words to soothe and heal

sometimes it just happens. i get dissatisfied with my life. i get impatient and unreasonable and irritated with what hasn't happened. today i blew up a little. i got bitter and mean and unhappy for about an hour. and i'm not going to tell you why. i'm not going to complain or write a really melo-dramatic blog entry. instead, i turned to my poetry books and i thought i'd post the ones i found particularly intriguing to my mood. poetry and words are so wonderful - that i encourage you to read them out loud, slowly to yourself. it's kind of dorky, but if you just skim poems, you might miss something really special. so here goes. enjoy.

Embrace

Billy Collins

You know the parlor trick.

Wrap your arms around your own body

and from the back it looks like

someone is embracing you,

her hands grasping your shirt,

her fingernails teasing your neck.

From the front it is another story.

You never looked so alone,

your crossed elbows and screwy grin.

You could be waiting for a tailor

to fit you for a straitjacket,

one that would hold you really tight.

Rainer Maria Rilke

... have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

Directions

Joesph Stroud

How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable

Seem to me all the uses of this world

Take a plane to London.

From King's Cross take the direct train to York.

Rent a car and drive across the vale to Ripon,

then into the dales toward the valley of the Nidd,

a narrow road with high stone walls on each side,

and soon you'll be on the moors. There's a pub,

The Drovers, where it's warm inside, a tiny room,

you can stand at the counter and drink a pint of Old Peculiar.

For a moment everything will be all right. You're back

at a beginning. Soon you'll walk into Yorkshire country,

into dells, farms, into blackberry and cloud country.

You'll walk for hours. You'll walk the freshness

back into your life. This is true. You can do this.

Even now, sitting at your desk, worrying, troubled,

you can gaze across Middlesmoor to Ramsgill,

the copses, the abbeys of slanting light, the fells,

you can look down on that figure walking toward Scar House,

cheeks flushed, curlews rising in front of him, walking,

making his way, working his life, step by step, into grace.

Wild Geese

Mary Oliver

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.

On a Line of Emily Dickinson's

Robert Cording

–Life's spell is so exquisite everything conspires to break it.

Off we go, each of us rolling our stone

Between home and work, our cell phones ringing,

A line of Pavlovian horns honking as the light changes,

The Palm Pilot lighting up with its daybook of hours.

No wonder, or nothing but wonder,

That, when the day ends, we come to a moment

Which, even if we miss it, always seems to be

Waiting in traffic for us to notice: the sun coloring in

A rosy lower edge of gray cirrus, and kindling

Dirty brick buildings to a blaze of winter fire;

The luminous, almost chilling silence of the river

Running under the bridge; and the sycamores

Crossing the water from shore to shore in perfect

Reflections. Our wills give up to the daily ritual

Of trying to get out of town, we sit with nothing

To do, nearly relaxed, and, in the falling light, feel

Ourselves become a part of some intensifying spell,

The reasons we've invented for everything we do

Dissolving. How long is it, under the starring sky,

The geese overhead wilder, guttural, initiates drunk

On wine in some Greek mystery, before we realize

We're a little frightened and begin to make notes–

The rental with a lake view that requires reservations

Well in advance; the milk and eggs we need to pick up–

Until, that spell so exquisite, we've conspired to break it.