Category Archives: Poetry

Tea

Posted on February 3, 2016 by ivonprefontaine

Amy Uyematsu wrote this poem for the Zen monk, Thich Nhat Hanh. In several books, he describes the peacefulness of drinking tea, washing dishes, and being a parent. The key to success, and it is hard to accomplish, is to be present and give one’s self over to the task, the person, and moment being shared.

Carl D’Agostino at I Know I Made You Smile reminded me today that the present is “very trying times for most of us.” It is. I find it easier to fictionalize the past and fantasize the future, but it is demanding to be present to the moment I share with someone else, a task, and/or an object.

The poem suggests this living in the present is not a task to be mastered, but something we engage with throughout our lives and it is hard work. Reading the poem gives me a sense of what a great role model Thich Nhat Hanh would be as he makes time for the present moment.

I read articles about mindfulness as a corporate strategy for leaders and followers alike. The authors often treat mindfulness as if it is something we can turn on and off at will, that there are 5 easy steps to follow. I know, from personal experience and missteps, that it is not that easy to live in the present moment each and every moment. The sunset I watch, the tea I drink, and the smiles I share with loved ones are not always easy to capture in the moment. It takes a life time of practice that is never complete.

How many years of suffering
revealed in hands like his
small and deliberate as a child’s

The way he raises them
from his lap, grasps the teacup
with sure, unhurried ease

Yet full of anticipation
for what he will taste in each sip
he drinks as if it’s his first time

Lifts the cup to his mouth,
a man who’s been practicing all his life,
each time tasting something new.

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Change

Posted on January 30, 2016 by ivonprefontaine

Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself. ― Rumi

Source: Change

I enjoy Rumi. He wrote poetry that yielded lasting messages.

We live in a world where people want to change the world, rather than themselves. However, the world changes when we change ourselves. I transform and move beyond who I was, even the second before. As I change, my view of the world shifts and the world appears new to me.

It reminds me of Marcel Proust‘s quote: “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”

Leaders who believe they can change the world for others are mere managers. Leaders change the world for themselves and invite others to join them in sharing their view of the world. There are not two identical views.

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Looking for the Differences

Posted on January 30, 2016 by ivonprefontaine

Tom Hennen wrote about the differences that can fill our senses each day. Sometimes, humans do not notice what is different as differences can hide in nooks and crannies of our daily lives. When we do sense the differences, they can excite our senses and call us to take care around them. In their daily existences, these things are “royalty in their own country.”

The words thing and objects used in the poem can be replaced by persons and subjects. How many people do we miss and avoid, because they look, speak, and act differently? There is a strangeness in the royalty of the other that calls upon us to question not them, but our self.

Hans-Georg Gadamer suggested that when some one or something different shows itself humans pull up short. Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas wrote that when the stranger appears at the door the host is faced with a paradox of unconditional responsiblity and risk. When we greet the stranger and what is different, we do so with uncertainty. The words host, hospitality, and hostile share etymological roots. We cannot know in advance who and what strangers represent when we greet them, but in Abrahamic tradition (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), the host is responsible for the care and well-being of that stranger.

Perhaps in being attentive and mindful to the world we exist in, we can better serve the stranger and what is strange when they appear.

I am struck by the otherness of things rather than their sameness.

The way a tiny pile of snow perches in the crook of a branch in the

tall pine, away by itself, high enough not to be noticed by people,

out of reach of stray dogs. It leans against the scaly pine bark, busy

at some existence that does not need me.

It is the differences of objects that I love, that lift me toward the rest

of the universe, that amaze me. That each thing on earth has its own

soul, its own life, that each tree, each clod is filled with the mud of

its own star. I watch where I step and see that the fallen leaf, old

broken grass, an icy stone are placed in exactly the right spot on the

earth, carefully, royalty in their own country.

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Sonnet XIV from The Sonnets To Orpheus by Rainer Maria Rilke

Posted on January 28, 2016 by ivonprefontaine

Reblogged on WordPress.com

Source: Sonnet XIV from The Sonnets To Orpheus by Rainer Maria Rilke

The last two stanzas challenge us to think about whether our roles are submissive and passive affairs or ones where we have some mastery and active choice. My mother used to tell us that we had free choice and had to accept responsibility for the consequences of those choices. She told us we are not empty vessels created by God, whatever that belief is, but responsible people with free choice.

