Spirit Poems

October 29, 1837 in Thoreau’s Journal: Why is it that in the lives of men we hear more of the dark wood than of the sunny pasture? Photo by Allan DiBiase (Thoreau's Journal facebook)

Driving West Virginia Hills in Early Fall Our car climbs and winds over hill after hill rolling Appalachia into endless fields of green beneath the distance of a clear blue sky. Covering this land like a hand over a face of someone loved, we follow golden trees in a stream of varied colors so brilliant they outspeak their need for names. This drive becomes a silent prayer guiding us toward home. Poem by Larry Smith/ Photo by Alan DiBiase

Here's a poem of spirit to survive...seeing animal life in ourselves. The Tree Sparrows    by JOSEPH LEGASPI We suffer through blinding equatorial heat, refusing to unfold the suspended bamboo shade nested by a pair of hardworking, cheerless sparrows. We’ve watched them fly in-and-out of their double entryways, dried grass, twigs clamped in their beaks. They skip, nestle in their woodsy tunnel punctured with light, we presume, not total darkness, their eggs aglow like lunar orbs. What is a home? How easily it can be destroyed: the untying of traditional ropes, pull, the scroll-unraveling. For want of a sweltering living room to be thrown into relief by shadow. The sunning couple perch open-winged, tube lofty as in Aristophanes’ city of birds, home made sturdy by creature logic and faith that it will all remain afloat.

Shared Revelation Midway through the film Thomas Keating: A Rising Tide of Silence , he shares a revelation which he had at a lone cabin in the wilderness.  As he walked out, he saw and felt himself in God and in all of Nature. Tear felt he released himself, no longer the structured person he had made of his life. He spoke of the deep pain and great release he felt in silence. As I close my eyes, I too feel this full sensory and emotional truth, this acceptance and letting go. Inside myself I sense a huge and heavy structure of steel beams, like a dark angled framework holding me. It’s a narrative of things taught to me and told to myself. What I’m sensing is how painful it is to feel, yet also how sweet to acknowledge and so begin to release. Breathing it in and expelling it out, I begin to dissolve this self I’ve sought so hard to build and carry. From deep inside come tears of pain and joy. This structure is not the me of Nature and God, but a me of man and society,...