Poem: Notes to Self

A member of group kindly shared this poem, written by Beth Kress, entitled "Notes to Self." I found myself pondering much of its wisdom during this stressful holiday season. I hope you also find solace and comfort in its words!

Notes to Self

Impressive, the number of ways

you’ve come up with to drive yourself crazy.

Relax, there are plenty of other people

willing and able to do this for you.

For starters, knock it off already

with the sugar and all the racing around.

Stay hooked on sunlight and cycling instead,

allow more lead time than you need.

How about this for a new plan?

Speak gently to yourself when you screw up

say thanks for all the times you get it right,

Find ingenious ways to be kind to yourself.

Treat yourself as you would a ditsy best friend,

surround yourself with people who glow,

be ready to laugh at your amusing self, 

never doubt your own essential lovability.

Every day do one thing differently, always

be hatching something: a party, a gift, a trip.

Strive for a 100% result; be thrilled with 80.

Seek out brilliance and connections. Be curious.

Make your time count, for heaven’s sake

pay attention to what actually matters

dive into your communities with gusto

lean in to the light; hang out in zones of gratitude.

Linger where you catch glimpses of grace,

fill your spaces with what brings out the ahh in you.

Give or put stuff away. Don’t be afraid.

Surrender to the mystery of it all.

Know that you belong here,

keep making room for more people,

more love, and for the immensity of things.

live deeply, unhurried, with humor.

Fall into the peaceful, powerful rhythm

of your own right life.

(Beth Kress, April 2016)

Poetry for the Troubled Mind

A group of researchers in the United Kingdom are exploring the concept of bibliotherapy - that is, reading as a form of therapy for those undergoing mental and emotional stress. In The Lancet, Jonathan Bate and Andrew Schuman write of the promises and challenges of what they call "the reading therapy," and point us to an organization called ReLit, which explores the relationship between literature and mental health.

I know from personal experience and from conversations with others that there are many who find consolation in the act of reading (and writing!) their own poetry and prose. In that spirit, I'd like to share with you two pieces by some very talented poets in our group, in the hopes that their words may, as John Milton put it, help "assuage the tumors of the troubled mind."

Mount Pleasant Cemetery
Thomas DeFreitas

A peaceful place, where potholed roads
made quirky pathways in between the stones,
where a wooden footbridge spans a thin-veined brook,
where leaves of broad elms flourish, blush, or fall
according to the temper of the year:
these acres keep Aunt Brenda, Cousin Michael;
my mom's parents, Nana and Grampa Mel;
Arlingtonians whose names (O'Hurley,
Demopoulos, Bohajian, Capasso)
take on the friendliness of good neighbours - 
I've seen them often on my evening walks.
It's likely I'll be buried here beneath
God's clement gaze, beneath unjudging skies,
be shaded by an overhang of branches,
my pulseless limbs compounded with kind earth.

Credo
Mario Pita

When everything is looking awfully grim,
since we all end up buried in the sod,
and prospects for the future all seem dim,
I don’t believe in anything but God.
When there appears no reason to have hope
and chances for relief from woe look slim,
and it’s insanely difficult to cope,
I don’t believe in anything but Him.
While causes for despair add up to many
and matter seems to be all we’re made of,
and we look for a sign and can’t find any,
I don’t believe in anything but Love.
The time will come when death appears to seize us.
I don’t believe in anything. Except Jesus.

(Visit https://snapshotcouplets.wordpress.com/2016/08/29/credo/ to hear Mario read his poem, and to read more of his work!)

"Today I Simply Suffer," a prose poem by César Vallejo

One of our group members was kind enough to pass on this gorgeous piece of writing, a poetic reflection on the nature of suffering.  When one is in the midst of suffering, it can be hard to find words to describe one's pain to someone who is not suffering and who wants to know the "why" and "how."  But the mystery of suffering is that often there is no why or how - it simply is.  Vallejo's poem beautifully captures this mystery.  I hope his words bring you a moment of grace.

The Power of Poetry

A member of our group has passed along this truly lovely poem, by the late Jane Kenyon, former poet laureate of New Hampshire, who struggled from depression and died an untimely death from leukemia.  Her poem, "Let Evening Come," is a beautiful prayer for acceptance, patience, and hope when darkness enters our lives.

Poetry - whether we're reading it or writing it ourselves - can help us express the otherwise wordless and inexpressible movements of our souls, and can put us in contact with the transcendent beauty that lies above and beyond all human experience, even depression.  Quaker Elder Parker J. Palmer reflects in this essay on the power of poetry to be a light in the darkness that guides us to face the day with faith and hope.

The Hound of Heaven

Recommended by a group member:

The Hound of Heaven

by Francis Thompson

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;

   I fled Him, down the arches of the years;

I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways

   Of my own mind; and in the midst of tears

I hid from Him, and under running laughter.

             Up vistaed hopes I sped;

             And shot, precipitated,

Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears,

   From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.

             But with unhurrying chase,

             And unperturbèd pace,

     Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,

             They beat—and a Voice beat

             More instant than the Feet—

     'All things betray thee, who betrayest Me'.

