Poetry
Cool haikus (ack. credits to follow.)
This is an unexpected find…the author, bless his soul, in brilliant flash of genius, decided to ‘condense’ some of the greatest literary works into little bite-sized nuggets of Japanese wisdom known as haikus.
Beowulf
Hrothgar’s hall, haunted
Dauntless danes die, Grendel-gored
Why not hrelocate?
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
As grapes become wine
so must one accept one’s fate
Die well. Like a grape.
St. Augustine, The Confessions
This is just to say
I screwed around. Forgive me.
I enjoyed it so.
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
Lecherous linguist
he lays low and is laid low
after laying Lo.
Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales
Pilgrims on sprying braecke –
roadde trippe! Whoe farted? Yiuw didde
Noe, naught meae. Yaes, yiuw.
***
Lovely Poems
And right after a gazillion laughs, I saw another treasure trove that brought warmth to my cold cold heart. 
Lake and Maple
- Jane Hirshfield
I want to give myself
utterly
as this maple
that bound and bound
for three days without stunting
and then in two more
dropped off every leaf;
as this lake that,
no matter what comes
to its green-blue depths
both takes and returns it.
In the still heart
that refuses nothing
the world is twice born –
two earths wheeling,
two heavens;
two egrets reaching
down into subtraction.
even the fish
for an instant doubled,
before it is gone.
I want the fish.
I want the losing it all
when it rains and I want
the returning transparence.
I want the place
by the edge-flower where
the shallow sand is deceptive,
where whatever
steps in must plunge,
and I want that plunging.
I want the ones
who come in secret to drink
only in the early darkness,
and I want the ones
who are swallowed.
I want the way
the water sees without eyes
hears without ears,
shines without will or tears
at the gentlest touch
I want the way it
accepts the old moonlight
and lets it pass,
all of it pass
without judgement or comment.
There is a lake,
Lalla Ded Sang. No larger
than a seed of mustard,
that all things return to.
O heart, if you
will not, cannot, give me the lake,
then give me the song.
Self Portrait
- David Whyte
It doesn’t interest me if there is a god or many gods.
I want to konw if you belong or feel abandoned.
If you know despair or can see it in others.
I want to know
if you are prepared to live in the world
with its harsh need
to change you. If you look back
with firm eyes
saying this is where I stand. I want to know
if you know
how to melt into that fiery heat of being
falling toward
the center of your longing. I want to know
if you are willing
to live, day by day, with the consequence of love
and the bitter
unwanted passion of your sure defeat.
I have heard, that in that fierce embrace, even
the gods speak of God.
