Author’s Message: Poems
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Poetry touches vibrancy, passion, deep movements of the soul. Feeling isolated when I retired, experiencing a painful gap when losing my life’s work, I found that writing poems became my companion and guide.
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I had no idea how to write. Yet as the poems unfolded, I saw life through a soul lens. This was deeply satisfying; I felt whole and truly alive. Not happy necessarily, but fruitful in getting to know and express the whole of myself. I encourage you to find time to be still, watchful, alert. To contemplate your world, inner and outer. Without thinking, allow yourself to write impressions, impulses, observations. Your writing doesn’t have to make sense. Just write for the sake of discovery.
You may listen for a phrase or a few words from my poems, from others’ poems, stories, conversations and simply allow yourself to be touched into writing what comes from these. You may surprise yourself.
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Christmas Monastery Morning
Joan Englander©2019
You cannot know the morning
Until you walk in it.
Until you hear the silence
In the dark.
Until the first birds chirp & peck
Along the mountain path.
Far below, clouds cover the sea
Cover my mind in swaddling clothes
The Birth echoing my own wonder,
Delight, as the sun nods its awakening
Over the mountains.
This walk my awakening, too.
Reds, oranges, great splashes of blue
Tinge these new beginnings with
Brilliance.
A brilliance I might not have noticed
On an ordinary waking day.
But this is no ordinary day nor should
Any day be labeled so.
All these years coming here, nothing seems
So vivid as now.
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No step so precious, nor the three deer
Leaping across the road.
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My steps begin the ascent up the path
Falter, halt.
Vivid hues of pink and red swim within
Clouds painting the sky.
Can there be any more luminous
Thanksgiving than this?
Colors under my feet reflect joy
In my eyes. A warm breeze enters
My chanting: all is divine
In nature’s morning. No words, no songs
Can capture God dancing through whispers
Of wind, trailing clouds swirling,
birds on the boughs.
Bells ring out into the blue of daylight.
Come, come to the chapel to give thanks.
Come to Gregorian chanting, the hush
of morning peace.
These bells will have to wait.
This could be the last time my feet pass
This way.
Changing
Joan Englander ©2018
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Beauty is what saves us from despair
That furry reddish brown squirrel’s tail
Flapping along the tree bark
Over the green patio shade
Scampering down the wooden beam
Darting along the railing
gone and back again
So busy and I so busy
judging
Those whose lives are frantic
Judging the deadlines, the hurry,
the carelessness
and wasn’t that me not so many years ago?
And now I prize aging
and sit
watching squirrel bouncing
in the shade cloth
mistaking cloth for a trampoline
and the crows kissing on telephone wires
Orange trees smiling with pride
In their blossoming
And am I blossoming?
Have I changed my life?
Or has my life changed me?
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Reflection on Swan by Mary Oliver
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If I Step Out I will
Break Into Bloom
Joan Englander 2016
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If I step out of my complaints
my restlessness
wanting more, wanting less
feeling lost, unworthy
vulnerable, afraid
If I break out
A great song
Will fill my lungs
Seep into my spirit
Cause joy in swollen rivers
Flowing deep into me
If I venture out
And mind stops
My heart will graze
On waving grasses singing
In meadows green and wide
If I journey out
into vast blue dancing overhead
Laughter will fill
My new mouth
Full of blossoming praise.
If I leap out
Will I fly?
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(Inspired by last line of the poem, A Blessing, by James Wright,
“That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.” )
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Try to Praise
Joan Englander 2016
Try to find praise within your soul
As mutilation sears the hearts of the innocents
As bloody rivers ravage the earth
Rivers of war and evil
Try praising every spec of beauty you
See, touch and taste
Etch upon your memory those sweet
Moments when you sang and candles
Turned the cottage gold
And spirits soared into song
And quieted you became
Like babes in sweet slumber—try
To praise those moments of dancing
In the streets, the parks, the halls
Frolicking in the ocean’s waves
Your breath in and out
Over and over a mantra of joy
Try praising life even as guns echo
Screams penetrate the skies, slash
Hammer, beat, blast—try
Praising the fullness of life
Try remembering peace.
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(Inspired by Try to Praise the Mutilated World,
Adam Zagajewski)
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Dancing
Joan Englander 2016
This is where I want to live:
In the immediacy of your Presence
like Rumi
swept away by joy.
Give away my meditation practices
and dance because I cannot help it.
