linemines

[linemines]

Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches?

Have you ever tried to enter the long black branches of other lives– tried to imagine what the crisp fringes, full of honey, hanging from the branches of the young locust trees, in early morning, feel like?

Do you think this world was only an entertainment for you?

Never to enter the sea and notice how the water divides with perfect courtesy, to let you in! Never to lie down on the grass, as though you were the grass! Never to leap to the air as you open your wings over the dark acorn of your heart!

No wonder we hear, in your mournful voice, the complaint that something is missing from your life!

Who can open the door who does not reach for the latch? Who can travel the miles who does not put one foot in front of the other, all attentive to what presents itself continually? Who will behold the inner chamber who has not observed with admiration, even with rapture, the outer stone?

Well, there is time left– fields everywhere invite you into them.

And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away from wherever you are, to look for your soul?

Quickly, then, get up, put on your coat, leave your desk!

To put one’s foot into the door of the grass, which is the mystery, which is death as well as life, and not be afraid!

To set one’s foot in the door of death, and be overcome with amazement!

To sit down in front of the weeds, and imagine god the ten-fingered, sailing out of his house of straw, nodding this way and that way, to the flowers of the present hour, to the song falling out of the mockingbird’s pink mouth, to the tippets of the honeysuckle, that have opened

in the night

To sit down, like a weed among weeds, and rustle in the wind!

Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?

While the soul, after all, is only a window,

and the opening of the window no more difficult than the wakening from a little sleep.

Only last week I went out among the thorns and said to the wild roses: deny me not, but suffer my devotion. Then, all afternoon, I sat among them. Maybe

I even heard a curl or two of music, damp and rouge red, hurrying from their stubby buds, from their delicate watery bodies.

For how long will you continue to listen to those dark shouters, caution and prudence? Fall in! Fall in!

A woman standing in the weeds. A small boat flounders in the deep waves, and what’s coming next is coming with its own heave and grace.

Meanwhile, once in a while, I have chanced, among the quick things, upon the immutable. What more could one ask?

And I would touch the faces of the daises, and I would bow down to think about it.

That was then, which hasn’t ended yet.

Now the sun begins to swing down. Under the peach-light, I cross the fields and the dunes, I follow the ocean’s edge.

I climb, I backtrack. I float. I ramble my way home.

-mary oliver

[linemines]

Blue Iris

Now that I’m free to be myself, who am I?

Cant’ fly, can’t run, and see how slowly I walk.

Well, I think, I can read books.

‘What’s that you’re doing?’ the green-headed fly shouts as it buzzes past.

I close the book.

Well, I can write down words, like these, softly.

‘What’s that you’re doing?’ whispers the wind, pausing in a heap just outside the window.

Give me a little time, I say back to its staring, silver face. It doesn’t happen all of a sudden, you know.

'Doesn’t it?’ says the wind, and breaks open, releasing distillation of blue iris.

And my heart panics not to be, as I long to be, the empty, waiting, pure, speechless receptacle.

-mary oliver

[linemines]

Can You Imagine?

For example, what the trees do not only in lightning storms or the watery dark of a summer's night or under the white nets of winter but now, and now, and now - whenever we're not looking. Surely you can't imagine they don't dance, from the root up, wishing to travel a little, not cramped so much as wanting a better view, or more sun, or just as avidly more shade - surely you can't imagine they just stand there loving every minute of it, the birds or the emptiness, the dark rings of the years slowly and without a sound thickening, and nothing different unless the wind, and then only in its own mood, comes to visit, surely you can't imagine patience, and happiness, like that.

-mary oliver

[linemines]

When I am Among the Trees

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.”

-mary oliver

[linemines]

We Should Be Well Prepared

The way the plovers cry goodbye. The way the dead fox keeps on looking down the hill with open eye. The way the leaves fall, and then there’s the long wait. The way someone says we must never meet again. The way mold spots the cake, The way sourness overtakes the cream. The way the river water rushes by, never to return. The way the days go by, never to return. The way somebody comes back, but only in a dream.

-mary oliver

[linemines]

Where Does the Temple Begin, Where Does It End?

There are things you can’t reach. But you can reach out to them, and all day long.

The wind, the bird flying away. The idea of God.

And it can keep you as busy as anything else, and happier.

The snake slides away; the fish jumps, like a little lily, out of the water and back in; the goldfinches sing from the unreachable top of the tree.

I look; morning to night I am never done with looking.

Looking I mean not just standing around, but standing around as though with your arms open.

And thinking: maybe something will come, some shining coil of wind, or a few leaves from any old tree– they are all in this too.

And now I will tell you the truth. Everything in the world comes.

At least, closer.

And, cordially.

Like the nibbling, tinsel-eyed fish; the unlooping snake. Like goldfinches, little dolls of goldfluttering around the corner of the sky

of God, the blue air.

-mary oliver

[linemines]

Imaginary Number

The mountain that remains when the universe is destroyed

is not big and is not small.

Big and small are

comparative categories, and to what

could the mountain that remains when the universe is destroyed

be compared?

Consciousness observes and is appeased.

The soul scrambles across the screes.

The soul,

like the square root of minus 1,

is an impossibility that has its uses.

- vijay seshadri

[linemines]

Father Returning Home

My father travels on the late evening train Standing among silent commuters in the yellow light Suburbs slide past his unseeing eyes His shirt and pants are soggy and his black raincoat Stained with mud and his bag stuffed with books Is falling apart. His eyes dimmed by age fade homeward through the humid monsoon night. Now I can see him getting off the train Like a word dropped from a long sentence. He hurries across the length of the grey platform, Crosses the railway line, enters the lane, His chappals are sticky with mud, but he hurries onward.

