I was thinking about peace today and feeling weary. I used to shout about it, used to march about it, wanted to tear down buildings and burn flags about it. I was thinking about Ghandi, about Martin Luther King Jr., about how I’ve been at war with my own thoughts for 55 years now and how it’s time to lay down the sword, the shield, the desire to win and do what Christ and Nanak and Muhammad and John and Oko said to do: to love, to see what that can do. Yeah, it’s corny and naïve and let’s the other guy “win.” But it seems that winning is the object of war, so peace must be some kind of surrender, if only to the struggle. Don’t get me wrong, doesn’t mean I won’t put on my marchin’ boots again one day, won’t put my vote where my heart is and won’t keep praying every day for peace. It’s the conflict, the back-and-forth that I’m tired of having around. So, here’s my tribute to peace in the written word, photos and a bit of John Lennon to inspire. I wish for you true peace within that spreads like morning sunlight across the surface of this planet into every heart that beats.

All poems are from Poems to Live By in Uncertain Times, edited by Joan Murray, Beacon Press, Publishers. 

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.

Wendell Berry
 

ON PRAYER

You ask me how to pray to someone who is not.
All I know is that prayer constructs a velvet bridge
And walking it we are aloft, as on a springboard,
Above landscapes the color of ripe gold
Transformed by a magic stopping of the sun.
That bridge leads to the shore of Reversal
Where everything is just the opposite and the word is
Unveils a meaning we hardly envisioned.
Notice: I say we; there, every one, separately,
Feels compassion for others entangled in the flesh
and knows that if there is no other shore
They will walk that aerial bridge all the same.

Czeslaw Milosz
Tr. by Robert Hass 

I know the truth –
give up all other truths!

I know the truth—give up all other truths!
No need for people anywhere on earth to struggle.
Look—it is evening, look, it is nearly night:
what do you speak of, poets, lovers, generals?

The wind is level now, the earth is wet with dew,
the storm of stars in the sky will turn to quiet.
And soon all of us will sleep under the earth, we
who never let each other sleep above it.

Marina Tsvetayeva
Tr. by Elaine Feinstein

Give Peace a Chance by John Lennon from The Best of John Lennon

Meditation for Communication from the CD Healing in Africa by Siri Dharma and the Alexandra Community Choir of Johannesburg, South Africa.

This week I included this audio recording in the Poetry Evolution E-letter. It is from Poetry Speaks: Elise Paschen & Rebekah Presson Mosby, Editors, Published by Sourcebooks, Inc. 

Silken Tent by Robert Frost

Our song. For years I thought it was "Knights" not "nights." I still like to hear it that way.

When I was growing up our family always drove to the valley, to Portland from our small town of Redmond, to be with my mother’s family for the Christmas holidays. It was a large tribe: Nana and Papa, Aunt Mary & Uncle Vince and their brood of seven (each kid in our family matched up in age with one of theirs), Uncle Butch & Aunt Alice, Auntie’s Dodi & Anna, who lived with Nana and Papa in the house where they were born, (where all ten of their children were born) and numerous other aunts, uncles and cousins racing in and out. These holidays were the highlight of the otherwise long, cold and school-laden winter; Nana’s raviolis and Aunt Mary’s cherry pie, the football games, the banter of the Uncles, playing Scrabble with the Aunt’s and exploring the streets and surrounds of the big city. Nana’s house (it was always her house, even after she was gone for twenty years) sat a few hundred yards from the railroad tracks. I loved the sound of it clacking along the rails, the whistle’s sharp call. Tramps and hobos would often come to the back door for a handout, which Nana always gave. The neighborhood was a little Europe, with Italians, Greeks, Irish, Germans, accents from places that were faraway and a little scary to a girl of seven or eight. Next door on the south side of their place was a “haunted” house inhabited by a Boo Radley type and on the other a robust Irish family, with two handsome red-headed boys in their teens.

On the appointed day of departure I would pack my small bag with pajamas, a sweater, long-sleeved shirts, knit pants, socks and mittens. My sisters and brother would do the same. Dad was always the first one out the door and sitting in the car, tooting the horn and hollering out the window to “Get a move on!” or “What are you doing in there, writing a novel?” He didn’t have to pack himself, nor was he subject to any of the last minute preparations like my mother: cleaning the kitchen, turning off all the lights, turning down the furnace, checking each child’s bags to make sure they brought what they needed, packing hers and Dad’s things—not to mention staying up until two or three a.m. the night before wrapping gifts for each cousin and each one of us with Santa Claus or angel wrapping paper, curled ribbon and red, green or gold bows. Dad’s duties were long ago completed—the car had a tank of gas, oil and anti-freeze checked and the heavy box of chains stashed in the back of the station wagon. When the time had arrived to depart (usually at some ungodly pre-noon time) Dad would begin to rattle his keys, yell upstairs and then down into the basement, “Get a move on! It’s time to go and be sure and go to the bathroom before you get in the car.” (This last command repeated several times, with the final one as we were all seated and ready to go in the driveway.) It was always Mom who would run out last, breathless and laughing, while Dad shook his head and honked as she dashed around the front of the car and slid onto the front seat.

(Read on …)

The following two poems I read at the Moonday Poetry Reading. The first is the more recent. It’s a prose poem, a form I have been spending more time with lately. The second is a list poem I wrote at Squaw Valley this summer. Both have been submitted to journals for publication and are out there trying to find a home. Oh, speaking of homes–I just found out that Poetry Evolution has been listed on a blogsearch called BESSED, along with some pretty prestigious web sites. Woo Hoo!

 (My poems originally appeared here, but have been removed. Many journals will not publish a poem that has been previously published anywhere, including a personal blog. Hopefully you’ll see It’s My Opinion and I Would Tell You printed elsewhere soon.)

You Go to School to Learn
A Streak of Blood that Once was a Red Spider (I say the title incorrectly on the recording. So sorry.)
The Perfect God
from New & Selected Poems, Mariner Books