumult whence it will,
Voice of sport, or rush of wings,
It is a sound, it is a token
That the marble sleep is broken,
And a change has passed on things.

  When late I walked, in earlier days,
All was stiff and stark;
Knee-deep snows choked all the ways,
In the sky no spark;
Firm-braced I sought my ancient woods,
Struggling through the drifted roads;
The whited desert knew me not,
Snow-ridges masked each darling spot;
The summer dells, by genius haunted,
One arctic moon had disenchanted.
All the sweet secrets therein hid
By Fancy, ghastly spells undid.
Eldest mason, Frost, had piled
Swift cathedrals in the wild;
The piny hosts were sheeted ghosts
In the star-lit minster aisled.
I found no joy: the icy wind
Might rule the forest to his mind.
Who would freeze on frozen lakes?
Back to books and sheltered home,
And wood-fire flickering on the walls,
To hear, when, 'mid our talk and games,
Without the baffled North-wind calls.
But soft! a sultry morning breaks;
The ground-pines wash their rusty green,
The maple-tops their crimson tint,
On the soft path each track is seen,
The girl's foot leaves its neater print.
The pebble loosened from the frost
Asks of the urchin to be tost.
In flint and marble beats a heart,
The kind Earth takes her children's part,
The green lane is the school-boy's friend,
Low leaves his quarrel apprehend,
The fresh ground loves his top and ball,
The air rings jocund to his call,
The brimming brook invites a leap,
He dives the hollow, climbs the steep.
The youth sees omens where he goes,
And speaks all languages the rose,
The wood-fly mocks with tiny voice
The far halloo of human voice;
The perfumed berry on the spray
Smacks of faint memories far away.
A subtle chain of countless rings
The next into the farthest brings,
And, striving to be man, the worm
Mounts through all the spires of form.

  The caged linnet in the Spring
Hearkens for the choral glee,
When his fellows on the wing
Migrate from the Southern Sea;
When trellised grapes their flowers unmask,
And the new-born tendrils twine,
The old wine darkling in the cask
Feels the bloom on the living vine,
And bursts the hoops at hint of Spring:
And so, perchance, in Adam's race,
Of Eden's bower some dream-like trace
Survived the Flight and swam the Flood,
And wakes the wish in youngest blood
To tread the forfeit Paradise,
And feed once more the exile's eyes;
And ever when the happy child
In May beholds the blooming wild,
And hears in heaven the bluebird sing,
'Onward,' he cries, 'your baskets bring,—
In the next field is air more mild,
And o'er yon hazy crest is Eden's balmier spring.'

  Not for a regiment's parade,
Nor evil laws or rulers made,
Blue Walden rolls its cannonade,
But for a lofty sign
Which the Zodiac threw,
That the bondage-days are told.
And waters free as winds shall flow.
Lo! how all the tribes combine
To rout the flying foe.
See, every patriot oak-leaf throws
His elfin length upon the snows,
Not idle, since the leaf all day
Draws to the spot the solar ray,
Ere sunset quarrying inches down,
And halfway to the mosses brown;
While the grass beneath the rime
Has hints of the propitious time,
And upward pries and perforates
Through the cold slab a thousand gates,
Till green lances peering through
Bend happy in the welkin blue.

  As we thaw frozen flesh with snow,
So Spring will not her time forerun,
Mix polar night with tropic glow,
Nor cloy us with unshaded sun,
Nor wanton skip with bacchic dance,
But she has the temperance
Of the gods, whereof she is one,—
Masks her treasury of heat
Under east winds crossed with sleet.
Plants and birds and humble creatures
Well accept her rule austere;
Titan-born, to hardy natures
Cold is genial and dear.
As Southern wrath to Northern right
Is but straw to anthracite;
As in the day of sacrifice,
When heroes piled the pyre,
The dismal Massachusetts ice
Burned more than others' fire,
So Spring guards with surface cold
The garnered heat of ages old.
Hers to sow the seed of bread,
That man and all the kinds be fed;
And, when the sunlight fills the hours,
Dissolves the crust, displays the flowers.

