28 Feb: "The Space Heater" by Sharon Olds

The Space Heater

On the then-below-zero day, it was on,
near the patients' chair, the old heater
kept by the analyst's couch, at the end,
like the infant's headstone that was added near the foot
of my father's grave. And it was hot, with the almost
laughing satire of a fire's heat,
the little coils like hairs in Hell.
And it was making a group of sick noises-
I wanted the doctor to turn it off
but I couldn't seem to ask, so I just
stared, but it did not budge. The doctor
turned his heavy, soft palm
outward, toward me, inviting me to speak, I
said, "If you're cold-are you cold? But if it's on 
for me..." He held his palm out toward me,
I tried to ask, but I only muttered,
but he said, "Of course," as if I had asked,
and he stood up and approached the heater, and then
stood on one foot, and threw himself
toward the wall with one hand, and with the other hand
reached down, behind the couch, to pull
the plug out. I looked away,
I had not known he would have to bend
like that. And I was so moved, that he
would act undignified, to help me,
that I cried, not trying to stop, but as if
the moans made sentences which bore
some human message. If he would cast himself toward the
outlet for me, as if bending with me in my old
shame and horror, then I would rest
on his art-and the heater purred, like a creature
or the familiar of a creature, or the child of a familiar,
the father of a child, the spirit of a father,
the healing of a spirit, the vision of healing,
the heat of vision, the power of heat,
the pleasure of power.

27 Feb: "On the Death of a Colleague" by Stephen Dunn

On the Death of a Colleague 

She taught theater, so we gathered
in the theater.
We praised her voice, her knowledge,
how good she was
with Godot and just four months later
with Gigi.
She was fifty. The problem in the liver.
Each of us recalled
an incident in which she'd been kind
or witty.
I told about being unable to speak
from my diaphragm
and how she made me lie down, placed her hand
where the failure was
and showed me how to breathe.
But afterwards
I only could do it when I lay down
and that became a joke
between us, and I told it as my offering
to the audience.
I was on stage and I heard myself
wishing to be impressive.
Someone else spoke of her cats
and no one spoke
of her face or the last few parties.
The fact was
I had avoided her for months.

It was a student's turn to speak, a sophomore,
one of her actors.
She was a drunk, he said, often came to class
reeking.
Sometimes he couldn't look at her, the blotches,
the awful puffiness.
And yet she was a great teacher,
he loved her,
but thought someone should say
what everyone knew
because she didn't die by accident.

Everyone was crying. Everyone was crying and it
was almost over now.
The remaining speaker, an historian, said he'd cut
his speech short.
And the Chairman stood up as if by habit,
said something about loss
and thanked us for coming. None of us moved
except some students
to the student who'd spoken, and then others
moved to him, across dividers,
down aisles, to his side of the stage.

26 Feb: "Hints on Pronounciation" annoumous author

HINTS ON PRONUNCIATION

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you
On hiccough, thorough, laugh and through?
Well done! And now you wish perhaps
To learn of these familiar traps?
Beware of heard, a dreadful word,
That looks like beard and sounds like bird,
And dead: it’s said like bed, not bead,
For Goodness’ sake, don’t call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat,
They rhyme with suite and straight and debt.
A moth is not a moth in mother
Nor both in bother, broth in brother,
And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then there’s does and rose and lose-
Just look them up: and goose and choose.
And cork and work and card and ward
And font and front and word and sword.
And do and go and thwart and cart-
Come, come, I’ve hardly made a start!
A dreadful language! Man Alive,
I’d mastered it when I was five.

25 Feb: "The Red Wheelbarrow" by William Carlos Williams


24 Feb: "This is just to say" by William Carlos Williams


23 Feb: "Dust of Snow" by Robert Frost


22 Feb: "Mr. Grumpledump's Song" by Shel Silverstein



21 Feb: "Water, is taught...." by Emily Dickinson

Water, is taught by thirst.
Land—by the Oceans passed.
Transport—by throe—
Peace—by its battles told—
Love, by Memorial Mold—
Birds, by the Snow. 

20 Feb: "Water Lily" by Rainer Maria Rilke

Water Lily 

by Rainer Maria Rilke


My whole life is mine, but whoever says so
will deprive me, for it is infinite.
The ripple of water, the shade of the sky
are mine; it is still the same, my life.

No desire opens me: I am full,
I never close myself with refusal-
in the rythm of my daily soul
I do not desire-I am moved;

by being moved I exert my empire,
making the dreams of night real:
into my body at the bottom of the water
I attract the beyonds of mirrors...


