Poem of the Month ~ March 2010
If you had (or have) qualities that others could not appreciate, and said qualities, upon being tested, nevertheless grew like untamable wildflowers and weeds, then this poem’s for you!  Have a very merry month!

--Krayna

Diagnosis
By the time I was six months old, she knew something 
was wrong with me. I got looks on my face 
she had not seen on any child 
in the family, or the extended family, 
or the neighborhood. My mother took me in 
to the pediatrician with the kind hands, 
a doctor with a name like a suit size for a wheel: 
Hub Long. My mom did not tell him 
what she thought in truth, that I was Possessed. 

Poem of the Month ~ January 2010
Happy New Decade!  Happy New Year!
 
Here is a fabulous recipe! 
Read poem.  Follow directions from start to finish.   
Digest.  Enjoy. 
Then read again; add fresh ingredients from your own recipe. 
Share when cooked.  Eat with gusto!  (Feeds multitudes.)

Blessings of love, joy and good humor, now and all year long!

--Krayna

Da Capo

Take the used-up heart like a pebble
and throw it far out.

Soon there is nothing left.
Soon the last ripple exhausts itself
in the weeds.

Returning home, slice carrots, onions, celery.
Glaze them in oil before adding
the lentils, water, and herbs.

Then the roasted chestnuts, a little pepper, the salt.
Finish with goat cheese and parsley. Eat.

You may do this, I tell you. It is permitted.
Begin again the story of your life.

--Jane Hirshfield
Copyrighted material; for educational/therapeutic purposes only.

Poem of the Month ~ November 2009

May you allow sweet darkness embrace you this month and surprise you

with gifts as of yet unimagined.

--Krayna

Sweet Darkness

When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.

When your vision has gone
no part of the world can find you.

Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.

There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.

The dark will be your womb
tonight.

The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.

You must learn one thing:
the world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn

anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive

is too small for you.

~ David Whyte from House of Belonging

Copyrighted material; for educational/therapeutic purposes only.

                             Poem of the Month  ~  September 2009

Pablo Neruda was a prolific poet and endlessly imaginative man.  His poetry reveals the spirit of a lover – impassioned, generous, earthy and potent.  He is at home with himself, his body, his sexuality, the natural world, and the fertile dark .  This poem delights and quiets me.  I savor the tender intimacy and strength of this love song, as a taproot into my own depths, where I bask in the light and the dark and am nourished. 

May it be so for you, too. ---Krayna

XVII
I don’t love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as certain dark things are loved,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom and carries
hidden within itself the light of those flowers,
and thanks to your love, darkly in my body
lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where
I love you simply, without problems or pride:
I love you in this way because I don’t know any other way of loving
but this, in which there is no I or you,
so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,
so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.

 
Illustration by French Toast Girl

Pablo Neruda, from 100 Love Sonnets (1960)
Copyrighted material; for educational/therapeutic purposes only.

Poem of the Month ~ July 2009

Mary Oliver, with her knack for mining the details of daily life and the natural world, composes poetry that can blow the ol’ circuits and bust through walls built of oblivion.   As you let the power of this poem sink in, you just may fall in love her questions,

take them to heart

and bless your one wild, precious life!

--Krayna

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean –
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down –
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Mary Oliver – From House of Light, 1990

 Poem of the Month ~ May 2009

What do your dreams try to remind you of that you’ve forgotten?

What happens when you take to heart that your dreams remember you? 

And what if you did re-awaken to that deep, true dream –

the one that is always there – waiting for you?

May Day, May Day!

--Krayna

What We Want

What we want

is never simple

We move among the things

we thought we wanted:

a face, a room, an open book

and these things bear our names –

now they want us.

But what we want appears

in dreams, wearing disguises.

We fall past,

holding out our arms

and in the morning

our arms ache.

We don’t remember the dream,

but the dream remembers us.

It is there all day

as an animal is there

under the table,

as the stars are there

even in full sun.

--Linda Pastan

Copyrighted material; for educational/therapeutic purposes only.

What if you have a sudden burst of inspiration to create your own “what if” poem, and what if in so doing, you feel raucous laughter joyfully erupt as you dive into a swirling, limitless ocean of creative imagination and new perception and you find the freedom to express yourself in ways that are “outside the box”…and what if it really changed the way you live?  Have a yummy March. 

Krayna with a K

         How Would You Live Then?   

         What if a hundred rose-breasted grosbeaks

     flew in circles around your head?  What if

the mockingbird came into the house with you and

     became your advisor?  What if

the bees filled your walls with honey and all

     you needed to do was ask them and they would fill

the bowl?  What if the brook slid downhill just

     past your bedroom window so you could listen

to its slow prayers as you fell asleep?  What if

     the stars began to shout their names, or to run

this way and that way above the clouds?  What if

     you painted a picture of a tree, and the leaves

began to rustle, and a bird cheerfully sang

     from its painted branches?  What if you suddenly saw

that the silver of water was brighter than the silver

     of money?  What if you finally saw

that the sunflowers, turning toward the sun all day

     and every day – who knows how, but they do it – were

         more precious, more meaningful than gold?

            By Mary Oliver from Blue Iris

          Copyrighted material, for educational/therapeutic purposes only.