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Laying around with covid, reading poetry

9/22/2022

IT'S THE SEASON I OFTEN MISTAKE

Birds for leaves, and leaves for birds.
The tawny yellow mulberry leaves
are always goldfinches tumbling
across the lawn like extreme elation.
The last of the maroon crabapple
ovates are song sparrows that tremble
all at once. And today, just when I
could not stand myself any longer,
a group of field sparrows, which were
actually field sparrows, flew up into
the bare branches of the hackberry
and I almost collapsed: leaves
reattaching themselves to the tree
like a strong spell for reversal. What
else did I expect? What good
is accuracy amidst the perpetual
scattering that unspools the world.

- Ada Limón
24th Poet Laureate of The United States

Rumi: "Insanity, they say..."

9/21/2022

The mystic dances in the sun,
hearing music others don't.

"Insanity," they say, those others.
If so, it's a very gentle,
nourishing sort.

The day the world ended

9/17/2022

As we awaken every day with the full knowledge of the Anthropocene, the temptation to despair may be strong. I ask myself, what would I like to be doing on the last day, and I think, I would like to be making art. I also might want to read the poetry of Robert Lax again. I've been thinking often lately of this poem. Number 26, from A Thing That Is.

New poem from my brother, David Westendorp

8/31/2022

What is missing
in me
can fill the Milky Way.

My life has more locks
than keys.
Silence is making me deaf.

In a dream I’m pouring
over a book
I cannot read.

When I can’t sleep
I still have
my telescope.

David Westendorp

Paying Attention

8/3/2022

Rabbi Jacob used to say:

Better a single moment of awakening in this world
than eternity in the world to come.

And better a single moment of inner peace
in the world to come than eternity in this world.

Why?
A single moment of awakening in this world
is living in this world with full attention.

The two are one, flip sides of a coin
forever tumbling and never caught.

Pirke Avot 4:22

P - 174

John Cage, poet, three quotes. No, four. And a Mountain Farmer

7/14/2022

"I have nothing to say
and I am saying it
and that is poetry
as I needed it"
--John Cage

"If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all." --John Cage.

"The first question I ask myself when something doesn't seem to be beautiful is why do I think it's not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason." --John Cage.

"Rather than create meaning in the traditional way, as something for the reader to absorb -- one isolated ego moving thoughts over into another isolated ego -- the poem becomes a meditative practice, an emptying of the mind, a return to the interior wild."
-- David Hinton, The Wilds of Poetry

U.S. POET LAUREATE ADA LIMÓN

7/13/2022

Ordered this book yesterday from bookstore.com, by the new poet laureate of the US. Very eager to see it!

Pádraig Ó Tuama

6/30/2022

A Solstice Blessing
As night stretches here,
day contracts elsewhere.
And in their night, we are
bathed in light. In all nights
there is light; in long days
there can be ache too.
For you, we call the sun
to stand still a while, and
the moon too, and stars, and
the waters and the heavens.
Hells as well — just for a
second; just for a breath.
May that breath rest you.
And may each breath rest you,
as it has until now, and now
and now. This one, after
that one, after that one after
that.

Loy Ching Yuen

2/27/2022

Sit quietly behind your wooden door:
Spring will come again.

O Sweet Irrational Worship

1/22/2022

By Thomas Merton
(1915 - 1968)

Wind and a bobwhite
And the afternoon sun.

By ceasing to question the sun
I have become light,

Bird and wind.

My leaves sing.

I am earth, earth

All these lighted things
Grow from my heart.

A tall, spare pine
Stands like the initial of my first
Name when I had one.

When I had a spirit,
When I was on fire
When this valley was
Made out of fresh air
You spoke my name
In naming Your silence:
O sweet, irrational worship!

I am earth, earth

My heart's love
Bursts with hay and flowers.
I am a lake of blue air
In which my own appointed place
Field and valley
Stand reflected.

I am earth, earth

Out of my grass heart
Rises the bobwhite.

Out of my nameless weeds
His foolish worship.