Understanding Stillness

Happy New Year everyone. I hope you enjoy a year enriched by beauty and wonder. I continue on my year-long healing journey and in order to recuperate I need to be quiet and rest. I am finding these times of solace and solitude restorative. There’s a wonderful book our son gave me for Christmas, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May. It beautifully describes the process of tuning inward in order to heal. I recommend it!

And then there is Mary Oliver . . . just when I think I have read all her poems out of the blue a member of my church (who doesn’t know me) sends me one I haven’t read before and it nails it.

The Lily by Mary Oliver

Night after night
darkness
enters the face
of the lily
which, lightly,
closes its five walls
around itself,
and its purse
of honey,
and its fragrance,
and is content
to stand there
in the garden,
not quite sleeping,
and, maybe,
saying in lily language
some small words
we can’t hear
even when there is no wind
anywhere,
its lips
are so secret,
its tongue
is so hidden –
or, maybe,
it says nothing at all
but just stands there
with the patience
of vegetables
and saints
until the whole earth has turned around
and the silver moon
becomes the golden sun –
as the lily absolutely knew it would,
which is itself, isn’t it,
the perfect prayer?

Creativity and wellness message for today: Be open to the gifts of the day no matter how quietly they come in.

Poem in Your Pocket Day: April 24

Save the date: Poem in Your Pocket Day 2014 will be held on Thursday, April 24! On Poem in Your Pocket Day, people throughout the United States select a poem, carry it with them, and share it with others throughout the day.

You can also share your poem selection on Twitter by using the hashtag #pocketpoem.

Why is this cool? It’s cool because it celebrates creativity and poetry and it brings poetry to the masses. It involves community and is an individual act, all at the same time. April is National Poetry Month.

What’s National Poetry Month? National Poetry Month is a month-long, national celebration of poetry established by the Academy of American Poets. The concept is to widen the attention of individuals and the media—to the art of poetry, to living poets, to our complex poetic heritage, and to poetry books and journals of wide aesthetic range and concern.

Reading a good poem takes me to a place of richness that I wasn’t in a moment before, such as this one . . .

Sleeping in the Forest

I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths
among the branches of the perfect trees.
All night I heard the small kingdoms
breathing around me, the insects,
and the birds who do their work in the darkness.
All night I rose and fell, as if in water,
grappling with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.

from Sleeping In The Forest by Mary Oliver

I’m more grounded after reading it, awakened, and oddly satisfied.

Creativity and wellness message for today: Commit to doing something poetic this month.

 

 

Poetry in Motion

It doesn’t have to be

the blue iris, it could be

weeds in a vacant lot, or a few

small stones; just

pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don’t try

to make them elaborate, this isn’t

a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which

another voice may speak.

~ Mary Oliver

Creativity and wellness message for today: Be open to silence.