Week Two poems: Mindful, Embodied. Liminal

 William Wordsworth

The World Is Too Much With Us

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

There was a Boy

There was a Boy; ye knew him well, ye cliffs

And islands of Winander! many a time,

At evening, when the earliest stars began

To move along the edges of the hills,

Rising or setting, would he stand alone,

Beneath the trees, or by the glimmering lake;

And there, with fingers interwoven, both hands

Pressed closely palm to palm and to his mouth

Uplifted, he, as through an instrument,

Blew mimic hootings to the silent owls

That they might answer him.—And they would shout

Across the watery vale, and shout again,

Responsive to his call,—with quivering peals,

And long halloos, and screams, and echoes loud

Redoubled and redoubled; concourse wild

Of jocund din! And, when there came a pause

Of silence such as baffled his best skill:

Then, sometimes, in that silence, while he hung

Listening, a gentle shock of mild surprise

Has carried far into his heart the voice

Of mountain-torrents; or the visible scene

Would enter unawares into his mind

With all its solemn imagery, its rocks,

Its woods, and that uncertain heaven received

Into the bosom of the steady lake.

This boy was taken from his mates, and died

In childhood, ere he was full twelve years old.

Pre-eminent in beauty is the vale

Where he was born and bred: the churchyard hangs

Upon a slope above the village-school;

And through that churchyard when my way has led

On summer-evenings, I believe that there

A long half-hour together I have stood

Mute—looking at the grave in which he lies!

Mary Oliver

When I am among the trees

When I am among the trees, 

especially the willows and the honey locust, 

equally the beech, the oaks and the pines, 

they give off such hints of gladness. 

I would almost say that they save me, and daily. 

I am so distant from the hope of myself, 

in which I have goodness, and discernment, 

and never hurry through the world 

but walk slowly, and bow often. 

Around me the trees stir in their leaves 

and call out, ”Stay awhile.” 

The light flows from their branches. 

And they call again, ”It's simple,” they say, 

”and you too have come 

into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled 

with light, and to shine.”

Mindful

Everyday
I see or hear
something
that more or less

kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle

in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for —
to look, to listen,

to lose myself
inside this soft world —
to instruct myself
over and over

in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant —
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,

the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help

but grow wise
with such teachings
as these —
the untrimmable light

of the world,
the ocean’s shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good. 

You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. 

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

 Meanwhile the world goes on. 

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. 

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting - over and over announcing your place in the family of things.

  Berry, Wendell

Wild Geese

Horseback on Sunday morning, harvest over, we taste persimmon and wild grape, sharp sweet of summer’s end.

 In time’s maze over fall fields, we name names that went west from here, names that rest on graves. 

We open a persimmon seed to find the tree that stands in promise, pale, in the seed’s marrow. 

Geese appear high over us, pass, and the sky closes. 

Abandon, as in love or sleep, holds them to their way, clear, in the ancient faith: what we need is here. 

And we pray, not for new earth or heaven, but to be quiet in heart, and in eye clear. What we need is here. 

The Peace of Wild Things

 When despair for the world grows in me and

I wake in the night at the least  sound 

In fear of what my life and my children's  lives may be, 

I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and

The great heron feeds. 

I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.

I come into the presence of still water.

 And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light.

For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.