             I pleaded, outlaw-wise,
By many a hearted casement, curtained red,
   Trellised with intertwining charities;
(For, though I knew His love Who followed,
             Yet was I sore adread
Lest, having Him, I must have naught beside.)
But, if one little casement parted wide,
   The gust of His approach would clash it to:
   Fear wist not to evade, as Love wist to pursue.
Across the margent of the world I fled,
   And troubled the gold gateway of the stars,
   Smiting for shelter on their clanged bars;
             Fretted to dulcet jars
And silvern chatter the pale ports o' the moon.
I said to Dawn: Be sudden—to Eve: Be soon;
   With thy young skiey blossom heap me over
             From this tremendous Lover—
Float thy vague veil about me, lest He see!
   I tempted all His servitors, but to find
My own betrayal in their constancy,
In faith to Him their fickleness to me,
   Their traitorous trueness, and their loyal deceit.
To all swift things for swiftness did I sue;
   Clung to the whistling mane of every wind.
          But whether they swept, smoothly fleet,
     The long savannahs of the blue;
            Or, whether, Thunder-driven,
          They clanged his chariot 'thwart a heaven,
Plashy with flying lightnings round the spurn o' their feet:—
   Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue.
             Still with unhurrying chase,
             And unperturbed pace,
      Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
             Came on the following Feet,
             And a Voice above their beat—
'Naught shelters thee, who wilt not shelter Me.'

I sought no more after that which I strayed
          In face of man or maid;
But still within the little children's eyes
          Seems something, something that replies,
They at least are for me, surely for me!
I turned me to them very wistfully;
But just as their young eyes grew sudden fair
         With dawning answers there,
Their angel plucked them from me by the hair.
Come then, ye other children, Nature's—share
With me’ (said I) 'your delicate fellowship;
          Let me greet you lip to lip,
          Let me twine with you caresses,
              Wantoning
          With our Lady-Mother's vagrant tresses,
             Banqueting
          With her in her wind-walled palace,
          Underneath her azured dais,
          Quaffing, as your taintless way is,
             From a chalice
Lucent-weeping out of the dayspring.’
             So it was done:
I in their delicate fellowship was one—
Drew the bolt of Nature's secrecies.
          I knew all the swift importings
          On the wilful face of skies;
           I knew how the clouds arise
          Spumèd of the wild sea-snortings;
             All that's born or dies
          Rose and drooped with; made them shapers
Of mine own moods, or wailful divine;
          With them joyed and was bereaven.
          I was heavy with the even,
          When she lit her glimmering tapers
          Round the day's dead sanctities.
          I laughed in the morning's eyes.
I triumphed and I saddened with all weather,
          Heaven and I wept together,
And its sweet tears were salt with mortal mine:
Against the red throb of its sunset-heart
          I laid my own to beat,
          And share commingling heat;
But not by that, by that, was eased my human smart.
In vain my tears were wet on Heaven's grey cheek.
For ah! we know not what each other says,
          These things and I; in sound I speak—
Their sound is but their stir, they speak by silences.
Nature, poor stepdame, cannot slake my drouth;
          Let her, if she would owe me,
Drop yon blue bosom-veil of sky, and show me
          The breasts o’ her tenderness:
Never did any milk of hers once bless
             My thirsting mouth.
             Nigh and nigh draws the chase,
             With unperturbed pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy;
             And past those noisèd Feet
             A voice comes yet more fleet—
          'Lo! naught contents thee, who content'st not Me.'

Naked I wait Thy love's uplifted stroke!
My harness piece by piece Thou has hewn from me,
             And smitten me to my knee;
          I am defenceless utterly.
          I slept, methinks, and woke,
And, slowly gazing, find me stripped in sleep.
In the rash lustihead of my young powers,
          I shook the pillaring hours
And pulled my life upon me; grimed with smears,
I stand amidst the dust o' the mounded years—My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap.
My days have crackled and gone up in smoke,
Have puffed and burst as sun-starts on a stream.
          Yea, faileth now even dream
The dreamer, and the lute the lutanist;
Even the linked fantasies, in whose blossomy twist
I swung the earth a trinket at my wrist,
Are yielding; cords of all too weak account
For earth with heavy griefs so overplussed.
          Ah! is Thy love indeed
A weed, albeit an amarinthine weed,
Suffering no flowers except its own to mount?
          Ah! must—
          Designer infinite!—Ah! must Thou char the wood ere Thou canst limn with it?
My freshness spent its wavering shower i' the dust;
And now my heart is as a broken fount,
Wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down ever
          From the dank thoughts that shiver
Upon the sighful branches of my mind.
          Such is; what is to be?
The pulp so bitter, how shall taste the rind?
I dimly guess what Time in mists confounds;
Yet ever and anon a trumpet sounds
From the hid battlements of Eternity;
Those shaken mists a space unsettle, then
Round the half-glimpsed turrets slowly wash again.
          But not ere him who summoneth
          I first have seen, enwound
With glooming robes purpureal, cypress-crowned;
His name I know and what his trumpet saith.
Whether man's heart or life it be which yields
          Thee harvest, must Thy harvest-fields
          Be dunged with rotten death?

             Now of that long pursuit
             Comes on at hand the bruit;
          That Voice is round me like a bursting sea:
          'And is thy earth so marred,
          Shattered in shard on shard?
          Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest Me!

          'Strange, piteous, futile thing!
Wherefore should any set thee love apart?
Seeing none but I makes much of naught' (He said),
'And human love needs human meriting:
          How hast thou merited—Of all man's clotted clay the dingiest clot?
          Alack, thou knowest not
How little worthy of any love thou art!
Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee,
          Save Me, save only Me?
All which I took from thee I did but take,
          Not for thy harms,
But just that thou might'st seek it in My arms.
          All which thy child's mistake
Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home:
          Rise, clasp My hand, and come!'

   Halts by me that footfall:
   Is my gloom, after all,
Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?
   'Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,
   I am He Whom thou seekest!
Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me.'