The Fight
Posted: January 15, 2015 Filed under: Kindness, Meditation, Yoga | Tags: compassion, desire, family, Gregory Djanikian, kindness, life, love, Omaha, passion, Poem, Poetry, reading, The Fight Leave a comment…
It was over a girl,
One boy had spoken to her,
Had asked her out, the other
Had been feeling with her
The twitches of something serious.
It was a misunderstanding,
Something that might have been fixed,
Talked out or around,
But the whole school had turned out
To watch them settle it.
It was too late for talk,
It was no longer just their fight,
Something irrelevant and impure
Had entered it, honor, looking
More upright than the other,
Things which had nothing to do
With the girl, or desire,
Or what she had whispered to one of them
One night in a car.
So they faced each other,
Bringing their anger up
By saying what finally did not matter
But loudly enough so their bodies believed it.
There was a sudden coming together,
There were fists flailing
While everybody, hundreds, watched.
One was cut above the eye, the other’s
Knuckles were bloodied against teeth.
It lasted half a minute until
One of them pulled back and said
Something like “This is stupid”
And the other dropped his fists
And watched him walk away
To the New Year
Posted: January 8, 2015 Filed under: Kindness, Meditation, Yoga | Tags: compassion, family, love, New Years Resolutions, Omaha, Poems, Poetry, reading, Storytelling, To the New Year, W.S. Merwin, writing, yoga 2 Comments…
With what stillness at last
you appear in the valley
your first sunlight reaching down
to touch the tips of a few
high leaves that do not stir
as though they had not noticed
and did not know you at all
then the voice of a dove calls
from far away in itself
to the hush of the morning
so this is the sound of you
here and now whether or not
anyone hears it this is
where we have come with our age
our knowledge such as it is
and our hopes such as they are
invisible before us
untouched and still possible
The End of This Year
Posted: December 31, 2014 Filed under: Kindness, Meditation, Yoga | Tags: Belize, gratitude, Jack Ridl, kindness, life, New Year's, passion, Poetry, Prose, The End of This Year 13 Comments…
The best place to be is here,
at home, the two of us, while
others ski or eat out. It will be
quiet. We won’t watch the ball
fall, the crowd in Times Square.
They will celebrate while here
there is this night. Tomorrow
some will start over, or vow
to stop something; maybe try
again. Here the snow will
fall through the light over
the back door and gather
on the steps. We will hope
our daughter will be safe.
She will wonder what
the year will bring. Maybe
we will say a prayer.
Waiting on the Corners
Posted: December 24, 2014 Filed under: Kindness, Meditation, Yoga | Tags: christmas, Donald Hall, family, friends, holidays, Poetry, Waiting on the Corners, winter 1 Comment…
Glass, air, ice, light,
and winter cold.
They stand on all the corners,
waiting alone, or in
groups that talk like the air
moving branches. It
is Christmas, and a red dummy
laughs in the window
of a store. Although
the trolleys come,
no one boards them,
but everyone moves
up and down, stamping his feet,
so unemployed.
They are talking, each of them,
but it is sticks and stones
that hear them,
their plans,
exultations,
and memories of the old time.
The words fly out, over
the roads and onto
the big, idle farms, on the hills,
forests, and rivers
of America, to mix into silence
of glass, air, ice, light,
and winter cold.
Kindness
Posted: December 18, 2014 Filed under: Kindness, Meditation, Yoga | Tags: gratitude, karma, kindness, Mindfulness, nebraska, Omaha, Poetry, Prose, Seva, snow, Stephen Dunn, winter, Winter Solstice 1 Comment…
In Manhattan, I learned a public kindness
was a triumph
over the push of money, the constrictions
of fear. If it occurred it came
from some deep
primal memory, almost entirely lost—
Here, let me help you, then you me,
otherwise we’ll die.
Which is why I love the weather
in Minnesota, every winter kindness
linked
to obvious self-interest,
thus so many kindnesses
when you need them;
praise blizzards, praise the cold.
CultFit 