mindful-poems

[mindful-poems]

Famous

by Naomi Shihab Nye

The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence, which knew it would inherit the earth before anybody said so.

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds watching him from the birdhouse.

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.

The idea you carry close to your bosom is famous to your bosom.

The boot is famous to the earth, more famous than the dress shoe, which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.

I want to be famous to shuffling men who smile while crossing streets, sticky children in grocery lines, famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous, or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular, but because it never forgot what it could do.

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"A Portable Paradise" - Roger Robinson

And if I speak of Paradise, then I’m speaking of my grandmother who told me to carry it always on my person, concealed, so no one else would know but me. That way they can’t steal it, she’d say. And if life puts you under pressure, trace its ridges in your pocket, smell its piney scent on your handkerchief, hum its anthem under your breath. And if your stresses are sustained and daily, get yourself to an empty room – be it hotel, hostel or hovel – find a lamp and empty your paradise onto a desk: your white sands, green hills and fresh fish. Shine the lamp on it like the fresh hope of morning, and keep staring at it till you sleep.

[mindful-poems]

By Li-Young Lee

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It's All Right

by William Stafford

Someone you trusted has treated you bad. Someone has used you to vent their ill temper. Did you expect anything different? Your work — better than some others' — has languished, neglected. Or a job you tried was too hard, and you failed. Maybe weather or bad luck spoiled what you did. That grudge, held against you for years after you patched up, has flared, and you've lost a friend for a time. Things at home aren't so good; on the job your spirits have sunk. But just when the worst bears down you find a pretty bubble in your soup at noon, and outside at work a bird says, "Hi!" Slowly the sun creeps along the floor; it is coming your way. It touches your shoe.

[mindful-poems]

A Note

by Wislawa Szymborksa tr. Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak

Life is the only way to get covered in leaves, catch your breath on sand, rise on wings;

to be a dog, or stroke its warm fur;

to tell pain from everything it’s not;

to squeeze inside events, dawdle in views, to seek the least of all possible mistakes;

An extraordinary chance to remember for a moment a conversation held with the lamp switched off;

and if only once to stumble on a stone, end up soaked in one downpour or another,

mislay your keys in the grass; and to follow a spark on the wind with your eyes;

and to keep on not knowing something important.

[mindful-poems]

The Good Life

by Mark Strand

You stand at the window. There is a glass cloud in the shape of a heart. There are the wind’s sighs that are like caves in your speech. You are the ghost in the tree outside.

The street is quiet. The weather, like tomorrow, like your life, is partially here, partially up in the air. There is nothing that you can do.

The good life gives no warning. It weathers the climates of despair and appears, on foot, unrecognized, offering nothing, and you are there.

[mindful-poems]

Crying

by Galway Kinnell

Crying only a little bit is no use. You must cry until your pillow is soaked! Then you can get up and laugh. Then you can jump in the shower and splash-splash-splash! Then you can throw open your window and, “Ha ha! ha ha!” And if people say, “Hey what’s going on up there?” “Ha ha!“ sing back, "Happiness was hiding in the last tear! I wept it! Ha ha!”

[mindful-poems]

In Passing

by Lisel Mueller

How swiftly the strained honey of afternoon light flows into darkness

and the closed bud shrugs off its special mystery in order to break into blossom

as if what exists, exists so that it can be lost and become precious

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exerpt from “John Chapman” in American Primitive by Mary Oliver

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— Mary Oliver, from The Gardener (via lunamonchtuna)

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Mary Oliver, from “Summer Morning.” [ID in alt text]

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ELLEN BASS

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Peonies

by Jim Harrison

The peonies, too heavy with their beauty, slump to the ground. I had hoped they would live forever but ever so slowly day by day they’re becoming the soil of their birth with a faint tang of deliquescence around them. Next June they’ll somehow remember to come alive again, a little trick we have or have not learned.

[mindful-poems]

The plum you're going to eat next summer

by Gayle Brandeis

The plum you’re going to eat next summer doesn’t exist yet; its potential lives inside a tree you’ll never see in an orchard you’ll never see, will be touched by a certain number of water droplets before it reaches you, by certain angles of light, by a finite amount of bugs and dust motes and hands you’ll never know. The plum you are going to eat next summer will gather sugar, gather mass, will harden at its center so it can soften toward your mouth. The plum you’re going to eat next summer doesn’t know you exist. The plum you are going to eat next summer is growing just for you.

[mindful-poems]

not sure if anyone is interested in this but here is a list of the most joyfully vital poems I know :)

You're the Top by Ellen Bass

Grand Fugue by Peter E. Murphy

Our Beautiful Life When It's Filled with Shrieks by Christopher Citro

Everything Is Waiting For You by David Whyte

Lawrence Ferlinghetti Is Alive! by Emily Sernaker

Instructions for Assembling the Miracle by Peter Cooley

Barton Springs by Tony Hoagland

Footnote to Howl by Allen Ginsberg

Song of the Open Road by Walt Whitman

Tomorrow, No, Tomorrower by Bradley Trumpfheller

At Last the New Arriving by Gabrielle Calvocoressi

To a Self-Proclaimed Manic Depressive Ex-Stripper Poet, After a Reading by Jeannine Hall Gailey

In the Presence of Absence by Richard Widerkehr

Chillary Clinton Said 'We Have to Bring Them to Heal' by Cortney Lamar Charleston

Midsummer by Charles Simic

Today by Frank O'Hara

Naturally by Stephen Dunn

Life is Slightly Different Than You Think It Is by Arthur Vogelsang

Ode to My Husband, Who Brings the Music by Zeina Hashem Beck

The Imaginal Stage by D.A. Powell

Lucky Life by Gerald Stern

Beginner's Lesson by Malcolm Alexander

Presidential Poetry Briefing by Albert Haley

A Poem for Uncertainties by Mark Terrill

On Coming Home by Lisa Summe

G-9 by Tim Dlugos

Five Haiku by Billy Collins

The Fates by David Kirby

Upon Receiving My Inheritance by William Fargason

Variation on a Theme by W. S. Merwin

Easy as Falling Down Stairs by Dean Young

Psalm 150 by Jericho Brown

Pantoum for Sabbouha by Zeina Hashem Beck

ASMR by Corey Van Landingham

A Welcome by Joanna Klink

From Blossoms by Li-Young Lee

At Church, I Tell My Mom She’s Singing Off-Key and She Says, by Michael Frazier

[mindful-poems]

I Worried

by Mary Oliver

I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers flow in the right direction, will the earth turn as it was taught, and if not how shall I correct it?

Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven, can I do better?

Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows can do it and I am, well, hopeless.

Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it, am I going to get rheumatism, lockjaw, dementia?

Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing. And gave it up. And took my old body and went out into the morning, and sang.

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IT'S THIS WAY

I stand in the advancing light,

my hands hungry, the world beautiful.  

My eyes can’t get enough of the trees–

they’re so hopeful, so green.  

A sunny road runs through the mulberries,

I’m at the window of the prison infirmary.  

I can’t smell the medicines–

carnations must be blooming nearby.  

It’s this way:

being captured is beside the point,

the point is not to surrender.

NAZIM HIKMET