  Beneath the calm, within the light,
A hid unruly appetite
Of swifter life, a surer hope,
Strains every sense to larger scope,
Impatient to anticipate
The halting steps of aged Fate.
Slow grows the palm, too slow the pearl:
When Nature falters, fain would zeal
Grasp the felloes of her wheel,
And grasping give the orbs another whirl.
Turn swiftlier round, O tardy ball!
And sun this frozen side.
Bring hither back the robin's call,
Bring back the tulip's pride.

  Why chidest thou the tardy Spring?
The hardy bunting does not chide;
The blackbirds make the maples ring
With social cheer and jubilee;
The redwing flutes his o-ka-lee,
The robins know the melting snow;
The sparrow meek, prophetic-eyed,
Her nest beside the snow-drift weaves,
Secure the osier yet will hide
Her callow brood in mantling leaves,—
And thou, by science all undone,
Why only must thy reason fail
To see the southing of the sun?

  The world rolls round,—mistrust it not,—
Befalls again what once befell;
All things return, both sphere and mote,
And I shall hear my bluebird's note,
And dream the dream of Auburn dell.

  April cold with dropping rain
Willows and lilacs brings again,
The whistle of returning birds,
And trumpet-lowing of the herds.
The scarlet maple-keys betray
What potent blood hath modest May,
What fiery force the earth renews,
The wealth of forms, the flush of hues;
What joy in rosy waves outpoured
Flows from the heart of Love, the Lord.

  Hither rolls the storm of heat;
I feel its finer billows beat
Like a sea which me infolds;
Heat with viewless fingers moulds,
Swells, and mellows, and matures,
Paints, and flavors, and allures,
Bird and brier inly warms,
Still enriches and transforms,
Gives the reed and lily length,
Adds to oak and oxen strength,
Transforming what it doth infold,
Life out of death, new out of old,
Painting fawns' and leopards' fells,
Seethes the gulf-encrimsoning shells,
Fires gardens with a joyful blaze
Of tulips, in the morning's rays.
The dead log touched bursts into leaf,
The wheat-blade whispers of the sheaf.
What god is this imperial Heat,
Earth's prime secret, sculpture's seat?
Doth it bear hidden in its heart
Water-line patterns of all art?
Is it Daedalus? is it Love?
Or walks in mask almighty Jove,
And drops from Power's redundant horn
All seeds of beauty to be born?

  Where shall we keep the holiday,
And duly greet the entering May?
Too strait and low our cottage doors,
And all unmeet our carpet floors;
Nor spacious court, nor monarch's hall,
Suffice to hold the festival.
Up and away! where haughty woods
Front the liberated floods:
We will climb the broad-backed hills,
Hear the uproar of their joy;
We will mark the leaps and gleams
Of the new-delivered streams,
And the murmuring rivers of sap
Mount in the pipes of the trees,
Giddy with day, to the topmost spire,
Which for a spike of tender green
Bartered its powdery cap;
And the colors of joy in the bird,
And the love in its carol heard,
Frog and lizard in holiday coats,
And turtle brave in his golden spots;
While cheerful cries of crag and plain
Reply to the thunder of river and main.

  As poured the flood of the ancient sea
Spilling over mountain chains,
Bending forests as bends the sedge,
Faster flowing o'er the plains,—
A world-wide wave with a foaming edge
That rims the running silver sheet,—
So pours the deluge of the heat
Broad northward o'er the land,
Painting artless paradises,
Drugging herbs with Syrian spices,
Fanning secret fires which glow
In columbine and clover-blow,
Climbing the northern zones,
Where a thousand pallid towns
Lie like cockles by the main,
Or tented armies on a plain.
The million-handed sculptor moulds
Quaintest bud and blossom folds,
The million-handed painter pours
Opal hues and purple dye;
Azaleas flush the island floors,
And the tints of heaven reply.

  Wreaths for the May! for happy Spring
To-day shall all her dowry bring,
The love of kind, the joy, the grace,
Hymen of element and race,
Knowing well to celebrate
With song and hue and star and state,
With tender light and youthful cheer,
The spousals of the new-born year.

  Spring is strong and virtuous,
Broad-sowing, cheerful, plenteous,
Quickening underneath the mould
Grains beyond the price of gold.
So deep and large her bounties are,
That one broad, long midsummer day
Shall to the planet overpay
The ravage of a year of war.

