image copyright Rebekah Choat
The rain to the wind said,
“You push and I’ll pelt.”
They so smote the garden bed
that the flowers actually knelt,
and lay lodged — though not dead.
I know how the flowers felt.
~ Robert Frost
Lodged
Category Archives: poetry
We Stand to Prayer
image by Rebekah Choat
The splendour of Nirvana is not ours,
We have no middle eye, no mystic wings,
And our brief visions take us unawares.
We stand to prayer as rows of earthen jars
Whose dark mouths open onto hidden things:
A secret kingdom where the poor are kings.
Here is an image of that inner place,
The quiet mountain country of the soul
With silver pools where lions drink their fill
And the pale unicorns lie down in peace.
Here is an emblem of the hidden grace
Beneath the flux and turmoil of what happens,
A quiet kingdom where the silence deepens,
Whose heart is hallowed by the Prince of Peace.
~ Malcolm Guite
God speaks to each of us
image by Rebekah Choat
God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.
These are the words we dimly hear:
You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.
Flare up like flame
and make big shadows I can move in.
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.
Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.
Give me your hand.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke
When I Am Among the Trees
image by Rebekah Choat
When I Am Among the Trees
by Mary Oliver
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.”
from the depths of unknowing
image by Rebekah Choat
Keep writing in the dark:
a record of the night, or
words that pulled you from the depths of unknowing,
words that flew through your mind, strange birds
crying their urgency with human voices,
or opened
as flowers of a tree that blooms
only once in a lifetime:
words that may have the power
to make the sun rise again.
~ Denise Levertov
A Circle in a Drought
image by Joel Brotzman
Somewhere in this country
of dry furrow and hard hill
the scabbed ground cracks
to a deep blade of shining,
a bright upwelling,
mud, rush, mess, hurry of voices,
the run, the flood, the telling.
I walk forward, careful.
The forked switch leads me.
Surely it will dip, leap
there at the end of the field
where dead stalks rub each other,
or there in the dry creekbed
where rocks tell the tale of torrent.
I must learn to live drily.
What to carry. What to leave.
What to drink instead of water.
What to wash the dust away with.
What to listen to. Wind
will tell me what to say.
Stone will lead me to beginning.
~ Ursula K. LeGuin
Before the Fire
Darkness and silence
sit with me, waiting, before
the fire’s insistent flare.
~ Rebekah Choat
A Tapestry of Words
Another place I post regularly is All Nine Muses, my lovely friend Kelly Belmonte’s blog. Here’s my latest contribution to the poetry-driven conversation that takes place there: http://allninemuses.wordpress.com/2013/11/11/desiderata-as-tapestry/
Rose Glow
image by Rebekah Choat
Driving in early
rose – glow of anticipation
brightening the sky.
~ Rebekah Choat
By the way…
Some of you might not know that this isn’t the only place I share thoughts; the more bookish posts and reviews can be found on the blog page of my website, http://www.booksbybecka.com. I reviewed my new favourite book of poetry – Malcolm Guite’s The Singing Bowl, which I’ve mentioned here within the last few days – there this morning.
Becka's Blog 