Translated by A. Poulin 



19 Feb: T.S.A by Amit Majmudar

T.S.A.
Off with the wristwatch, the Reeboks, the belt.
             My laptop's in a bin.
I dig out the keys from my jeans and do
             my best Midwestern grin.
At O'Hare, at Atlanta, at Dallas/Fort Worth,
             it happens every trip,
at LaGuardia, Logan, and Washington Dulles,
             the customary strip
is never enough for  a young brown male
             whose name comes up at random.
Lest the randomness of it be doubted, observe
             how Myrtle's searched in tandem,
how Doris's six-pack of Boost has been seized
             and Ethel gets the wand.
How polite of the screeners to sham paranoia
             when what they really want
is to pick out the swarthiest, scruffiest of us
             and pat us top to toe,
my fellow Ahmeds and my alien Alis,
             Mohammed alias Mo—
my buddies from med school, my doubles partners,
             my dark unshaven brothers
whose names overlap with the crazies and God fiends,
             ourselves the goateed other.

18 Feb: "Hinges" by Shel Silverstein


17 Feb: "No one travels..." by Matsuo Basho

No one travels
Along this way but I,
This autumn evening.
- Matsuo Bashō

16 Feb: "From time to time..." by Matsuo Basho

From time to time
The clouds give rest
To the moon-beholders.
- Matsuo Bashō

15 Feb: "'O Dreary life..." by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Patience Taught By Nature

'O DREARY life,' we cry, ' O dreary life ! '
And still the generations of the birds
Sing through our sighing, and the flocks and herds
Serenely live while we are keeping strife
With Heaven's true purpose in us, as a knife
Against which we may struggle ! Ocean girds
Unslackened the dry land, savannah-swards
Unweary sweep, hills watch unworn, and rife
Meek leaves drop year]y from the forest-trees
To show, above, the unwasted stars that pass
In their old glory: O thou God of old,
Grant me some smaller grace than comes to these !--
But so much patience as a blade of grass
Grows by, contented through the heat and cold. 


14 Feb: "If pieces I lack..." by Typer Knott Gregson


12 Feb: "Let it Enfold You" by Charles Bukowski

Let It Enfold You

by 
 either peace or happiness,
let it enfold you

when i was a young man
I felt these things were
dumb,unsophisticated.

I had bad blood,a twisted
mind, a pecarious
upbringing.


I was hard as granite,I
leered at the 
sun.

I trusted no man and
especially no
woman.


I was living a hell in
small rooms, I broke
things, smashed things,
walked through glass,
cursed.

I challenged everything,
was continually being
evicted,jailed,in and
out of fights,in and aout
of my mind.

women were something
to screw and rail
at,i had no male
freinds,

I changed jobs and
cities,I hated holidays,
babies,history,
newspapers, museums,
grandmothers,
marriage, movies,
spiders, garbagemen,
english accents,spain,
france,italy,walnuts and
the color 
orange.

algebra angred me,
opera sickened me,
charlie chaplin was a
fake
and flowers were for
pansies.


peace an happiness to me
were signs of
inferiority,
tenants of the weak
an
addled
mind.


but as I went on with
my alley fights,
my suicidal years,
my passage through
any number of 
women-it gradually
began to occur to
me
that I wasn't diffrent

from the
others, I was the same,

they were all fulsome
with hatred,
glossed over with petty
greivances,
the men I fought in
alleys had hearts of stone.

everybody was nudging,
inching, cheating for
some insignificant
advantage,
the lie was the
weapon and the
plot was
emptey,
darkness was the
dictator.


cautiously, I allowed
myself to feel good
at times.

I found moments of 
peace in cheap
rooms
just staring at the 
knobs of some
dresser
or listening to the
rain in the 
dark.

the less i needed
the better i 
felt.


maybe the other life had worn me 
down.

I no longer found
glamour
in topping somebody
in conversation.

or in mounting the
body of some poor
drunken female
whose life had 
slipped away into 
sorrow.


I could never accept
life as it was,
i could never gobble 
down all its
poisons
but there were parts,
tenous magic parts
open for the
asking.


I re formulated
I don't know when,
date,time,all
that
but the change
occured.

something in me
relaxed, smoothed
out.

i no longer had to 
prove that i was a 
man,

I did'nt have to prove
anything.


