How to Love the World Read online

  how when I stand before the mirror

  combing my hair, I see my mother’s eyes,

  and happiness wells up like a wave

  without warning.

  My mother looks forward

  to a lunch of bread and cheese,

  a glass of apple juice.

  She speaks of the weather,

  today being only itself.

  Her time is reeling in, a line cast

  from shore. But how she loves

  the sea, the horizon, the flaming sun!

  My mother, who knows the brutal world,

  who survived while others did not,

  says, Me? I had it easy.

  Abigail Carroll

  In Gratitude

  For h, tiny fire

  in the hollow of the throat,

  opener of every hey,

  hi, how are you?,

  hello; chums with c,

  with t, shy lover of s;

  there and not

  there—never seen,

  hardly heard, yet

  real as air

  fluttering the oak,

  holding up the hawk;

  the sound

  of a yawn, of sleep, of heat,

  a match, its quivering

  orange flame

  turning wood into light,

  light into breath;

  the sound

  of stars if stars

  could be heard, perhaps

  the sound

  of space; life speaking life:

  warm air endowed

  to hard clay—

  a heart, hurt,

  a desire to be healed—

  the work

  of bees stuck in the nubs

  of hollyhocks

  and columbine, time

  to the extent that time

  is light, is bright

  as the match,

  the flame of the sun,

  real as the muffled hush

  of sleep,

  the fluttering oak,

  a moth, the silent oh

  in the throat

  when a hand is laid

  upon the shoulder;

  hunger—

  the body’s empty cry

  for filling, for loving,

  for knowing

  the intimacy of breath,

  of half-breathed words

  fragile as the stars:

  hollow, hush,

  holy.

  Michelle Wiegers

  Held Open

  After the band concert, we filed out

  of the high school auditorium

  where the door seemingly stood open

  all by itself. As I stepped into the hallway,

  there stood one student’s grandmother,

  smiling as she held the door

  for the crowd, her eyes searching

  for the grandson she wanted to hug.

  The embrace of this night of music

  still wrapped its warm arms around me,

  as if I’d just been held for over an hour

  by the deep tones of the bari sax,

  the stunning runs of the flutes, which caught

  my breath, my son’s steady rhythms

  still pulsing in my chest,

  as I stepped out into the night air.

  David Graham

  Listening for Your Name

  As a father steals into his child’s half-lit bedroom

  slowly, quietly, standing long and long

  counting the breaths before finally slipping

  back out, taking care not to wake her,

  and as that night-lit child is fully awake the whole

  time, with closed eyes, measured breathing,

  savoring a delicious blessing she couldn’t

  name but will remember her whole life,

  how often we feel we’re being watched over,

  or that we’re secretly looking in on the ones

  we love, even when they are far away,

  or even as they are lost in the sleep

  no one wakes from—what we know

  and what we feel can fully coincide, like love

  and worry, like taking care in full silence

  and secrecy, like darkness and light together.

  Heather Swan

  Another Day Filled with Sleeves of Light,

  and I carry ripened plums,

  waiting to find the one

  who is interested in tasting.

  How can we ever be known?

  Today the lily sends up

  a fifth white-tipped tendril, the promise

  of another flower opening,

  and I think, this must mean this plant

  is happy, here, in this house, by this window.

  Is this the right deduction?

  The taller plant leans and leans toward the light.

  I turn it away, and soon its big hands are reaching again

  toward what nourishes it,

  but which it can never touch.

  Couldn’t the yellowing leaves of the maple

  and their falling also be a sign of joy?

  Another kind of leaning into.

  A letting go of one thing

  to fall into another.

  A kind of trust I cannot imagine.

  Annie Lighthart

  A Cure Against Poisonous Thought

  Believe the world goes on

  and this bee bending

  in honeysuckle just one

  of a mighty nation, golden

  beads thrumming

  a long invisible thread.

  In the green drift of an afternoon,

  the body is not root but wick:

  the press of light surrounds it.

  Mary McCue

  Forgiveness

  How does it creep into arteries,

  level blood pressure

  and wipe clean

  the slate of anger

  held close to the chest?

  Look long into the mirror,

  be tender with the face you see,

  then to the blistered past,

  the entire landscape,

  the smallest detail

  as in a Brueghel painting,

  then revise and revise

  until the story changes shape

  and you, no longer the jailor,

  have learned to love

  what is left.