  Drug the cup, thou butler sweet,
And send the nectar round;
The feet that slid so long on sleet
Are glad to feel the ground.
Fill and saturate each kind
With good according to its mind,
Fill each kind and saturate
With good agreeing with its fate,
And soft perfection of its plan—
Willow and violet, maiden and man.

  The bitter-sweet, the haunting air
Creepeth, bloweth everywhere;
It preys on all, all prey on it.
Blooms in beauty, thinks in wit,
Stings the strong with enterprise,
Makes travellers long for Indian skies,
And where it comes this courier fleet
Fans in all hearts expectance sweet,
As if to-morrow should redeem
The vanished rose of evening's dream.
By houses lies a fresher green,
On men and maids a ruddier mien,
As if Time brought a new relay
Of shining virgins every May,
And Summer came to ripen maids
To a beauty that not fades.

  I saw the bud-crowned Spring go forth,
Stepping daily onward north
To greet staid ancient cavaliers
Filing single in stately train.
And who, and who are the travellers?
They were Night and Day, and Day and Night,
Pilgrims wight with step forthright.
I saw the Days deformed and low,
Short and bent by cold and snow;
The merry Spring threw wreaths on them,
Flower-wreaths gay with bud and bell;
Many a flower and many a gem,
They were refreshed by the smell,
They shook the snow from hats and shoon,
They put their April raiment on;
And those eternal forms,
Unhurt by a thousand storms,
Shot up to the height of the sky again,
And danced as merrily as young men.
I saw them mask their awful glance
Sidewise meek in gossamer lids;
And to speak my thought if none forbids
It was as if the eternal gods,
Tired of their starry periods,
Hid their majesty in cloth
Woven of tulips and painted moth.
On carpets green the maskers march
Below May's well-appointed arch,
Each star, each god; each grace amain,
Every joy and virtue speed,
Marching duly in her train,
And fainting Nature at her need
Is made whole again.

  'Twas the vintage-day of field and wood,
When magic wine for bards is brewed;
Every tree and stem and chink
Gushed with syrup to the brink.
The air stole into the streets of towns,
Refreshed the wise, reformed the clowns,
And betrayed the fund of joy
To the high-school and medalled boy:
On from hall to chamber ran,
From youth to maid, from boy to man,
To babes, and to old eyes as well.
'Once more,' the old man cried, 'ye clouds,
Airy turrets purple-piled,
Which once my infancy beguiled,
Beguile me with the wonted spell.
I know ye skilful to convoy
The total freight of hope and joy
Into rude and homely nooks,
Shed mocking lustres on shelf of books,
On farmer's byre, on pasture rude,
And stony pathway to the wood.
I care not if the pomps you show
Be what they soothfast appear,
Or if yon realms in sunset glow
Be bubbles of the atmosphere.
And if it be to you allowed
To fool me with a shining cloud,
So only new griefs are consoled
By new delights, as old by old,
Frankly I will be your guest,
Count your change and cheer the best.
The world hath overmuch of pain,—
If Nature give me joy again,
Of such deceit I'll not complain.'

  Ah! well I mind the calendar,
Faithful through a thousand years,
Of the painted race of flowers,
Exact to days, exact to hours,
Counted on the spacious dial
Yon broidered zodiac girds.
I know the trusty almanac
Of the punctual coming-back,
On their due days, of the birds.
I marked them yestermorn,
A flock of finches darting
Beneath the crystal arch,
Piping, as they flew, a march,—
Belike the one they used in parting
Last year from yon oak or larch;
Dusky sparrows in a crowd,
Diving, darting northward free,
Suddenly betook them all,
Every one to his hole in the wall,
Or to his niche in the apple-tree.
I greet with joy the choral trains
Fresh from palms and Cuba's canes.
Best gems of Nature's cabinet,
With dews of tropic morning wet,
Beloved of children, bards and Spring,
O birds, your perfect virtues bring,
Your song, your forms, your rhythmic flight,
Your manners for the heart's delight,
Nestle in hedge, or barn, or roof,
Here weave your chamber weather-proof,
Forgive our harms, and condescend
To man, as to a lubber friend,
And, generous, teach his awkward race
Courage and probity and grace!