I began to see things:
coffe cups lined up
behind a counter in a 
cafe.

or a dog walking along
a sidewalk.

or the way the mouse
on my dresser top
stopped there
with its body,
its ears,
its nose,
it was fixed,
a bit of life
caught within itself
and its eyes looked 
at me
and they were
beautiful.

then- it was
gone.


I began to feel good,
I began to feel good
in the worst situations
and there were plenty
of those.

like say, the boss
behind his desk,
he is going to have
to fire me.


I've missed too many 
days.

he is dressed in a
suit, necktie, glasses,
he says, "i am going
to have to let you go"

"it's all right" i tell
him.


He must do what he
must do, he has a 
wife, a house, children.

expenses, most probably
a girlfreind.


I am sorry for him
he is caught.


I walk onto the blazing
sunshine.

the whole day is
mine
temporailiy,
anyhow.


(the whole world is at the
throat of the world,
everybody feels angry,
short-changed, cheated,
everybody is despondent,
dissillusioned)

I welcomed shots of
peace, tattered shards of
happiness.


I embraced that stuff
like the hottest number,
like high heels,breasts,
singing,the
works.


(dont get me wrong,
there is such a thing as cockeyed optimism
that overlooks all
basic problems justr for
the sake of
itself-
this is a sheild and a 
sickness.
)

The knife got near my
throat again,
I almost turned on the
gas
again
but when the good
moments arrived
again
I did'nt fight them off
like an alley 
adversary.

I let them take me,
i luxuriated in them,
I bade them welcome
home.

I even looked into
the mirror
once having thought
myself to be
ugly,
I now liked what
I saw,almost
handsome,yes,
a bit ripped and
ragged,
scares,lumps,
odd turns,
but all in all,
not too bad,
almost handsome,
better at least than
some of those movie
star faces
like the cheeks of
a babys
butt.


and finally I discovered
real feelings fo
others,
unhearleded,
like latley,
like this morning,
as I was leaving,
for the track,
i saw my wif in bed,
just the 
shape of
her head there
(not forgetting
centuries of the living
and the dead and
the dying,
the pyarimids,
Mozart dead
but his music still 
there in the
room, weeds growing,
the earth turning,
the toteboard waiting for
me)
I saw the shape of my
wife's head,
she so still,
i ached for her life,
just being there
under the 
covers.


i kissed her in the,
forehead,
got down the stairway,
got outside,
got into my marvelous
car,
fixed the seatbelt,
backed out the
drive.

feeling warm to
the fingertips,
down to my
foot on the gas
pedal,
I entered the world
once
more,
drove down the 
hill
past the houses
full and emptey
of
people,
i saw the mailman,
honked,
he waved
back
at me.

11 Feb: "Dothead" by Amit Majmudar

Well yes, I said, my mother wears a dot.
I know they said "third eye" in class, but it's not
an eye eye, not like that. It's not some freak
third eye that opens on your forehead like
on some [radiation]1 baby. What it means
is, what it's showing is, there's this unseen
eye, on the inside. And she's marking it.
It's how the X that says where treasure's at
is not the treasure, but as good as treasure.—
All right. What I said wasn't half so measured.
In fact, I didn't say a thing. Their laughter
had made my mouth go dry. Lunch was after
World History; that week was India—myths,
caste system, suttee, all the Greatest Hits.
The white kids I was sitting with were friends,
at least as I defined a friend back then.
So wait, said Nick, does your mom wear a dot?
I nodded, and I caught a smirk on Todd—
She wear it to the shower? And to bed?—
whie Jesse sucked his chocolate milk and Brad
was getting ready for another stab.
I said, Hand me that ketchup packet there.
And Nick said, What? I snatched it, twitched the tear,
and squeezed a dollop on my thumb and worked
circles till the red planet entered the house of war
and on my forehead for the world to see
my third eye burned those schoolboys in their seats,
their flesh in little puddles underneath,
pale pools where Nataraja cooled his feet.



1- I switched the word in ordered to be less offensive. I do not think the meaning of the poem is affected, and I hope the original reader will find this revision appropriate.

10 Feb: "To Meditate" by Thich Nhat Hahn

To Meditate 

To meditate does not mean to fight with a problem.
To meditate means to observe.
Your smile proves it.
It proves that you are being gentle with yourself,
that the sun of awareness is shining in you,
that you have control of your situation.
You are yourself,
and you have acquired some peace.
- Thich Nhat Hahn

9 Feb: "The Peace of Wild Things" by Wendell Berry

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.

– Wendell Berry

8 Feb: "In your light..." by Rumi

In your light I learn how to love.
In your beauty, how to make poems.