Home again, I see him drinking weak tea, Eating a stale chapati, reading a book. He goes into the toilet to contemplate Man's estrangement from a man-made world. Coming out he trembles at the sink, The cold water running over his brown hands, A few droplets cling to the greying hairs on his wrists. His sullen children have often refused to share Jokes and secrets with him. He will now go to sleep Listening to the static on the radio, dreaming Of his ancestors and grandchildren, thinking Of nomads entering a subcontinent through a narrow pass.

- dilip chitre

[linemines]

Miss you. Would like to grab that chilled tofu we love.

Do not care if  you bring only your light body. Would just be so happy to sit at the table and talk about the menu. Miss you. Wish we could bet which chilis they’ll put on the cubes of tofu. Our favorite. Sometimes green. Sometimes red. Roasted we always thought. But so cold and fresh. How did they do it? Wish you could be here to talk about it like it was so important. Wish you could. Watched you on the screens as I was walking, as I was cooking. Wished you could get out of the hospital. Can’t bring myself to order our dish and eat it in the car. Miss you laughing. Miss you coming in from the cold or one too many meetings. Laughing. I’ll order already. I’ll order seven helpings, some dumplings, those cold yam noodles that you like. You can come in your light body or skeleton or be invisible I don’t even care. Know you have a long way to travel. Know I don’t even know if it’s long at all. Wish you could tell me. What you’re reading. If you’re reading. Miss you. I’m at the table in the back.

- gabrielle calvocoressi

[linemines]

Miss you. Would like to take a walk with you.

Do not care if  you just arrive in your skeleton. Would love to take a walk with you. Miss you. Would love to make you shrimp saganaki. Like you used to make me when you were alive. Love to feed you. Sit over steaming bowls of pilaf. Little roasted tomatoes covered in pepper and nutmeg. Miss you. Would love to walk to the post office with you. Bring the ghost dog. We’ll walk past the waterfall and you can tell me about the after. Wish you. Wish you would come back for a while. Don’t even need to bring your skin sack. I’ll know you. I know you will know me even though. I’m bigger now. Grayer. I’ll show you my garden. I’d like to hop in the leaf pile you raked but if you want to jump in? I’ll rake it for you. Miss you standing looking out at the river with your rake in your hand. Miss you in your puffy blue jacket. They’re hip now. I can bring you a new one if you’ll only come by. Know I told you it was okay to go. Know I told you it was okay to leave me. Why’d you believe me? You always believed me. Wish you would come back so we could talk about truth. Miss you. Wish you would walk through my door. Stare out from the mirror. Come through the pipes.

- gabrielle calvocoressi

[linemines]

For S Who Wonders If I Get Much Joy Out of Life

As a matter of fact I do. I contemplate, with a certain grim satisfaction, dynamic men who sell better butter. Sometimes I down a Coke implacably at the Taj. This morning I terrorized (successfully) the bank manager. I look striking in red and black and a necklace of skulls.

- eunice de souza

[linemines]

Heavy

That time I thought I could not go any closer to grief without dying

I went closer, and I did not die. Surely God had his hand in this,

as well as friends. Still, I was bent, and my laughter, as the poet said,

was nowhere to be found. Then said my friend Daniel, (brave even among lions), “It’s not the weight you carry

but how you carry it – books, bricks, grief – it’s all in the way you embrace it, balance it, carry it

when you cannot, and would not, put it down.” So I went practicing. Have you noticed?

Have you heard the laughter that comes, now and again, out of my startled mouth?

How I linger to admire, admire, admire the things of this world that are kind, and maybe

also troubled – roses in the wind, the sea geese on the steep waves, a love to which there is no reply?

- mary oliver

[linemines]

Theories about the Universe

I am trying to see things in perspective. My dog wants a bite of my peanut butter chocolate chip bagel. I know she cannot have this, because chocolate makes dogs very sick. My dog does not understand this. She pouts and wraps herself around my leg like a scarf and purrs and tries to convince me to give her just a tiny bit. When I do not give in, she eventually gives up and lays in the corner, under the piano, drooping and sad. I hope the universe has my best interest in mind like I have my dogs. When I want something with my whole being, and the universe withholds it from me, I hope the universe thinks to herself: “Silly girl.  She thinks this is what she wants, but she  does not understand how it will hurt."

- blythe baird

[linemines]

In Moderation

After Frank O’Hara

I am a woman of few excesses. I am cautious who I talk to. I buy cheap jeans that I let fade. I eat small steaks.

But sometimes it’s so great when I get out of bed late and drink too much Scotch and smoke too much pot and love you too much.

- joan cofrancesco

[linemines]

Abundance

in memory of Mary Oliver

It’s impossible to be lonely when you’re zesting an orange. Scrape the soft rind once and the whole room fills with fruit. Look around: you have more than enough. Always have. You just didn’t notice until now.

- amy schmidt

[linemines]

The Gift

Be still, my soul, and steadfast. Earth and heaven both are still watching though time is draining from the clock and your walk, that was confident and quick, has become slow.

So, be slow if you must, but let the heart still play its true part. Love still as once you loved, deeply and without patience. Let God and the world know you are grateful. That the gift has been given.

- mary oliver

[linemines]

Red Brocade

The Arabs used to say, When a stranger appears at your door, feed him for three days before asking who he is, where he’s come from, where he’s headed. That way, he’ll have strength enough to answer. Or, by then you’ll be such good friends you don’t care. Let’s go back to that. Rice? Pine nuts? Here, take the red brocade pillow. My child will serve water to your horse. No, I was not busy when you came! I was not preparing to be busy. That’s the armor everyone put on to pretend they had a purpose in the world. I refuse to be claimed. Your plate is waiting. We will snip fresh mint into your tea.

- naomi shihab nye