In the Quiet, I Hear Birds Singing

In the Quiet, I Hear the Birds Singing

            for Suzuki Roshi

In the quiet, I hear the birds singing,

two together, and one alone.

The wind is silver and spiraling.

The frog sits nobly on mossy stone.

I feel at ease.

Each day, I wake into fragrance,

flower-light and fruit-light, freshening

and flourishing inside me.

In the quiet, I listen with a different kind of mind,

nothing is missing-my life

is generous as it is:

a petal on a wave,

a sky changing color,

my reflection as a tree in clear water.

I feel at ease, here.

Like a child lights up when held in love,

I am buoyant and eternal, unafraid

of time.

Yes, in the quiet, I hear the birds singing,

three together, and not one of us, alone.

By Teresa Williams

II by Wendell Berry

I dream of a quiet man
who explains nothing and defends
nothing, but only knows
where the rarest wildflowers
are blooming, and who goes,
and finds that he is smiling
not by his own will.

-- Wendell Berry, from Given p. 70

Poem of the One World

Poem of the One World

This morning

the beautiful white heron

was floating above the water

and then into the sky of this

the one world

we all belong to

where everything

sooner or later

is a part of everything else

which thought made me feel

for a little while

quite beautiful myself.

-- Mary Oliver, from A Thousand Mornings

Beauty quote

Because our present habit of  mind is governed by the calculus of consumerism and busyness, we are less and less frequently available to the exuberance of beauty.

[Beauty] enables us to go with, rather than against, the deepest tendency or theme in the universe.

-- John O'Donahue, from Beauty p. 7

Best season poem

Ten thousand flowers in spring

The moon in autumn, a cool breeze in summer

Snow in winter.

If your mind isn't clouded by unnecessary

Things, this is the best season of your life.

- Wu-men

Varanasi, by Mary Oliver

VARANASI

Early in the morning we crossed the ghat,

where fires were still smoldering,

and gazed, with our Western minds, into the Ganges.

A woman was standing in the river up to her waist;

she was lifting handfuls of water and spilling it

over her body, slowly and many times,

as if until there came some moment

of inner satisfaction between her own life and the river’s.

Then she dipped a vessel she had brought with her

and carried it filled with water back across the ghat,

no doubt to refresh some shrine near where she lives,

for this is the holy city of Shiva, maker

of the world, and this is his river.

I can’t say much more, except that it all happened

in silence and peaceful simplicity, and something that felt

like that bliss of a certainty and a life lived

in accordance with that certainty.

I must remember this, I thought, as we fly back

to America.

Pray God I remember this.

_______________________

Mary Oliver
A Thousand Mornings
(Penguin, 2012)

IV., by Wendell Berry

IV.

A man is walking in a field
and everywhere at his feet
in the short grass of April
the small purple violets
are in bloom.  As the man walks
the ground drops away,
the sunlight of day becomes
a sort of darkness in which
the lights of the flowers rise
up around him like
fireflies or stars in a sort
of sky through which he walks.

-- Wendell Berry, from Leavings