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Poems
Risk
Laugh is to risk appearing the fool.
To weep is to risk being called sentimental.
To reach out to another is to risk involvement.
To expose feelings is to risk showing your true self.
To place your ideas and dreams before the crowd
is to risk being called naïve.
To love is to risk not being loved in return.
To live is to risk dying.
To hope is to risk despair.
To try is to risk failure.
But risks must be taken because the greatest risk is to risk nothing.
The people who risk nothing, do nothing, have nothing, are nothing and becoming
nothing.
They may avoid suffering and sorrow, but they are slaves, they’ve forfeited their
freedom.
Only the people who risk are truly free.
Author Unknown
Risk & Love
To love at all is to be vulnerable.
Love anything and your heart will certainly be wrung
and possibly broken.
If you want to make sure of keeping your heart intact,
You must give it to no one, not even an animal.
Wrap it carefully around with hobbies and little luxuries;
avoid all entanglements; lock it up in a casket safe,
dark, motionless, airless, but there it will change.
It will not become broken but unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.
The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation.
The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe
From all the dangers of love is hell.
C.S. Lewis The Four Loves
SUNRISE
You can
die for it
an idea,
or the world. People
have done so,
brilliantly,
letting
their small bodies be bound
to the stake,
creating
an unforgettable
fury of light. But,
this morning,
climbing the familiar hills
In the familiar
fabric of dawn, I thought
of China
and India
and Europe, and I thought
how the sun
blazes for everyone just
so joyfully
as it rises
under the lashes
of my own eyes, and I thought
I am so many!
What is my name?
What is the name
of the deep breath I would take
over and over
Call it
whatever you want, it is
happiness, it is another one
of the ways to enter fire.
Mary Oliver Dream Work
WILD GEESE
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 offer 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.
Mary Oliver Dream Works
THE JOURNEY
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt
the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations
though its melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice,
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do
determined to save
the only life you could save.
Mary Oliver Dream Works
THE HOUSE
It grows larger,
wall after wall
sliding
on some miraculous arrangement
of panels,
blond and
weightless
as balsa, making space
for windows, alcoves,
more rooms, stairways
and passages, all
bathed
in light, with here
and there the green
flower of a tree,
vines, streams
casually
breaking through…
what a change
from the cramped
room at the
center
where I began, where I crouched
and was safe, but could hardly
breath! Day after day
I labor at it;
night after night
I keep going
I’m clearing new ground
I’m lugging boards,
I’m measuring,
I’m hanging sheet of glass,
I’m nailing down the hardwoods,
the thresholds
I’m hinging the doors
once they are up they will lift
their easy latches, they will open
like wings.
Mary Oliver Dream Works |
