a Rilke tree poem

Thinking of the beauty of trees, I've been reading some of my favourite poets for their images and tree-metaphors. Here's one:

"Prelude

Whoever you are: at evening step forth
out of your room, where all is known to you;
last thing before the distance lies your house:
whoever you are.
With your eyes which wearily
scarce from the much-worn threshold free themselves,
you lift quite slowly a black tree
and place it against the sky: slender, alone.
And you have made the world. And it is large
and like a word that yet in silence ripens.
And as your will takes in the sense of it,
tenderly your eyes let it go . . . "

Rainer Maria Rilke as translated by M.D. Herter Norton, 1938

A Poem a day - 2nd installment

Back when my friend Tina was 'infecting' people with the bug for writing a poem a day she wrote this one which I love:

Where to start

I wouldn't know where to start

says Carol, when I ask

if she'll write poems

after she quits work. You start

with the taste of the tea,

the look of the kitchen, the view

out the window, the dream.

Start right here, with the sound

of a quiet house, faint rainbeat

on the roof, flicker of candle deep

down in a blue cup, the feel

of a wet shirt from feeding baby geese

and pulling out soggy pooped-on hay

while rain splashes down and the geese

cheep in confusion at the disappearance

of their ground and the intimidating pile

of new dry hay, like the sudden arrival

of a forest. Start with the thought

of listening to the day, of chronicling

the invisible currents as the days pass,

since the  currents are not apparent up close

but the maps must be drawn up close

before we can stand back

to see the way the river runs,

before we see how it was

to travel into this new place,

this motherhood, this remembering,

before we can peel

the layers of the story back

and look at how the river has carried us

when we didn't know how we could carry

one more thing.

                             copyright Tina Tau,  2000

You as Poet!

There is a mystery that will awe you waiting at your fingertips for you to discover it - it's the writing of poems. This past week I've been infecting people with the itch to write their own poems. I know they're hiding inside of everyone, maybe a little shy, but there all the same. Anyone can write a poem - they're so accessible! Yes, they're waiting inside you too.

You can write one anywhere - in a cafe, on the bus, while waiting for a meeting to start, in bed (I write many of mine from that quiet sanctuary). 

You can write a poem on anything - in a notebook or on the back of a restaurant receipt. On a napkin or on the fly-leaf of a book (if it's your book!). You can write a poem while on the bus, or in the kitchen, or in a waiting room. You can write it on any subject you please, on the mundane or the profound, the every day or the unique. You can choose a personal perspective or a global one. Where else do you get to be so totally in command?!

Yup. A poem a day invites the Holy into your life too. Are you up for it?

Try it out and let me know how it goes - I love to read or hear other people's poetry. It takes me into a world I might never visit if not for their poem, and that's a precious gift indeed.

Lighting the world...

Within me is a love song. It sings of loving winter, loving the snow, and especially loving the moon when it rises so fat and beautiful over the mountain and the whole dark world begins to glow!

And then I ask myself - how can I make the world glow too? What's mine to do, my calling, that place, (as Frederic Buechner describes it), “where my deep joy meets the world's deep need”... I love Buechner’s naming of the Holy at work within us. How generous is the Holy of Holies that our life-work can become known to us by the deep joy it elicits in our entire beings!

For me, this past year has been a time of greater and greater clarity about my own life-work. Urgency grows in me for the well-being of the earth, for our connection with this generosity of a planet that we lucked out to exist on! ‘Course it wasn’t really luck since there was the Creator behind it all, yet there is within me the sense of luck, of unlooked for blessing – would that be ‘grace’, maybe...?

Having received this incredible vulnerable gift of a human body to inhabit, and the equally incredible and equally vulnerable gift of a beautiful planet to dwell upon, I am continually seized with the intense desire to respond in kind. For me, this means offering retreats where people get to come and reconnect with that child’s delight we all once knew.

Remember what treasure it was when a day stretched before you with unlimited possibilities? When there was the prospect of climbing trees, playing in dirt or sand or snow, collecting rocks or leaves or insects, building roads or forts or faery grottos….. That was you living intimately with the earth. That was you in deep relationship with our beautiful planet. And that is what I dangle in front of people’s noses and hearts. Remember that feeling? Wasn’t it grand!

And the great thing is it’s not something that belongs only to children. It belongs to you as an adult too. So I dangle it not to torment or taunt, but to invite and affirm. This is your heritage, your inheritance, your legacy. And it is waiting for you to reclaim it, waiting for your home-coming.

We are all prodigal daughters and sons here on the earth and our home-coming will be celebrated because it will mean the end of neglecting the planet. It will mean the end of pretending we haven’t noticed the consequences of what we name ‘civilization’. It will mean the end of standing by, helplessly, as we see climate change accelerating.

When we love something or someone openly, we step into a place of accountability. When we have a relationship of unconcealed intimacy, we choose to be known for who and what we love. When we allow our hearts to be pierced with tenderness and enchantment, we will protect what we love with all we have.

I would. Wouldn’t you?

Copenhagen - are they listening?

Pulling the blanket closer
trying to stay warm.
That doesn't work - ah! Only
a single layer. I refold to
double and notice
my night-gown is inside out.
The morning is bleak, clouded.
On the ground the skiff of snow
not thick enough to insulate
sleeping beasties in their tunnels
or rootlets of plants. The mercury drops,
the wind licks, nervous and
cruel, catching every corner.
We wait, all of us - earth,
plants, animals, humans -
wait to find out
what will come next,
wait to see if the foolish humans
have turned the world
inside-out. Or not.
And whether they'll
have the heart and wisdom
to put it right.

Gyllian Davies, Dec 2009.

Living on our earth!

Happy 3/4 Moon Day!
Did you see it last night where you live? Maybe a clear sky with the moon reigning over a realm of stars.... Maybe peeking a moment from behind some illuminated clouds... Or perhaps hidden totally from view and existing only in your imagination and memory.... do you know which it was?

Do you know which direction it was tilted? ~ cupping the light, holding the waters of night and mystery with a relaxed open-ness, a metaphor of trust... There's enough for everyone,... there's enough for my needs,... I am enough. There's a relieving thought!

Or was the lovely 3/4 moon tipped towards you, pouring abundance into the velvet night? And did you feel the night air against your cheek, a soft brush of an invisible presence, light as a kiss on your forehead.....

Maybe the wind was passing through where you live, grabbing your hair or any loose clothing, pressing your clothes against your skin, searching for a way into your core. What about rain - was it wet? misty? drenching? What did it feel like? What did you feel like?

How often we get caught up in the 'human' world, forgetting to remember our physical body that inhabits this physical earth. But what happens when you stop for a moment, release all thought, and reach out with your senses to feel what it's like to be you in this human body at this very moment....

I have always been deeply moved by Mary Oliver's poem Wild Geese. Here is an available doorway into this sensual world...
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
(http://tinyurl.com/yh7veuo for the full poem)
What could be simpler than that!

So I invite you ~ go out and look for the moon tonight. Feel the air. Taste it. Smell the fragrance of wetness or coldness. Give your body that moment it longs for, of BE-ing an earth creature!

small poems

Little tiny feet
patter across the edges of
who I am. Sometimes the brush
of a wing in landing, the slight
weight on my shoulder, or a wisp of
warm breath. Here. Gone. Before
I catch on. They attend me,
solicitous, constant. I glow
inside the luminous shell of
their tender care.


©  GyllianDavies 11.25.09