Tree
Jane Hirshfield

It is foolish
to let a young redwood
grow next to a house.

Even in this
one lifetime,
you will have to choose.

That great calm being,
this clutter of soup-pots and books--

Already the first branch tips brush at the window.
Softly, calmly,
immensity taps at your life.

From Wiggle 3-34

Dogfish

Some kind of relaxed and beautiful thing

kept flickering in with the tide

and looking around.

Black as a fisherman's boot,

with a white belly.

If you asked for a picture I would have to draw a smile

under the perfectly round eyes and above the chin,

which was rough

as a thousand sharpened nails.

And you know

what a smile means,

don't you?

I wanted

the past to go away, I wanted

to leave it, like another country; I wanted

my life to close, and open

like a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the song

where it falls

down over the rocks: an erosion, a discovery;

I wanted

to hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know,

whoever I was, I was

alive

for a little while.

It was evening, and no longer summer.

Three small fish, I don't know what they were,

huddled in the highest ripples

as it came swimming in again, effortless, the whole body

one gesture, one black sleeve

that could fit easily around

the bones of three small fish.

Also I wanted

to be able to love. And we all know

how that one goes,

don't we?

Mary Oliver

From Wiggle 3-34

Slowly

The dogfish tore open the soft basins of water.

You don't want to hear the story

of my life, and anyway

I don't want to tell it, I want to listen

to the enormous waterfalls of the sun.

And anyway it's the same old story

a few people just trying,

one way or another,

to survive.

Mostly, I want to be kind.

And nobody, of course, is kind,

or mean,

for a simple reason.

And nobody gets out of it, having to

swim through the fires to stay in

this world.

And look! Look! Look! I think those little fish

better wake up and dash themselves away

from the hopeless future that is

bulging toward them.

And probably,

if they don't waste time

looking for an easier world,

they can do it.

Mary Oliver

From Wiggle 3-34

who are you, little i
(five or six years old)
peering from some high

window, at the gold

of november sunset

(and feeling: that if day
has to become night
this is a beautiful way)

e.e. cummings

Welcome Wigglers who wandered in by way of All Souls' Procession. You may elect to receive hand-prepared monthly-ish poetryart in the mail (imagine, real mail!) or follow us here. In either case, you have arrived--you are home.

from Wiggle 3-15

"In Cold Storm Light"

In cold storm light

I watch the sandrock

canyon rim.

The wind is met

with the smell of pinon

The wind is cold

with the sound of juniper.

And then

out of the thick ice sky

running swiftly

pounding

swirling above the treetops

the snow elk come,

moving, moving,

white song

storm wind in the branches.

And when the elk have passed

behind them

a crystal train of snowflakes

strands of mist

tangled in rock

and leaves.

-Leslie Marmon Silko

from "Song of the Universal"

....
In spiral routes, by long detours (as a much-tacking ship upon the sea)
For it, the partial to the permanent flowing,
For it the real to the ideal tends.
....
For it, the mystic evolution,
Not the right only justified, what we call evil also justified.
....
Electric, antiseptic yet, cleaving, suffusing all,
only the good is universal.
....
Over the mountain-growth's disease and sorrow,
an uncaught bird is ever hovering, hovering,
high in the purer, happier air.
....
Oh the blest eyes, the happy hearts,
That see, that know the guiding thread so fine,
Along the mighty labyrinth.
Walt Whitman