mindful-poems

[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.

[mindful-poems]

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

[mindful-poems]

[mindful-poems]

LIFE ON EARTH

The odds are we should never have been born.

Not one of us. Not one in 400 trillion to be

exact. Only one among the 250 million

released in a flood of semen that glides

like a glassine limousine filled with tadpoles

of possible people, one of whom may

or may not be you, a being made of water

and blood, a creature with eyeballs and limbs

that end in fists, a you with all your particular

perfumes, the chords of your sinewy legs

singing as they form, your organs humming

and buzzing with new life, moonbeams

lighting up your brain’s gray coils,

the exquisite hills of your face, the human

toy your mother longs for, your father

yearns to hold, the unmistakable you

who will take your first breath, your first

step, bang a copper pot with a wooden spoon,

trace the lichen growing on a boulder you climb

to see the wild expanse of a field, the one

whose heart will yield to the yellow forsythia

named after William Forsyth—not the American

actor with piercing blue eyes, but the Scottish

botanist who discovered the buttery bells

on a highland hillside blooming

to beat the band, zigzagging down

an unknown Scottish slope. And those

are only a few of the things 

you will one day know, slowly chipping away

at your ignorance and doubt, you

who were born from ashes and will return

to ash. When you think you might be

through with this body and soul, look down

at an anthill or up at the stars, remember

your gambler chances, the bounty 

of good luck you were born for.

DORIANNE LAUX

[mindful-poems]

Such Silence

by Mary Oliver

As deep as I ever went into the forest I came upon an old stone bench, very, very old, and around it a clearing, and beyond that trees taller and older than I had ever seen.

Such silence! It really wasn’t so far from a town, but it seemed all the clocks in the world had stopped counting. So it was hard to suppose the usual rules applied.

Sometimes there’s only a hint, a possibility. What’s magical, sometimes, has deeper roots than reason. I hope everyone knows that.

I sat on the bench, waiting for something. An angel, perhaps. Or dancers with the legs of goats.

No, I didn’t see either. But only, I think, because I didn’t stay long enough.

[mindful-poems]

From Paul Tran's book, All the Flowers Kneeling. (Penguin, 2022)

[mindful-poems]

Death

by Joyce Grenfell

If I should die before the rest of you, Break not a flower nor inscribe a stone. Nor, when I’m gone, speak in a Sunday voice, But be the usual selves that I have known. Weep if you must, Parting is hell. But life goes on, So … sing as well.

[mindful-poems]

From Darius Simpson's book, Never Catch Me. (Button Poetry, 2022)

[mindful-poems]

From Sarah Kay's book, No Matter the Wreckage. (Write Bloody, 2014)

[mindful-poems]

From Diane Seuss's new book Modern Poetry, out today with Graywolf!

[mindful-poems]

Ordinary Life by Barbara Crooker

[mindful-poems]

~ Mary Oliver, Devotions

[mindful-poems]

~ Mary Oliver, Devotions poems

[mindful-poems]

“Let me peer out at the world through your lens. (Maybe I’ll shudder, or gasp, or tilt my head in a question.) Let me see how your blue is my turquoise and my orange is your gold. Suddenly binary stars, we have startling gravity. Let’s compare scintillation - let’s share starlight.”

~ Naomi Shihab Nye

[mindful-poems]

[mindful-poems]

Blessing the Boats

by Lucille Clifton

(at St. Mary’s)

may the tide that is entering even now the lip of our understanding carry you out beyond the face of fear may you kiss the wind then turn from it certain that it will love your back     may you open your eyes to water water waving forever and may you in your innocence sail through this to that