You Learn by Jorge Luis Borges

After a while you learn the subtle difference

Between holding a hand and chaining a soul,

And you learn that love doesn't mean leaning

And company doesn't mean security.

And you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts

And presents aren't promises,

And you begin to accept your defeats

With your head up and your eyes open

with the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child,

And you learn to build all your roads on today

Because tomorrow's ground is too uncertain for plans

And futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight.

After a while you learn...

That even sunshine burns if you get too much.

so you plant your garden and decorate your own soul,

Instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.

And you learn that you really can endure...

That you really are strong

And you really do have worth...

And you learn and learn...

With every good-bye you learn.

by Jorge Luis Borges

ranslation by Veronica A. Shoffstall

found on Oriah Mountaindreamer's Facebook page

Poem for Spring Flowers

http://www.stellaalesi.com/blog

April
by James Schuyler


The morning sky is clouding up
and what is that tree,
dressed up in white? The fruit
tree, French pear. Sulphur-
yellow bees stud the forsythia
canes leaning down into the transfer
across the park. And trees in
skimpy flower bud suggest
the uses of paint thinner, so
fine the net they cast upon
the wind. Cross-pollination
is the order of the fragrant day.
That was yesterday: today is May,
not April and the magnolias
open their goblets up and
an unseen precipitation
fills them. A gray day in May.

poem from poets.org A Poem a Day

Poem for Women's Day

Imagine a Woman II

Imagine a woman who is interested in her own life.
A woman who embraces her life as teacher, healer, and challenge.
Who is grateful for the ordinary moments of beauty and grace.

Imagine a woman who participates in her own life.
A woman who meets each challenge with creativity.
Who takes action on her own behalf with clarity and strength.

Imagine a woman who has crafted a fully-formed solitude.
A woman who is available to herself.
Who chooses friends and lovers with the capacity to respect her solitude.
Imagine a woman who acknowledges the full range of human emotion.
A woman who expresses her feelings clearly and directly.
Who allows them to pass through her as naturally as the breath.

Imagine a woman who tells the truth.
A woman who trusts her experience of the world and expresses it.
Who refuses to defer to the thoughts, perceptions, and responses of others.

Imagine a woman who follows her creative impulses.
A woman who produces original creations.
Who refuses to color inside someone else’s lines.

Imagine a woman who has relinquished the desire for intellectual safety and approval.
A woman who makes a powerful statement with every action she takes.
Who asserts to herself the right to reorder the world.

Imagine a woman who has grown in knowledge and love ofherself.
A woman who has vowed faithfulness to her own life.
Who remains loyal to herself. Regardless.

Imagine yourself as this woman.

“Imagine a Woman II” © Patricia Lynn Reilly, 1995
Excerpt: Imagine a Woman in Love with Herself (Conari, 1999)

Meeting my Own Grief

Meeting my grief, even if only halfway, sucks

the breath right out of my lungs.

Suddenly my bra is too tight.

My counselor said, look at that young girl’s stories

with compassion (I unhook the bra).

How to step into the gravity field of my own longing. *

I dream the river is rising. The big car rounds

the bend, makes a wide turn to avoid

splashing water at the crest of the hill.

I round up the kids, get us to higher ground,

look for a shortcut over that highway.

But a man says, only turnpikes, clover leafs,

You can’t get there on foot.

Swallow my grief? Or swim right through it?

I step into the river.

poem by me
*quote from David Whyte

Conversations with God

Love this book.

Here's an excerpt I particularly like:

"The most loving person is the person who is self-centered.

People think, "If I can just love others, they will love me. Then I will be lovable and I can love me." Deep down we've been lead to believe we are bad, unworthy, missing some essential ingredient and we have to behave well to be loved.

...Your first relationship must be with your Self. You must first learn to honour and cherish and love your Self. You must first see yourself as worthy before you can see another as worthy.

Honour your feelings means to honour the self. Then you can honour the feelings of another. Have the feeling  and then you step back from the rage,  upset, disgust - you disown them as not who you want to be. You try them out until you realize you don't want to do that anymore - it's no longer who you want to be."

Keeping Things Whole

In a field
I am the absence
of field.

This is always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.

- Mark Strand

Stepping Westward

Denise Levertov

What is green in me
darkens, muscadine.

If woman is inconstant,
good, I am faithful to

ebb and flow, I fall
in season and now

is a time of ripening.
If her part

is to be true,
a north star,

good, I hold steady
in the black sky

and vanish by day,
yet burn there

in blue or above
quilts of cloud.

There is no savor
more sweet, more salt

than to be glad to be
what, woman,

and who, myself,
I am, a shadow

that grows longer as the sun
moves, drawn out

on a thread of wonder.
If I bear burdens

they begin to be remembered
as gifts, goods, a basket

of bread that hurts
my shoulders but closes me

in fragrance, I can
eat as I go.

To all my women friends, who carry that basket, and bear those gifts.
I learned this poem in a poetry class with Fran Quinn, in New York City several years ago, in which we all learned the value of learning a poem by heart, and making it our own.