why i feed the birds
Posted: April 2, 2015 Filed under: Kindness, Meditation, Mindfulness, Yoga | Tags: compassion, kindness, love, nature, Poetry, Richard Vargas 2 Comments…
once
i saw my grandmother hold out
her hand cupping a small offering
of seed to one of the wild sparrows
that frequented the bird bath she
filled with fresh water every day
she stood still
maybe stopped breathing
while the sparrow looked
at her, then the seed
then back as if he was
judging her character
he jumped into her hand
began to eat
she smiled
a woman holding
a small god
– Richard Vargas
Dancing
Posted: March 26, 2015 Filed under: Kindness, Meditation, Mindfulness, Yoga | Tags: Canada, Daily Meditation, dancing, Identity, kindness, life, love, Margaret Atwood, Mindfulness, Omaha, passion, Poetry, Prose, writing, yoga 1 Comment…
It was my father taught my mother
how to dance.
I never knew that.
I thought it was the other way.
Ballroom was their style,
a graceful twirling,
curved arms and fancy footwork,
a green-eyed radio.
There is always more than you know.
There are always boxes
put away in the cellar,
worn shoes and cherished pictures,
notes you find later,
sheet music you can’t play.
A woman came on Wednesdays
with tapes of waltzes.
She tried to make him shuffle
around the floor with her.
She said it would be good for him.
He didn’t want to.
A Drink of Water
Posted: March 12, 2015 Filed under: Kindness, Meditation, Yoga | Tags: compassion, family, Identity, Jeffrey Harrison, kindness, life, love, meditation, nature, passion, Poetry 16 Comments…
When my nineteen-year-old son turns on the kitchen tap
and leans down over the sink and tilts his head sideways
to drink directly from the stream of cool water,
I think of my older brother, now almost ten years gone,
who used to do the same thing at that age;
and when he lifts his head back up and, satisfied,
wipes the water dripping from his cheek
with his shirtsleeve, it’s the same casual gesture
my brother used to make; and I don’t tell him
to use a glass, the way our father told my brother,
because I like remembering my brother
when he was young, decades before anything
went wrong, and I like the way my son
becomes a little more my brother for a moment
through this small habit born of a simple need,
which, natural and unprompted, ties them together
across the bounds of death, and across time …
as if the clear stream flowed between two worlds
and entered this one through the kitchen faucet,
my son and brother drinking the same water.
Greeting to Spring (Not Without Trepidation)
Posted: March 5, 2015 Filed under: Kindness, Meditation, Yoga | Tags: blogging, compassion, Identity, kindness, life, love, meditation, nature, passion, Poetry, Prose, Robert Lax, writing, yoga Leave a comment…
Over the back of the Florida basker,
over the froth of the Firth of Forth,
Up from Tahiti and Madagascar,
Lo, the sun walks north.
The first bright day makes sing the slackers
While leaves explode like firecrackers,
The duck flies forth to greet the spring
And sweetly municipal pigeons sing.
Where the duck quacks, where the bird sings,
We will speak of past things.
Come out with your marbles, come out with your Croup,
The grass is as green as a Girl Scout troop;
In the Mall the stone acoustics stand
Like a listening ear for the Goldman band.
At an outside table, where the sun’s bright glare is,
We will speak of darkened Paris.
Meanwhile, like attendants who hasten the hoofs
Of the ponies who trot in the shadow of roofs,
The sun, in his running, will hasten the plan
Of plants and fishes, beast and man.
We’ll turn our eyes to the sogging ground
And guess if the earth is cracked or round.
Over the plans of the parties at strife,
Over the planes in the waiting north,
Over the average man and his wife,
Lo, the sun walks forth!
– Robert Lax
For a Five-Year-Old
Posted: February 26, 2015 Filed under: Kindness, Meditation, Yoga | Tags: Children, Fleur Adcock, Identity, Internet, life, parenting, Poetry, Seva, Spring, writing, yoga 1 Comment…
A snail is climbing up the window-sill
into your room, after a night of rain.
You call me in to see and I explain
that it would be unkind to leave it there:
it might crawl to the floor; we must take care
that no one squashes it. You understand,
and carry it outside, with careful hand,
to eat a daffodil.
I see, then, that a kind of faith prevails:
your gentleness is moulded still by words
from me, who have trapped mice and shot wild birds,
from me, who drowned your kittens, who betrayed
your closest relatives and who purveyed
the harshest kind of truth to many another,
But that is how things are: I am your mother,
And we are kind to snails.
CultFit 