Poetry Resources
Maya Angelou
WHEN GREAT TREES FALL When great trees fall, rocks on distant hills shudder,lions hunker downin tall grasses,and even elephantslumber after safety. When great trees fallin forests,small things recoil into silence,their senseseroded beyond fear. When great souls...
Wendell Berry
HORSEBACK ON SUNDAY MORNING Horseback on Sunday morning,harvest over, we taste persimmonand wild grape, sharp sweetof summer's end. In time's mazeover the fall fields, we name namesthat went west from here, namesthat rest on graves. We opena persimmon seed to find the...
Charles Bukowski
The Laughing Heart your life is your lifedon’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.be on the watch.there are ways out.there is light somewhere.it may not be much light butit beats the darkness.be on the watch.the gods will offer you chances.know them.take them.you...
Lucille Clifton
Lucille Clifton won't you celebrate with mewhat I have shaped intoa kind of life? I had no modelborn in babylonboth nonwhite and womanwhat did I see to be except myself?i made it uphere on this bridge betweenstarshine and claymy one hand holding tightmy other hand;...
Emily Dickinson- “Nature”
“Nature” is what we see—
The Hill—the Afternoon
Squirrel—Eclipse— the Bumble bee
Nay—Nature is Heaven—
Danna Faulds
The call to deeper practice comes, and I respond before I catch myself.
All that I am is drawn inside as if pulled by the strongest tide, a current flowing in only one direction.
What does this practice look like?
Laura Foley
Go into the woods and tell your story to the trees.They are wise standing in their folds of silenceamong white crystals of rock and dying limbs.And they have time.Time for swaying of leaves, the floating down of dust.They have time for gathering and holding the...
Linda France
I’m lying down looking at the colour of sky falling through trees,
dreaming the real, tasting what it feels like to love it.
Ross Gay
THANK YOU If you find yourself half nakedand barefoot in the frosty grass, hearing,again, the earth's great, sonorous moan that saysyou are the air of the now and gone, that saysall you love will turn to dust,and will meet you there, do notraise your fist. Do not...
Thich Nhat Hanh
Our true home is in the present moment.
To live in the present moment is a miracle.
The miracle is not to walk on water.
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.
Langston Hughes
To fling my arms wideIn some place of the sun,To whirl and to danceTill the white day is done.Then rest at cool eveningBeneath a tall treeWhile night comes on gently,Dark like me—That is my dream!To fling my arms wideIn the face of the sun,Dance! Whirl! Whirl!Till the...
Kabir
Are you looking for me? I am in the next seat.
My shoulder is against yours.
You will not find me in the stupas, not in Indian shrine
rooms, nor in synagogues, nor in cathedrals:
Vasant Lad
Just as there is a space between the clouds in the sky,
There is a space between your thoughts.
This space is the doorway to the divine.
Mark Nepo
When I can be the truth, It grows more and more clear.
When it is necessary to tell the truth.
That is, when I have access to the place within me that is lighted, I don’t have to speak heatedly.
Pablo Neruda
Keeping Quiet Now we will count to twelveand we will all keep still.For once on the face of the earth,let's not speak in any language,let's stop for a second,and not move our arms so much.It would be an exotic momentwithout rush, without engines;we would all be...
John O’Donohue
Nearer to the earth’s heart,
Deeper within its silence:
Animals know this world In a way we never will.
We who are ever
Distanced and distracted
Mary Oliver
When the hummingbird sinks its face into the trumpet vine
and the funnels of the blossoms, and the tongue leaps out and throbs,
I am scorched to realize once again how many small,
Nancy Paddock
Lie down with your belly to the ground,
like an old dog in the sun.
Smell the greenness of the cloverleaf,
feel the damp earth through your clothes,
Rumi
I prayed for change,so I changed my mind.I prayed for guidanceand learned to trust myself.I prayed for happinessand realized I am not my ego.I prayed for peaceand learned to accept others unconditionally.I prayed for abundance and realized my doubt kept it out.I...
Craig Santos
I don’t love you as if you were rare earth metals,
diamonds, or reserves of crude oil that propagate war:
I love you as one loves most vulnerable things, urgently,
between the habitat and its loss.
David Sluyter
I awoke to the confusion of a new day.
The scraps of dreams, memories of yesterday, and new
Cravings creeping into awareness,
The sun spilling its light over all but the shadows and a Cacophony of sound
Terry Tempest Williams
I pray to the birds. I pray to the birds because I believe they will carry the messages of my heart upward. I pray to them because I believe in their existence, the way their songs begin and end each day—the invocations and benedictions of Earth.
Thanksgiving Address
Today we have gathered and we see that the cycles of life continue. We have been given the duty and responsibility to live in balance and harmony with each other and all living things. So now, we bring our minds together as one as we give our greetings and our thanks...
The First Free Women- Poems of the Early Buddhist Nuns
How do you cross the flood?
You cross calmly – one step at a time,
feeling for stones.
Lao Tzu
Empty yourself of everything.Let the mind rest at peace.The ten thousand things rise and fallwhile the Self watches their return.They grow and flourishand then return to the source.Returning to the source is stillness,which is the way of nature....
Alice Walker
We have a beautiful mother
Her hills are buffaloes
Her buffaloes hills
We have a beautiful mother
Walt Whitman
I exist as I am, that is enough,
If not other in the world be aware I sit content,
And if each and all be aware I sit content.
David Whyte
SOMETIMESSometimes if you move carefully through the forestBreathing like the onesin the old stories who could cross a shimmering bed of dry leaves without a sound,you come to a place whose only task is to trouble you with tinybut frightening requestsconceived out of...
Wendell Berry- “Being Watchful”
BEING WATCHFUL As soon as I felt a necessity to learn about the non-human world,I wished to learn about it in a hurry.And then I began to learn perhapsthe most important lesson that nature had to reach me:that I could not learn about her in a hurry.The most important...
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