  Heather Lanier

  Two Weeks After a Silent Retreat

  How quickly I lose my love

  of all things. I nearly flick an ant

  off the cliff of an armchair.

  But remember, Self,

  the week you spent

  enveloped in psalms

  intoned by monks?

  By Wednesday you beheld

  a three-balled body

  creeping around

  the onionskin of your book,

  its six teensy toothpick legs

  bent into all manner of

  delicate angles.

  Your chest became

  a doorway

  to a spacious unmarked

  heaven. You loved the ant.

  The kingdom,

  said Christ,

  is at hand, meaning

  not ticking above

  in a time bomb of gold-

  paved streets

  but tapping its antennae

  along the heart line

  of your imperfect palm.

  Reflective Pause

  The Kingdom at Hand

  Stepping outside of life, even for a short while, can help us return with a new perspective on what seemed unworkable before. Though such a wide-open embrace of life never lasts forever, it can be enough to know that it waits within us, accessible when we need it the most. Heather Lanier illustrates this in her poem, as she remembers her own time of reflection while on retreat, when her “chest became a doorway to a spacious unmarked heaven.” Such moments often appear after periods of stillness, whether on an actual retreat, at chur
ch, or while spending the day outdoors, away from our screens.

  Yet our lives do not unfold as a single, unbroken stretch of gratefulness and hope. We are humans living in an imperfectly human world, after all, and so we easily lose our reverence and “love of all things” in the midst of busyness, worry, and strife. We fall out of the practice of patience. But as Lanier points out, we can remind ourselves that the gate to the kingdom at hand remains open anytime we choose to pass through, and the reward for close attention to our lives, even if it is simply to save the life of an ant, is the heaven of a fuller presence in the here and now.

  Invitation for Writing and Reflection

  Think back to a time when you brought yourself back to the moment at hand and found the world vivid and lovable again. You might begin with Lanier’s first line, “How quickly I lose my love,” and see where that leads you.

  Jane Hirshfield

  Today, When I Could Do Nothing

  Today, when I could do nothing,

  I saved an ant.

  It must have come in with the morning paper,

  still being delivered

  to those who shelter in place.

  A morning paper is still an essential service.

  I am not an essential service.

  I have coffee and books,

  time,

  a garden,

  silence enough to fill cisterns.

  It must have first walked

  the morning paper, as if loosened ink

  taking the shape of an ant.

  Then across the laptop computer—warm—

  then onto the back of a cushion.

  Small black ant, alone,

  crossing a navy cushion,

  moving steadily because that is what it could do.

  Set outside in the sun,

  it could not have found again its nest.

  What then did I save?

  It did not move as if it was frightened,

  even while walking my hand,

  which moved it through swiftness and air.

  Ant, alone, without companions,

  whose ant-heart I could not fathom—

  how is your life, I wanted to ask.

  I lifted it, took it outside.

  This first day when I could do nothing,

  contribute nothing

  beyond staying distant from my own kind,

  I did this.

  Laura Ann Reed

  Red Thyme

  In the red thyme

  that crawls

  languidly

  between stepping stones

  time stops

  as bees

  thrust their passion

  deep into the promise

  of tiny crimson-purple

  blooms.

  Where blossom

  ends

  and bee

  begins

  are the first words

  of a lullaby

  the world sings

  while it rocks you

  as you fall

  awake

  in the later years

  of a life

  spent mostly

  sound

  asleep.

  Laura Foley

  The Once Invisible Garden

  How did I come to be

  this particular version of me,

  and not some other, this morning

  of purple delphiniums blooming,

  like royalty—destined

  to meet these three dogs

  asleep at my feet, and not others—

  this soft summer morning,

  sitting on her screened porch

  become ours, our wind chime,

  singing of wind and time,

  yellow-white digitalis

  feeding bees and filling me—

  and more abundance to come:

  basil, tomatoes, zucchini.

  What luck or fate, instinct,

  or grace brought me here?—

  in shade, beneath hidden stars,

  a soft, summer morning,

  seeing with my whole being,

  love made visible.

  James Crews

  Down to Earth

  The heart of a farmer

  is made of muscle

  and clay that aches

  for return to earth.

  And when the sky

  releases a steady rain,

  massaging each row

  of sprouted beans,

  my husband leans out

  of the car window

  and opens his hand

  to hold that water

  for a single instant,

  his heart now beating

  in sync with rain

  seeping through layers

  to kiss the roots

  of every plant alive

  on this living, breathing

  planet on whose back

  we were granted

  permission to live

  for a limited time.