  Poets praise that hidden wine
Hid in milk we drew
At the barrier of Time,
When our life was new.
We had eaten fairy fruit,
We were quick from head to foot,
All the forms we looked on shone
As with diamond dews thereon.
What cared we for costly joys,
The Museum's far-fetched toys?
Gleam of sunshine on the wall
Poured a deeper cheer than all
The revels of the Carnival.
We a pine-grove did prefer
To a marble theatre,
Could with gods on mallows dine,
Nor cared for spices or for wine.
Wreaths of mist and rainbow spanned.
Arch on arch, the grimmest land;
Whittle of a woodland bird
Made the pulses dance,
Note of horn in valleys heard
Filled the region with romance.

  None can tell how sweet,
How virtuous, the morning air;
Every accent vibrates well;
Not alone the wood-bird's call,
Or shouting boys that chase their ball,
Pass the height of minstrel skill,
But the ploughman's thoughtless cry,
Lowing oxen, sheep that bleat,
And the joiner's hammer-beat,
Softened are above their will,
Take tones from groves they wandered through
Or flutes which passing angels blew.
All grating discords melt,
No dissonant note is dealt,
And though thy voice be shrill
Like rasping file on steel,
Such is the temper of the air,
Echo waits with art and care,
And will the faults of song repair.

  So by remote Superior Lake,
And by resounding Mackinac,
When northern storms the forest shake,
And billows on the long beach break,
The artful Air will separate
Note by note all sounds that grate,
Smothering in her ample breast
All but godlike words,
Reporting to the happy ear
Only purified accords.
Strangely wrought from barking waves,
Soft music daunts the Indian braves,—
Convent-chanting which the child
Hears pealing from the panther's cave
And the impenetrable wild.

  Soft on the South-wind sleeps the haze:
So on thy broad mystic van
Lie the opal-colored days,
And waft the miracle to man.
Soothsayer of the eldest gods,
Repairer of what harms betide,
Revealer of the inmost powers
Prometheus proffered, Jove denied;
Disclosing treasures more than true,
Or in what far to-morrow due;
Speaking by the tongues of flowers,
By the ten-tongued laurel speaking,
Singing by the oriole songs,
Heart of bird the man's heart seeking;
Whispering hints of treasure hid
Under Morn's unlifted lid,
Islands looming just beyond
The dim horizon's utmost bound;—
Who can, like thee, our rags upbraid,
Or taunt us with our hope decayed?
Or who like thee persuade,
Making the splendor of the air,
The morn and sparkling dew, a snare?
Or who resent
Thy genius, wiles and blandishment?

  There is no orator prevails
To beckon or persuade
Like thee the youth or maid:
Thy birds, thy songs, thy brooks, thy gales,
Thy blooms, thy kinds,
Thy echoes in the wilderness,
Soothe pain, and age, and love's distress,
Fire fainting will, and build heroic minds.

  For thou, O Spring! canst renovate
All that high God did first create.
Be still his arm and architect,
Rebuild the ruin, mend defect;
Chemist to vamp old worlds with new,
Coat sea and sky with heavenlier blue,
New tint the plumage of the birds,
And slough decay from grazing herds,
Sweep ruins from the scarped mountain,
Cleanse the torrent at the fountain,
Purge alpine air by towns defiled,
Bring to fair mother fairer child,
Not less renew the heart and brain,
Scatter the sloth, wash out the stain,
Make the aged eye sun-clear,
To parting soul bring grandeur near.
Under gentle types, my Spring
Masks the might of Nature's king,
An energy that searches thorough
From Chaos to the dawning morrow;
Into all our human plight,
The soul's pilgrimage and flight;
In city or in solitude,
Step by step, lifts bad to good,
Without halting, without rest,
Lifting Better up to Best;
Planting seeds of knowledge pure,
Through earth to ripen, through heaven endure.

we must risk delight

another poem on last day of poetry month 2016. . . . I've posted two fierce poems today.

A Brief for the Defense. by Jack Gilbert

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that’s what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.

poetry is what he thought but could not say

I've posted this fiercely beautiful, and moving, poem before.  I love to reread this one.Today is last day of poetry month 2016.

