Today I want to share a few poems that have touched me recently. Perhaps they can all serve as anti-anxiety tools. The first one is by 14th c. Persian mystic, Hafiz:
Even
after
all this time
the Sun never says to the Earth
"You owe me."
Look
what happens
with a love like that.
It lights the whole sky.
When I Am Among the Trees
When I am among the trees, especially the willows and the honey locust, equally the beech, the oaks and the pines, they give off such hints of gladness. I would almost say that they save me, and daily.
I am so distant from the hope of myself, in which I have goodness, and discernment, and never hurry through the world but walk slowly, and bow often.
Around me the trees stir in their leaves and call out, “Stay awhile.” The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say, “and you too have come into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled with light, and to shine.”
Mary Oliver
Walking in a Swamp
When you first feel the ground under your feet
Going soft and uncertain,
Its best to start running as fast as you can slog
Even though falling
Forward on your knees and lunging like a cripple.
You may escape completely
Being bogged down in those few scampering seconds.
But if you’re caught standing
In deep mud, unable to walk or stagger,
Its time to reconsider
Your favorite postures, textures and means of moving,
Coming to even terms
With the kind of dirt that won’t take no for an answer.
You must lie down now,
Like it or not: if you are in it up to your thighs,
Be seated gently,
Lie back, open your arms, and dream of floating
In a sweet backwater.
Slowly your sunken feet will rise together,
And you may slither
Spread-ottered casually backwards out of trouble.
If you stay vertical
And, worse, imagine you’re in a fearful struggle,
Trying to swivel
One stuck leg at a time, keeping your body
Above it all,
Immaculate, you’ll sink in even deeper,
Becoming an object lesson
For those who wallow after you through the mire
In which case you should know
For near-future reference: muck is one part water,
One part what-have-you,
Including yourself, now in it over your head,
As upright as ever.
David Wagoner
Bilbo's Last Song
Day is ended, dim my eyes,
but journey long before me lies.
Farewell, friends! I hear the call.
The ship's beside the stony wall.
Foam is white and waves are grey;
beyond the sunset leads my way.
Foam is salt, the wind is free;
I hear the rising of the Sea.
Farewell, friends! The sails are set,
the wind is east, the moorings fret.
Shadows long before me lie,
beneath the ever-bending sky,
but islands lie behind the Sun
that I shall raise ere all is done;
lands there are to west of West,
where night is quiet and sleep is rest.
Guided by the Lonely Star,
beyond the utmost harbour-bar,
I'll find the heavens fair and free,
and beaches of the Starlit Sea.
Ship, my ship! I seek the West,
and fields and mountains ever blest.
Farewell to Middle-earth at last.
I see the Star above my mast!
J.R.R. Tolkien
published posthumously
Until next time,
Dawn
Photo credits:
Sun and earth, David Marcu, unSplash
Leaves, Kai Pilger, unSplash
Mud, Kind and Curious, unSplash
Ocean, Christopher Kuzman, unSplash
Starry sea, Johannes Plenio, unSplash