You dance inside my chest
where no one sees you,

but sometimes I do,
and that sight becomes this art.

-Rumi

7 Feb: "Mushrooms" by Laura Kasischke

Like silent naked monks huddled
around an old tree stump, having
spun themselves in the night
out of thought and nothingness—

And God so pleased with their silence
He grants them teeth and tongues.

Like us.

How long have you been gone?
A child’s hot tears on my bare arms.

6 Feb: "WILMA RUDOLPH" by Ann Whitford Paul

One leg was bent; her foot turned in.
She had to wear a heavy brace
and an ugly, hateful shoe.
Each pace, each step, she scraped and clunked.
Kids gathered close to stare at her
and taunt and tease.
Slowly
Wilma hobbled off.
She found a secret place,
unbuckled the brace, untied the shoe,
then yanked them off.
Every day she practiced walking.
How it hurt to hold her leg the normal way!
At first Wilma stumbled.
She dragged her foot.
Step, slow step . . .
slow lurching steps . . .
until she learned to walk!
Faster! Faster!
Wilma began
to run.
She ran
and ran
and ran.

5 Feb: "Dear You" by Kaveria Patel

DEAR YOU
By Kaveri Patel
Dear you,
You who always have
so many things to do
so many places to be
your mind spinning like
fan blades at high speed
each moment always a blur
because you’re never still.
I know you’re tired.
I also know it’s not your fault.
The constant brain-buzz is like
a swarm of bees threatening
to sting if you close your eyes.
You’ve forgotten something again.
You need to prepare for that or else.
You should have done that differently.
What if you closed your eyes?
Would the world fall
apart without you?
Or would your mind
become the open sky
flock of thoughts
flying across the sunrise
as you just watched and smiled.

4 Feb: "Found" by Federick Buechner

FOUND
By Frederick Buechner
From Lecture To A Book of The Month Club
Maybe it’s all utterly meaningless.
Maybe it’s all unutterably meaningful.
If you want to know which,
pay attention to
what it means to be truly human
in a world that half the time
we’re in love with
and half the time
scares the hell out of us…
The unexpected sound of your name on somebody’s lips.
The good dream.
The strange coincidence.
The moment that brings tears to your eyes.
The person who brings life to your life.
Even the smallest events hold the greatest clues.

3 Feb: "The Guest House" by Rumi

THE GUEST HOUSE
By Rumi
Translation by Coleman Barks
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
Meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes.
Because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

2 Feb: "Walk Don't Run" by Rob Bell

WALK DON’T RUNphoto_2016-10-20_08-44-00
By Rob Bell
Walk, don’t run.
That’s it.
Walk, don’t run.
Slow down, breathe deeply,
and open your eyes because there’s
a whole world right here within this one. The bush doesn’t suddenly catch on fire, it’s been burning the whole time.
Moses is simply moving
slowly enough to see it. And when he does,
he takes off his sandals.
Not because
the ground has suddenly become holy,
but because he’s just now becoming aware that
the ground has been holy the whole time.
Efficiency is not God’s highest goal for your life,
neither is busyness,
or how many things you can get done in one day,
or speed, or even success.
But walking,
which leads to seeing,
now that’s something.
That’s the invitation for every one of us today,
and everyday, in every conversation, interaction,
event, and moment: to walk, not run. And in doing so,
to see a whole world right here within this one.

1 Feb: "Finding Heaven" by Sandra Rossetter

(in response to The Monk and the Samurai parable:
http://healingstory.org/the-monk-and-the-samurai/?doing_wp_cron=1485969090.1977100372314453125000)


Finding Heaven 
by Sandra Rossetter (Allie's yoga classmate) 

May we return to ourselves.
Riding the current of our breath.
It is here that stillness is cultivated.

Instead of drawing up our sword,
May we find refuge in this safe place
before reacting, speaking, judging.

May the pilgrimage of the breath through the interior of the temple body,
Circle through heart center, chest, shoulders.

Traveling up and down the golden corridor 
Of our spine, allowing balance, compassion and kindness. 

Lighting dark places, illuminating detail and wisdom inherit within.  
Conscious of all the ways we are the same,
Sharing, interconnected.

May the release of each breath be a steady and calm gesture. 
Giving back to the plants, to all the things that sustain us. 

Gracefully bowing and acknowledging all
We do not understand, all that is different. 

Trusting, returning to this space, our peaceful
Resolve, making way for right thought, speech, action.
Making way for us to rise together.