  Freya Manfred

  Old Friends

  Old friends are a steady spring rain,

  or late summer sunshine edging into fall,

  or frosted leaves along a snowy path—

  a voice for all seasons saying, I know you.

  The older I grow, the more I fear I’ll lose my old friends,

  as if too many years have scrolled by

  since the day we sprang forth, seeking each other.

  Old friend, I knew you before we met.

  I saw you at the window of my soul—

  I heard you in the steady millstone of my heart

  grinding grain for our daily bread.

  You are sedimentary, rock-solid cousin earth,

  where I stand firmly, astonished by your grace and truth.

  And gratitude comes to me and says:

  “Tell me anything and I will listen.

  Ask me anything, and I will answer you.”

  Brad Peacock

  Let It Rain

  I’m not sure why I did my best to outrun you.

  Perhaps I had forgotten how your touch

  makes me feel alive, like the gentle hands

  of my husband reaching out to console me.

  I smile, feeling the first drops from the sky

  igniting my senses, calling forth the little boy inside

  who wants more, to feel it pour. This is not

  a shower that will extinguish the light

  I’ve found within. It is a rain that will soak me through,

  down to bone, baptizing me again and again,

  as I walk these gravel roads that have helped me heal.

  Droplets now fall from the brim of my hat,

  streaming down my cheeks like the time I cried out,

  begging for the shame to subside, wondering

  if I had the strength to live this life anymore.

  Molly Fisk

  Against Panic

  You recall those times, I know you do, when the sun

  lifted its weight over a small rise to warm your face,

  when a parched day finally broke open, real rain

  sluicing down the sidewalk, rattling city maples

  and you so sure the end was here, life a house of cards

  tipped over, falling, hope’s last breath extinguished

  in a bitter wind. Oh, friend, search your memory again—

  beauty and relief are still there, only sleeping.

  Naomi Shihab Nye

  Over the Weather

  We forget about the spaciousness

  above the clouds

  but it’s up there. The sun’s up there too.

  When words we hear don’t fit the day,

  when we worry

  what we did or didn’t do,

  what if we close our eyes,

  say any word we love

  that makes us feel calm,

  slip it into the atmosphere

  and rise?

  Creamy miles of quiet.

  Giant swoop of blue. />
  Paula Gordon Lepp

  Notions

  Look at the silver lining, they say.

  But what if, instead,

  I pluck it off

  and use that tensile strand to bind

  myself to those things I do not

  want to lose sight of.

  Families knit together by evening walks,

  board games, laughter.

  The filament fixing us to friends

  no matter the distance apart.

  A braid of gratitude for small kindnesses.

  The thin gauge wire of loss.

  Let me twist that lining

  around my finger,

  it’s silvery glint a reminder

  of just how quickly life can change.

  I will remember to love more.

  I will remember to give more.

  I will remember to be still.

  I will knot the string tightly.

  So it won’t slip away.

  So I won’t forget.

  Ellen Bass

  Any Common Desolation

  can be enough to make you look up

  at the yellowed leaves of the apple tree, the few

  that survived the rains and frost, shot

  with late afternoon sun. They glow a deep

  orange-gold against a blue so sheer, a single bird

  would rip it like silk. You may have to break

  your heart, but it isn’t nothing

  to know even one moment alive. The sound

  of an oar in an oarlock or a ruminant

  animal tearing grass. The smell of grated ginger.

  The ruby neon of the liquor store sign.

  Warm socks. You remember your mother,

  her precision a ceremony, as she gathered

  the white cotton, slipped it over your toes,

  drew up the heel, turned the cuff. A breath

  can uncoil as you walk across your own muddy yard,

  the big dipper pouring night down over you, and everything

  you dread, all you can’t bear, dissolves

  and, like a needle slipped into your vein—

  that sudden rush of the world.

  Reflective Pause

  Returning to the World

  When the world seems incomprehensible and its ills too many, I often retreat to the natural world, looking up “at the yellowed leaves of the apple tree” to calm my mind and try to make sense of our sometimes violent, divided culture. “Any common desolation,” as Ellen Bass says, can send us into a frenzy, can glue us to our screens; but it is more healing if we get outside of our minds and commune with “that sudden rush” of the actual world again.