I’ve been looking for dancing
in the wrong places.
The dance that really sings
is when God leaps out from my
limbs and makes praising
Divine.
It’s not the tango in an elegant
restaurant
Or Bollywood flirtations in a
dance studio
Or bouncing gyrations of a
rock band.
It’s the unspeakable moment when
God says go
rise up, become liquid grace
in my embrace come
along my wedding path fall
into my arms of love.
Reflection on the poem, Buoyancy by Rumi
A Momentary Happiness
Joan Englander ©2018
Have you ever known a silly bird?
He’s out there somewhere I can’t see
But I can’t miss his snoring song
Right at the end of a decent melody
He ruins it with a clogged up snort
And brings me up short, laughing
When a moment ago I tasted tears
Sadness as my daughter disappears
And I am left to ponder:
How do I let go of all my treasures
Made of beauty, give away all I
Cling to and adore
No wonder that bird upsets me
With his croaking cry he shakes
Me away from loss and grief and
Even these I try to cling to
In spite of myself, life is amusement
What then is the secret of being happy?
Is it as simple as a rush of wings
Flapping through winter leaves
In warm sunlight?
A moment when an imagined piccolo
Dances in the crimson air? And I
Stand enchanted at the doorway of life?
Green Moments
Joan Englander ©2018
To keep vitality alive, I must see with new eyes
Refuse to sink into the morass of life slipping away.
May I feast on every moment
green, black or grey
feast in awe as a breeze
sifts through oak leaves
raindrops dance on winter branches
breaking forth into healing songs.
Raindrops sing in my heart
A moment so delicious
while stars remain hidden in daylight
But in my heart, they shine.
Feasting has become a symphony I taste
As the sun drifts down into the sea
And all things are precious, sacred
as long as I feast and not fall asleep
missing this one precious moment
green, black or grey.
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Inspired by Birthday Poem, Ted Kooser
Love’s Funeral Pyre
If I lay my pain body down
on the funeral pyre of Love
Would I still carry the pain
of feeling left out?
Feeling strange and unacceptable
As life’s events pass me by?
Would I feel abandoned, lost
If I stepped onto the pyre
Sang of Love healing the rift
In my soul
Sang aloud on this morning walk
As cloud becomes fish
Flying in the air, breathing
Fins across the sky
Am I a strange bird creating
Fish with my eyes
Strange to prefer solitude to
A luncheon with ladies
On an elegant lawn?
Steeped in thoughts of rejection
Souring this new day
Along the dirt pathway
Jasmine breathes its springtime sigh
Breathes its fragrance into me
Come: love the distress, the hurt
The mirage created by loneliness
Lay your pain body down
On the funeral pyre of Love
And at last pass away
Into jubilation.
Joan Englander ©2019
Inspired by Hafiz, The Gift
Author’s Message
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Deep listening, sometimes known as Lectio Divina in the Benedictine spiritual tradition, opens the heart to an inner knowing, a depth of awareness. By inwardly repeating a phrase or a few words from a poem, scripture, or song, these words become the core through which you can live on a deeper level. When I feel unloved, I return to this poem inspired by author, Henri Nouwen.[1]
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Heard By God
Joan Englander ©2013
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Before anyone ever saw me
I was seen by God’s loving eyes.
Before anyone ever heard me cry or laugh
I was heard by God’s heart.
Before any person ever spoke to me
I was spoken to and chosen by
the voice of eternal Love
existing throughout all eternity.
Throughout my life many scars have come
threatening to rule and define me
wreak havoc
over the goodness my life is meant to be.
Befriending these scars and shadows
I put this brokenness
under the light of blessing.
For I am called beloved for all eternity.
Thoughts of worthlessness, uselessness
Not good enough, never can do it right
Insults, rejection, blaming
Under the light of blessing:
This brokenness is a gateway
to joy.
For I am called beloved for all eternity.
Beloved I am now each moment I live
each moment I die.
And when my breathing ends
the voice I heard before I was born
calls in exuberant song
that same ancient echo:
You are beloved for all eternity.
As I slip softly away
Into eternity I go like
silent footsteps over golden leaves
blown by a winter wind
even the leaves speak the same refrain:
grasses, wind, trailing gold
Beloved for all eternity are they
As together we journey
To a place called Home
A place we can’t remember.
[1] Henri J.M. Nouwen, Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World, The Crossroad Pub. Co., Spring Valley, NY, 2002