The liberty of others and their choices constrains our personal liberty. Without differences, life would be a boring space without room for creativity and growth, a moving to the surface that is fraught with potential challenges.

Similar to the plants in Rilke‘s poem, we face obstacles and constraints. We exist and flourish within those constraints when we find the proper paths to live lives fully. It is no easy task, but one that can bring great fulfillment. When care for and tend to those paths, our lives become filled with vigour, often flourishing because of the lessons learned from finding those paths.

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The Frog

Posted on January 28, 2016 by ivonprefontaine

The frog does not drink up the pond in which he lives. source: Teton Sioux Proverb image: Eddie Two Hawks, Image Collection, The Frog

The local is important in how we live life and experience our environments. Sometimes, we look at the world and it seems larger than the world we experience, as it most immediately. We can never fully know the world, but we can know most the world we live in most immediately. It is imperative to not spoil that world. When each community fulfills its ethical and practical role, this overlaps others’ roles, feeding the whole.

Source: The Frog

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The Lessons of Water

Posted on January 26, 2016 by ivonprefontaine

David Wagoner wrote this wonderful poem that encourages us to watch nature and learn from it. Regardless of one’s faith, we receive gifts that act as teachers for our living.

When we watch water, we can see and hear its story and that can guide our behaviours. Nature is not separate from us, but a part of us that was shared with us so we might care for it and pass it on to the next generations.

The best way to conduct oneself may be observed in the behavior of water. —Tao te ching

When given a place to wait, it fills that place
By taking the shape of what contains it,
Its upper surface poised and level,
Absorbing, accepting what it can as lightly
Or heavily as it does itself. If pressed
Down, it will offer back in all directions
Everything it was given. If chilled, it will shatter
Daylight and whiten to stars, will harden and sharpen
And turn unforseeably dazzling. Neglected,
It will disappear, being transformed and lifted
Into thin air. Or thrown away, it will gather
With other water, which is all one water,
And rise and fall, regather and go on rising
And falling the more quickly its path descends
And the more slowly as it wears that path away,
To be left awhile, to stir for the moon, to wait
For the wind to begin again.

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School Prayer

Posted on January 23, 2016 by ivonprefontaine

The second stanza of this poem is a great message for the world today. When we hate, we take something out of the world. The world is a place in need of love, humility. wonder, and peace.

Diane Ackerman writes a wonderful poem that offers insight into the world and with. John Dewey suggested the world is not separated into objective or subjective worlds, but is a continuous forming and conversing between the two we each engage in moment-to-moment.

What would happen if this prayer and poem began each day for us and our children?

In the name of the daybreak
and the eyelids of morning
and the wayfaring moon
and the night when it departs,

I swear I will not dishonor
and my soul with hatred,
but offer myself humbly
as a guardian of nature,
as a healer of misery,
as a messenger of wonder,
as an architect of peace.

In the name of the sun and its mirrors
and the day that embraces it
and the cloud veils drawn over it
and the uttermost night
and the male and the female
and the plants bursting with seed
and the crowning seasons
of the firefly and the apple,

I will honor all life
—wherever and in whatever form
it may dwell—on Earth my home,

and in the mansions of the stars.

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Adios

Posted on January 20, 2016 by ivonprefontaine

When we say good-bye to something or someone, the word means more than we say. We hold thoughts and images of what and who we leave behind. Our work, when we say Adios, is incomplete. We recall the memories of things and people we left behind, as we said and waved good-bye. The memories bring smiles, tears, shrugs, and frowns, among other features, to our face and body.

When we say good-bye, there is always something and someone calling us back, perhaps only in our mind as we reach out. The space fills with questions about what we left and a sense of wondering about what is happening with that thing or that person.

Naomi Shihab Nye captured the essence of good-bye as it rolls off our tongues and as we tap our fingers marroed to it. Thoughts and images fill our minds as we reflect on what that word, regardless of language, might mean.