*********************************************************************************

What He Thought by Heather McHugh, American  poet

We were supposed to do a job in Italy and full of our feeling for ourselves
(our sense of being Poets from America) we went from Rome to Fano, met the Mayor,
mulled a couple matters over. (what’s cheap date, they asked us: what’s flat drink)
Among Italian literati we could recognize our counterparts: the academic,the apologist, the arrogant,
the amorous, the brazen and the glib.
And there was one administrator (The Conservative),in suit of regulation gray,
who like a good tour guide with measured pace and uninflected tone
narrated sights and histories the hired van hauled us past.
Of all he was most politic — and least poetic — so it seemed.
Our last few days in Rome I found a book of poems this unprepossessing one had written:
it was there in the pensione room (a room he’d recommended)
where it must have been abandoned by the German visitor
(was there a bus of them?) to whom he had inscribed and dated it a month before.
I couldn’t read Italian either, so I put the book back in the wardrobe’s dark.
We last Americans were due to leave tomorrow. For our parting evening then
our host chose something in a family restaurant, and there we sat and chatted, sat and chewed, till sensible it was our last big chance to be Poetic, make our mark, one of us asked “What’s poetry?
Is it the fruits and vegetables and marketplace at Campo dei Fiori or the statue there?”
Because I was the glib one, I identified the answer instantly, I didn’t have to think —
“The truth is both, it’s both!” I blurted out. But that was easy. That was easiest to say.
What followed taught me something about difficulty, for our underestimated host spoke out all of a sudden, with a rising passion, and he said:
The statue represents Giordano Bruno, Brought to be burned in the public square
because of his offence against authority, which was to say the Church.
His crime was his belief the universe does not revolve around the human being:
God is no fixed point or central government but rather is poured in waves, through all things: All things move. “If God is not the soul itself he is the soul of the soul of the world.”
Such was his heresy. The day they brought him forth to die they feared he might incite the crowd
(the manwas famous for his eloquence).
And so his captors placed upon his face an iron mask in which he could not speak.
That is how they burned him.
That is how he died, without a word,in front of everyone.
And poetry —

(we’d all put down our forks by now, to listen to the man in gray; he went on softly)
—
poetry is what he thought, but did not say.

A Woman Speaks by Audre Lorde

I've been neglecting poetry month, which is April. I have a couple days left!

A Woman Speaks
By Audre Lorde
Moon marked and touched by sun
my magic is unwritten
but when the sea turns back
it will leave my shape behind.
I seek no favor
untouched by blood
unrelenting as the curse of love
permanent as my errors
or my pride
I do not mix
love with pity
nor hate with scorn
and if you would know me
look into the entrails of Uranus
where the restless oceans pound.

I do not dwell
within my birth nor my divinities
who am ageless and half-grown
and still seeking
my sisters
witches in Dahomey
wear me inside their coiled cloths
as our mother did
mourning.
I have been woman
for a long time
beware my smile
I am treacherous with old magic
and the noon's new fury
with all your wide futures
promised
I am
woman
and not white.
Audre Lorde, “A Woman Speaks” from The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde. Copyright © 1997 by Audre Lorde.

modeling self acceptance to toddlers with nudity

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Cheryl left her home when she was fifteen.   Her father had long since disappeared and her one older, half-brother was also long gone. She knew he lived in Maine but had no way to contact him. She kept track of her mother  after leaving home but, for the most part, they did not have a relationship again until her mother was at the end stages of dying of cancer. Then Cheryl took her in for the last months of her life. And she did so grudgingly.   ©
Cheryl is unusually tall, about six feet two inches,  very thin, with a crooked nose that turned left then, somehow, right, she still managed to appear appealing, if not quite beautiful. She had never cut her hair so it was quite long, below her hips. It was also very thin and it billowed behind her as she moved through the world, a cloud of a goddess gliding along. Then, and now that she is in her fifties, she appeared to float along the ground rather than walk, her hair down to her hip billowing around her as she walked. One had a sense that she floated a few inches off the crowd. That she glided, and did not walk as mere mortals do. She had and still has an ephemeral air. She is a finely wrought energy.
 ©
It was no surprise to anyone who knew her, or anyone holding stereotypes about hippies in the early seventies, that Cheryl landed in a hippie commune just outside of Baltimore, the city she had grown up in. It was a commune that consisted mostly of therapists and wannabe Waldorf teachers but they were all hippies.©

There were several homes rented by the group, all chosen for their proximity to one another.©

Just as Cheryl joined this group, the young adults with children decided to open a Waldorf School.

