Just Beyond Yourself by David Whyte

Blue (M.A. Reilly, August 2021, Redemption Bay, Seward, Alaska)

I love the idea of self-forgetting and all of the possibilities that get folded into it such a state. It's what I experience when I am involved in something intense, like making images, painting, teaching, or deep learning.  This poem by David Whyte reminds me of the importance of movement. All things living move. Some mornings I wake and wonder, what road beckons?  What path just beyond myself--be it made of dirt, asphalt or water--do I now need to know? 

Moving beyond myself--the often too-comfortable place--is in fact where I most need to be. 

JUST BEYOND YOURSELF

     -- by David Whyte

Just beyond

yourself.

It’s where

you need

to be.

Half a step

into

self-forgetting

and the rest

restored

by what

you’ll meet.

There is a road

always

beckoning.

When you see

the two sides

of it

closing together

at that far horizon

and deep in

the foundations

of your own

heart

at exactly

the same

time,

that’s how

you know

it's where

you

have

to go.

That’s how

you know

it’s the road

you

have

to follow.

That’s

how you know.

It’s just beyond

yourself,

it’s

where you

need to be.

…

Poetry Break: Sisyphus and the Ants

 

Sisyphus (M.A.Reilly, Paterson, NJ)

Sisyphus and the Ants

BY JENNIFER S. FLESCHER

The story tells us Sisyphus is being punished.

Over and over he has to push that boulder

up and up. The mountain and God glaring.

And you, you have

your avalanche of moods.

Pills the size of stars to nearly quell

cascade and tumult.

And still you step

gravity amplified by incline, each hazard

in the way of the boulder a reminder

it should be easier. There should be

a hot fudge sundae at the top. A long nap in the shade.

The story forgot to tell us, though, Sisyphus thrived.

He learned to guide his wrists

and shoulder girdles safely to protect himself.

And later he worked to safeguard every insect

from here to the crest. Considers this his calling.

Even as the sun and the weight of time bears down.

Your strength is kingly.

Source: Poetry (February 2019)

#PoetryBreak: Love After Love

 A page from one of my art journals.

Love After Love

 - by Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

#PoetryBreak - Planet

Newark, NJ (M.A. Reilly

Planet

-       Catherine Pierce

This morning this planet is covered by winds and blue.

This morning this planet glows with dustless perfect light,

enough that I can see one million sharp leaves

from where I stand. I walk on this planet, its hard-packed

dirt and prickling grass, and I don’t fall off. I come down

soft if I choose, hard if I choose. I never float away.

Sometimes I want to be weightless on this planet, and so

I wade into a brown river or dive through a wave

and for a while feel nothing under my feet. Sometimes

I want to hear what it was like before the air, and so I duck

under the water and listen to the muted hums. I’m ashamed

to say that most days I forget this planet. That most days

I think about dentist appointments and plagiarists

and the various ways I can try to protect my body from itself.

Last weekend I saw Jupiter through a giant telescope,

its storm stripes, four of its sixty-seven moons, and was filled

with fierce longing, bitter that instead of Ganymede or Europa,

I had only one moon floating in my sky, the moon

called Moon, its face familiar and stale. But this morning

I stepped outside and the wind nearly knocked me down.

This morning I stepped outside and the blue nearly

crushed me. This morning this planet is so loud with itself—

its winds, its insects, its grackles and mourning doves—

that I can hardly hear my own lamentations. This planet.

All its grooved bark, all its sand of quartz and bones

and volcanic glass, all its creeping thistle lacing the yards

with spiny purple. I’m trying to come down soft today.

I’m trying to see this place even as I’m walking through it.

#poetrybreak, Let Them Not Say

Petals (M.A. Reilly, Dublin)

Let Them Not Say

 - Jane Hirschfield

Jane Hirschfield wrote this poem well before the presidential inauguration and without the event in mind. “But,” she writes, “it seems a day worth remembering the fate of our shared planet and all its beings, human and beyond.”

Let them not say:    we did not see it.
We saw.

Let them not say:    we did not hear it.
We heard.

Let them not say:    they did not taste it.
We ate, we trembled.

Let them not say:    it was not spoken, not written.
We spoke,
we witnessed with voices and hands.

Let them not say:     they did nothing.
We did not-enough.

Let them say, as they must say something: 

A kerosene beauty.
It burned.

Let them say we warmed ourselves by it,
read by its light, praised,
and it burned.

#PoetryBreak: America

Sunday Afternoon (M.A. Reilly)

America

BY CLAUDE MCKAY

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,

And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth,

Stealing my breath of life, I will confess

I love this cultured hell that tests my youth.

Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,

Giving me strength erect against her hate,

Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.

Yet, as a rebel fronts a king in state,

I stand within her walls with not a shred

Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.

Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,

And see her might and granite wonders there,

Beneath the touch of Time’s unerring hand,

Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.

Claude McKay, "America" from Liberator (December 1921).

#PoetryBreak: Remember

Coming Undone (M.A. Reilly)

Remember

  - by Joy Harjo 

Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star's stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun's birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother's, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life, also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe.
Remember you are all people and all people
are you.
Remember you are this universe and this
universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this.
Remember the dance language is, that life is.
Remember.

"Remember." Copyright ©1983 by Joy Harjo from She Had Some Horses by Joy Harjo. 

#PoetryBreak: Sorrow Is Not My Name

Counting (M.A. Reilly)

Thanks to Brian Mooney for sharing this poem. 

Sorrow Is Not My Name

BY ROSS GAY

—after Gwendolyn Brooks

No matter the pull toward brink. No

matter the florid, deep sleep awaits.

There is a time for everything. Look,

just this morning a vulture

nodded his red, grizzled head at me,

and I looked at him, admiring

the sickle of his beak.

Then the wind kicked up, and,

after arranging that good suit of feathers

he up and took off.

Just like that. And to boot,

there are, on this planet alone, something like two

million naturally occurring sweet things,

some with names so generous as to kick

the steel from my knees: agave, persimmon,

stick ball, the purple okra I bought for two bucks

at the market. Think of that. The long night,

the skeleton in the mirror, the man behind me

on the bus taking notes, yeah, yeah.

But look; my niece is running through a field

calling my name. My neighbor sings like an angel

and at the end of my block is a basketball court.

I remember. My color's green. I'm spring.

      —for Walter Aikens

#PoetryBreak: Still I Rise

Still I Rise

BY MAYA ANGELOU

Maya (M.A. Reilly, 2019)

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?

Why are you beset with gloom?

’Cause I walk like I've got oil wells

Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,

With the certainty of tides,

Just like hopes springing high,

Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops,

Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don't you take it awful hard

’Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines

Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise

That I dance like I've got diamonds

At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame

I rise

Up from a past that’s rooted in pain

I rise

I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise

I rise.

Maya Angelou, "Still I Rise" from And Still I Rise: A Book of Poems.  Copyright © 1978 by Maya Angelou.  Used by permission of Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

#PoetryBreak: Break

Today's poetry break and I hope it inspires you to teak a break from all that is churning around us.

from Wales (M.A. Reilly, 2014)

Break

We put the puzzle together piece
by piece, loving how one curved
notch fits so sweetly with another.
A yellow smudge becomes
the brush of a broom, and two blue arms
fill in the last of the sky.
We patch together porch swings and autumn
trees, matching gold to gold. We hold
the eyes of deer in our palms, a pair
of brown shoes. We do this as the child
circles her room, impatient
with her blossoming, tired
of the neat house, the made bed,
the good food. We let her brood
as we shuffle through the pieces,
setting each one into place with a satisfied
tap, our backs turned for a few hours
to a world that is crumbling, a sky
that is falling, the pieces
we are required to return to.

—Dorianne Laux

#PoetryBreak: The Lost Land

Today's #PoetryBreak is from Eavan Boland. Happy St. Patrick's Day.

Bay (M.A. Reilly, Ireland)

The Lost Land

BY EAVAN BOLAND

I have two daughters.

They are all I ever wanted from the earth.

Or almost all.

I also wanted one piece of ground:

One city trapped by hills. One urban river.

An island in its element.

So I could say mine. My own.

And mean it.

Now they are grown up and far away

and memory itself

has become an emigrant,

wandering in a place

where love dissembles itself as landscape:

Where the hills

are the colours of a child's eyes,

where my children are distances, horizons:

At night,

on the edge of sleep,

I can see the shore of Dublin Bay.

Its rocky sweep and its granite pier.

Is this, I say

how they must have seen it,

backing out on the mailboat at twilight,

shadows falling

on everything they had to leave?

And would love forever?

And then

I imagine myself

at the landward rail of that boat

searching for the last sight of a hand.

I see myself

on the underworld side of that water,

the darkness coming in fast, saying

all the names I know for a lost land:

Ireland. Absence. Daughter.

“The Lost Land” from THE LOST LAND by Eavan Boland. Copyright ©1998 by Eavan Boland. Used by permission of W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Source: The Lost Land (W. W. Norton and Company Inc., 1998)