It is a good word, rolling off the tongue;

no matter what language you were born with

use it. Learn where it begins,

the small alphabet of departure,

how long it takes to think of it,

then say it, then be heard.

Marry it. More than any golden ring,

it shines, it shines.

Wear it on every finger

till your hands dance,

touching everything easily,

letting everything, easily, go.

Strap it to your back like wings.

Or a kite-tail. The stream of air behind a jet.

If you are known for anything,

let it be the way you rise out of sight

when your work is finished.

Think of things that linger: leaves,

cartons and napkins, the damp smell of mold.

Think of things that disappear.

Think of what you love best,

what brings tears into your eyes.

Something that said adios to you

before you knew what it meant

or how long it was for.

Explain little, the word explains itself.

Later perhaps. Lessons following lessons,

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ON HOW TO PICK AND EAT POEMS

Posted on January 15, 2016 by ivonprefontaine

Phyllis Cole-Dai wrote this wonderful poem that offers so much advice about how to live life more fully. When I stand still and just am in the moment, it is there that I can live most fully. Poems grow there and, just like finding something wonderful in nature, we can bow to it as we read it and let it soak in.

Stop whatever it is you’re doing.
Come down from the attic.
Grab a bucket or a basket and head for light.
That’s where the best poems grow, and in the dappled dark.

Go slow. Watch out for thorns and bears.
When you find a good bush, bow to it, or take off your shoes.
Then pluck. This poem. That poem. Any poem.
It should come off the stem easy, just a little tickle.
No need to sniff first, judge the color, test the firmness.
You’ll only know it’s ripe if you taste.

So put a poem upon your lips. Chew its pulp.
Let its juice spill over your tongue.
Let your reading of it teach you
what sort of creature you are
and the nature of the ground you walk upon.
Bring your whole life out loud to this one poem.
Eating one poem can save you, if you’re hungry enough.

When birds and deer beat you to your favorite patch,
smile at their familiar appetite, and ramble on.
Somewhere another crop waits for harvest.
And if your eye should ever light upon a cluster of poems
hanging on a single stem, cup your hand around them
and pull, without greed or clinging.
Some will slip off in your palm.
None will go to waste.

Take those you adore poem-picking when you can,
even to the wild and hidden places.
Reach into brambles for their sake,
stain your skin some shade of red or blue,
mash words against your teeth, for love.
And always leave some poems within easy reach
for the next picker, in kinship with the unknown.

If you ever carry away more than you need,
go on home to your kitchen, and make good jam.
No need to rush, the poems will keep.
Some will even taste better with age,
a rich batch of preserves.

Store up jars and jars of jam. Plenty for friends.
Plenty for the long, howling winter. Plenty for strangers.
Plenty for all the bread in this broken world.

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An Appalachian Wedding

Posted on January 13, 2016 by ivonprefontaine

This is my first post since getting back at it. It has been a great few months. I did not go far from my computer, but my efforts focused on dissertation writing. That is off the table for about a month as the committee members read and offer feedback. When that is done, I hope to be into research.

Thomas Berry was a Catholic priest and environmentalist who wrote the book The Dream of the Earth. He approached his environmentalism in a very holistic manner, incorporating a variety of traditions: Judeo-Christian, Eastern philosophies, and Indigenous people.

I feel that many people have moved away from the holistic relationship they subjectively and objectively engage in the world/ universe. We are not separate but part of a complex dynamic that is always incomplete and unpredictable.

Look up at the sky
the heavens so blue
the sun so radiant
the clouds so playful
the soaring raptors
woodland creatures
meadows in bloom
rivers singing their
way to the sea
wolfsong on the land
whalesong in the sea
celebration everywhere
wild, riotous
immense as a monsoon
lifting an ocean of joy
then spilling it down over
the Appalachian landscape
drenching us all
in a deluge of delight
as we open our arms and
rush toward each other
all of us moved by that vast
compassionate curve
that brings all things together
in intimate celebration
celebration that is
the universe itself.