Now that I have sent my daughter to a Waldorf School, sat on the board of a Waldorf school for many years and even completed a Masters in Anthroposophical Community Development, I know that everyone who teaches in a Waldorf School is supposed to be grounded both in Waldorf pedagogy and Anthroposophy. Back in the seventies, there were two fledging Waldorf teacher training programs in this country, one on each coast. There was no training in Baltimore. And the "Waldorf" school Cheryl's hippie commune decided to start had no Waldorf trained teachers, although everyone working in the school did their best to apply Waldorf principles.©

Waldorf is more than art combined with hippie values. Waldorf education, beginning in preschool, is built upon solid pedagogical theory. A Waldorf teacher approaches every child with reverence and every lesson offered to children with even more reverence.

I am skeptical about the foundations of the Baltimore Waldorf school, in the Cheryl years,  based on Cheryl's early hippie escape from normal life. When that school opened, it hired by-then-seventeen year old Cheryl, along with a teenage boy, to run the preschool. Cheryl had been living with and hanging out with many young adults who, apparently, tended to forget she was a minor, and, for all her seeming maturity, was still a child. Heck, she was probably having statutory rape sex with some of the guys in the © commune. 

The preschool was really a day care program for the children of all the hippies, regardless of their roles in the school. The preschool would accept children whose parents did not work at the school but few parents from outside the school community chose a preschool run by high school drop-out teens. Imagine having two high school drop outs, both 17, running a "preschool". Babysitting, sure, they were qualified to babysit. They were qualified to keep the children alive, feed them lunch and snacks and take them on outings to the park, two by two. To bill that preschool as a Waldorf preschool with  Waldorf preschool teachers was a big stretch.Having said that, I acknowledge that Cheryl told me all the 'teachers' in the school had ongoing training.  Every summer, most Waldorf teachers, with or without Waldorf teacher training, take continuing education programs to prepare them for the coming school year. If a teacher's class was heading into the third grade, the teacher usually spends part of his summer at a class about Waldorf pedagogy for the third grade. Etc. ©

Years later, after Cheryl and I had parted ways as business partners or friends, I got to know the administrator of the Baltimore Waldorf School, which was the same embryonic Waldorf School that gave seventeen year old Cheryl her first job. I met that administrator in my Waldorf School Administrator program at Sunbridge College, in suburban New York City. He was professional, well grounded both in Waldorf pedagogy and Anthroposophy. He assured me that all of the teachers at his school finally had Waldorf teacher training or were regular certified and licensed teachers who, during the summers, received Waldorf pedagogy training one grade at a time. And he assured me that he remembered Cheryl, for he had held off enrolling his children in her preschool group, waiting to enroll his kids in kindergarden with a real, adult teacher. ©

Cheryl and I became business partners in the mid-eighties. We offer five-day intensives that we invented as we went along. Encounter groups, I guess. Metaphysics. We relied a lot on A Course in Miracles. We offered all our training for self-determined fees which turned out to be great marketing. Folks would sign up thinking they'd get a free five-day training in metaphysics but they did not count on the workshops being so great that they would end up paying us, often and of course not always, a lot of money.  Cheryl and I found that the more equanimous we were about how much money we were paid, the more money we got. We learned to be totally accepting when someone paid nothing. Invariably, if someone paid nothing, someone else wrote us a check for two grand. And this was in the eighties.
When she and I were still partners, for I don't know what she does these days, we used the fellowship hall of a Unity church. The pastor charged us a percentage of whatever money we received so it was affordable. And the pastor was a great guy who became our friend.©
Cheryl traveled from Baltimore to Minneapolis every other month, doing her intensive in Baltimore in the in-between months with me traveling to Baltimore every other month.  We fell into the habit of always having lunch with Reverend Phil the day before our next intensive in Minneapolis. 
Phil loved our lunches. He said his parishioners didn't tend to see him as a friend, but as a religious counselor and teacher, so they did not hang out with him over lunch. Since his entire life revolved around the church, he did not have, he told us, a lot of social friends. He had a wife and they were happy. And of course they had friends.  I guess he just liked being treated to lunch by us, for he was always very happy about those lunches.

