Favorite Poems

Clearing

by Morgan Farley

I am clearing a space
here, where the trees stand back
I am making a circle so open
the moon will fall in love
and stroke these grasses with her silver
I am setting stones in the four directions
stones that have called my name
from mountaintops and river beds,
canyons and mesas
Here I will stand with my hands empty
mind empty under the moon
And if something
takes my life, if a sudden wind
sweeps through me, changing everything
I will not resist
I am ready for whatever comes
But I think it will be
something small, an animal
padding out from the shadows
on delicate paws, or a word
spoken so softly I hear it inside
There is a way to live
that makes the angels cry out in rapture.
There is
a way to live that makes each cell a star.
Come stand with me here, it is
cold, I know, and silent,
nothing is happening
the next breath, and the next,
is the new life

The Peace of Wild Things

by Wendell Berry

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.

Night Music

by Rolf Jacobsen
as translated from the Norwegian
by Robert Hedin

The constellations will change,
The Big Dipper’s handle
will be pulled to the south
and Orion lose his sword
before the last pain is gone,
says the stone.

I too
am allotted my share.
As the fountain’s glittering dust
springs up and falls back into itself,
all my days come from somewhere inside me,
doled out in a bowl of stone.

There’s a calm light around old trees.
They let the wind flow through their leaves
and the stars pass high over their crowns
in majestic procession.