Poetry: Add your favourite poem!

[Tine]

I keep coming across wonderful poems which open my eyes to the beauty in the world, remind me of lessons I have long forgotten, make me smell the flowers and open my heart with gratitude.

So I thought we could start a collection here:

[Tine]

Always we hope by Lao Tze

Always we hope
Someone else has the answer
Some other place will be better,
Some other time it will all turn out.

This is it.

No one else has the answer
No other place will be better,
And it has already turned out.
At the center of your being
You have the answer,
You know who you are
And you know what you want.
There is no need
To run outside
For better seeing.
Nor to peer from a window.
Rather abide at the center of your being;
For the more you leave it, the less you learn.

Search your heart
And see
The way to do
Is to be.

[Guest User]

What a wonderful idea!

I just read this the other day and it really hit home, so I am sharing it here with you! ?

People aren't homes

Child,

why did no one

ever teach you

that you cannot

turn people

into homes?

People are rivers,

ever changing,

ever flowing.

They will disappear with

everything you put

inside them.

Still, 

your home does 

have a heartbeat.

But it isn't one

locked in

anyone else's 

chest.

Just

look inside

your own.

 

by Nikita Gill

[Guest User]

Wisdom - an Ode :-)

Wisdom does not teach you
Through volumes of paper books
Indoctrination limiting
To where we all should look

And rather than the pages
Written by who knows who
Wisdom gives perspective
From a more human view

Those who share are indeed blessed
It's part of the exchange
Wise words often compel us
To find strength from inner change

Cause gaining wisdom dearest friends
And helping others grow
Starts by simply understanding
That there's some thing's we don't know

<3 Sany

[Je****]

“Tender words we spoke
to one another
are sealed in the secret
vaults of heaven.
One day like rain,
they will fall to earth
and grow green 
all over the world .”
Rumi

 

[Guest User]

Pets -  an ode

 

Have you ever had your pet

Look at you as a judge

Staring at you strangely 

With a bit of a grudge

 

Or maybe they can notice

A habit so sublime

Observing your behavior

Repeated over time

 

An energy that they detect

When we get into our moods

Reacting out of loyalty

To our changing attitudes

 

Well dear friends your not far off

There's something to be said

Notice it the next time

They sense some love instead

 

Sany

[Tine]

Important

We hurry through the so-called boring things
in order to attend to that which we deem
more important, interesting.
Perhaps the final freedom will be a recognition that
everything in every moment is "essential"
and that nothing at all is "important.

By Helen M. Luke

[Guest User]

The Addict - an ode

 

Have you ever know an addict

Living with their truth

Battling self convictions

Ever since their youth

 

Well dear friends show some respect

The addict lives inside

And those amongst brave enough

Rarely try and hide

 

The form in which it gives us

The pleasure that we need

This functional dysfunction

That we all seem to breed

 

Cause when we live with what's inside

And you wear it on your sleeve

Make no mistake about it

The truth shall set you free

 

Sany

[Guest User]

Until we're out of. Time - An Ode 

An unfathomable deity
Created us from dust
For no apparent reason
But to learn and blindly trust

Or maybe evolution
Became this human group
A billion years in making
From nothing more than soup

Well dear friends it matters not
Which perspective you subscribe
We are indeed all sentient
With a spirit as our guide

Cause it's not about where we're from
It's our purpose we must find
Sharing all our blessings
Until we're out of time

❤  Sany

[Be****]

"Love After Love"

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 yourself. 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.

-Derek Walcott 

[Tine]

@Taopenny mentioned this poem on her profile. Thank you! ?

 

Hokusai says by Roger Keys

He says pay attention, notice.
He says keep looking, stay curious.
He says there is no end to seeing.

He says look forward
He says keep changing,
you just get more who you really are.
He says get stuck, accept it, repeat yourself
as long as it’s interesting.

He says keep doing what you love.
He says keep praying.
He says every one of us is a child,

every one of us is ancient,
every one of us has a body.
He says every one of us is frightened.
He says every one of us has to find a way to live with fear.

He says everything is alive—
shells, buildings, people, fish, mountains, trees.
Wood is alive.
Water is alive.
Everything has its own life.
Everything lives inside us.
He says live with the world inside you.

He says it doesn’t matter if you draw, or write books.
It doesn’t matter if you saw wood, or catch fish.
It doesn’t matter if you sit at home
and stare at the ants on your verandah or the shadows of the trees
and grasses in your garden.

It matters that you care.
It matters that you feel.
It matters that you notice.
It matters that life lives through you.

Contentment is life living through you.
Joy is life living through you.
Satisfaction and strength
are life living through you.
Peace is life living through you.

He says don’t be afraid.
Don’t be afraid.
Look, feel, let life take you by the hand.
Let life live through you.

Roger Keyes

[Tine]

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

By Mary Oliver from New and Selected Poems, 1992

[Guest User]

Pieces - an ode ?

I often shed the pieces

Of my awkward life

Thankful for my mother

My father and his strife

 

Combined they both have given me

The sum of both of them

Shedding their own pieces

Becoming my own skin

 

And as generations before them

The pieces often fell 

Scattering wherewithal

Living life in hell

 

give you all that I am

Sharing what I lack

Allowing you to fill yourself 

No longer looking back

 

Cause the pieces that you take from me

The reason that I live

 Are the strength and love and fortitude

 That one day you shall give

 

❤️ Sany

 

[Guest User]

What's in a name - an ode ☺

Ever wonder who you are

Where you're going and why

The answer is seldom obvious

As our lives just fly right by.

 

Parents browse the books

Awaiting for you to arrive

Choosing just the perfect name

But what we don't realize

 

Is that our names are already chosen

Impressed on us from above

It seems to make perfect sense

Cause we choose them out of love.

 

And when we make our choices

Driven from the heart

It always works out much better

Than trying to be apart...

 

From the source the spirit God or nature

Whichever you prefer

It's the voice that lives within the voice

Felt but rarely heard.

 

From our past we have become

Exactly who we are

All the things that will happen

Or that have happened to us so far

 

Are tiny indications

That there is something to be said

About one's name and the power of love...

God Bless Us… Sany Aabed ❤

[Berta]

"Work in the Invisible World just as much as you work in the Visible World.” 

— Rumi

[Tine]

The Peace of Wild Things

 

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

 

by Wendell Berry

[Tine]

 

"Let everything happen to you

Beauty and terror

Just keep going

No feeling is final"

— Rainer Maria Rilke

[Candy]

Great Spirit, I am Mother.

I was made by you so that the image 

of your love could be brought into existence.

May I always carry with me

the sacredness of this honour.

Creator, I am Daughter.

I am the learner of the traditions.

May I carry them forward

so that the Elders and Ancestors

will be remembered for all time.

Maker-of-all-things, I am Sister.

Through me, may my brothers be shown

the manner in which I am to be respected.

May I join with my sisters in strength

and power as a healing shield 

So that they will no longer bear the stain of abuse.

Niskam, I am committed Partner:

One who shares her spirit,

but is wise to remember never to give it away,

lest it become lost, 

And the two become less than one.

I am woman.

Hear me.

Welal'in

- Native American Chant