We always went to ethnic restaurants for those lunches. Ethiopian, Burmese, Afghani. The Afghan one was my personal favorite, it was close to Phil's church and we had fallen into the habit of going there. Phil got bored with Afghani food one day and asked if we could go to a deli for sandwiches. of course we agreed.
That deli lunch stands out for me because of the stories shared over those sandwiches.
Phil began our lunch conversation by recounting his and his wife's recent dinner party. They had invited six couples over for dinner. The invitation had said "Please bring the story of your most embarrassing moment to share."  Phil and his wife had thought their invitation was a clear signal to have fun but most of the invited guests had declined to accept the invite. Only two couples accepted and attended that dinner. Phil laughed hard, and so did Cheryl and I, as he speculated on people's possible reactions to their dinner invitation. What the heck did those people think Phil and his wife expected people to share? He told us he and his wife had thought people would bring funny stories and that their invitation would get the party off on a fun note.
After cuing up the somewhat failed dinner party invitation, Phil shared with us his most embarrassing moment that he had shared with his smaller-than-anticipated dinner party. I don't remember Phil's story.
Then Cheryl asked if she could tell us about her most embarrassing moment. Of course Phil and I wanted to hear it.
When she was seventeen, working at her first paid job as a Waldorf preschool teacher, Cheryl and her teenage boy preschool co-teacher had decided the children, toddlers ages two, three and maybe four, needed lessons in accepting their bodies.

As a sidebar, I have to say that I have never met a toddler who needed this lesson. I also have to point out that I am sure Cheryl and her co-preschool co-teacher did not consult any of the actual teachers, or actual adults, at that school with their plan.  Although some teachers might have agreed with the idea that teaching very little children to accept their bodies was a good lesson, I am very sure no actual adult and teacher would have approved Cheryl's lesson plan for the day in question.
Cheryl and her male preschool co-teacher decided to spend the day in the nude and to inite the children to go nude that day. They did not insist that the children go nude. No child chose to be nude that day and this reinforced for Cheryl her conviction that the children needed work on accepting their bodies.

Again, I have to share a bit of my experience with toddlers. Many, but probably not all, toddlers will happily remove their clothing to run nude under a water sprinkler on a hot day. Many toddlers might remove their clothes impulsively and forget they are naked. Few toddlers, I believe, when  invited by persons they perceive as adult authority figures, ever accept such an invitation and then strip to nakedness in a group.

I totally get why the kids declined to go nude when Cheryl suggested it as an option. If she and her co-teacher had instructed the children to take off their clothes, they probably would have obeyed. The child would have been confused but obedient. Thank goddess it was an open-ended suggestion that the children all felt free to decline.

So there was nude Cheryl and her nude male co-teacher, spending the day in the school's garden, outdoors, with about ten fully clothed toddlers, with Cheryl and her co-worker hoping that at some point the children would grok something about nudity and strip of their own accord.

All Waldorf schools schedule regular marketing tours,especially back in the early seventies. Enrolling students so the school could pay its bills was a constant challenge. These tours tend to happen at the same time each month, like the second Tuesday of each month from 10 a.m. until noon. Adult teachers would factor the tour into their day's lessons plans, striving to be doing something appealing when the prospective parents of paying students came to observe the school to good advantage.
On the day Cheryl decided to teacher her toddlers her idea of how to be comfortable in one's own body, the day she and her male co-worker spent nude with a group of children not their own, the marketing tour group came out into the garden.

Cheryl, bless her seventeen year old naivete, forgot she was nude and warmly greeted the tour guide, a friend of hers, and then began introducing herself to the prospective parents who were checking out the school with an eye to enrolling their children. Tours meant tuition. Cheryl noticed that the tour guide and those on the tour were acting strangely. They did not look at Cheryl directly. They acted uncomfortable. It took naive seventeen year old Cheryl a minute or two to even register that she was getting strange reactions. I think she had to actually have her nudity pointed out by the tour guide, also a school employee and, very likely, Cheryl's friend.

At that point, the tour group hustled back indoors and Cheryl felt the most embarrassed she ever had.
This is the story Cheryl told us in that deli with Reverend Phil. I wanted to ask her how the rest of the school's faculty had reacted to Cheryl's choice to have two nude adults spend the day with other people/s children without their parents knowledge or consent but the moment to ask never seemed to arrive.  I wanted to hear that those two dopey teenagers were supervised more closely after that day spent in the nude with the children. Lunch, after all, is only an hour.  As soon as Cheryl had told us her story, we paid the check and moved on with our day.