Poetry can be a powerful resource in the process of healing and the path towards wholeness. Poetry invites our attention inwards, to reflect on and explore our inner terrain, often speaking to the deepest aspects of ourselves and those hidden parts that may be difficult to give voice to. When we feel a resonance through poetry, it can inspire us, ignite a sense of relief, a feeling of being understood, a sense of connection to our common humanity knowing that others have walked down a similar path to ours. Such resonance can offer us hope and support us in expanding our way of perceiving our situation and the world around us. In the words of Mary Oliver,

“The poem is a temple - or a green field - a place to enter and in which to feel. The poem was made not just to exist, but to speak - to be company”

The Journey
Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop. You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do- determined to save
the only life you could save.

Wild Geese
Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees. for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you about mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscape, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Lost
David Wagoner

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

Sacred Exhaustion
Jeff Foster

Your tiredness has dignity to it. Do not rush to pathologise it or push it away For it may contain great intelligence, even medicine. You have been on a long journey from the stars, friend. Bow before your tiredness now; do not fight it any longer. There is no shame in admitting that you cannot go on. Even the courageous need to rest. For a great journey lies ahead.mAnd you will need all your resources. Come, sit by the fire of Presence. Let the body unwind. Drop into the silence here. Forget about tomorrow, let go of the journey to come and sink into this evening’s warmth. Every great adventure is fuelled by rest at its heart. Your tiredness is noble, friend, and contains healing power….If you would only listen

I Worried
Mary Oliver

I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers
flow in the right direction, will the earth turn
as it was taught, and if not how shall I correct it?
Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,
can I do better?
Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows
can do it and I am, well, hopeless.
Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,
am I going to get rheumatism,
lockjaw, dementia?
Finally, I saw that worrying had come to nothing.
And gave it up. And took my old body
and went out into the morning,
and sang.

Kindness
Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

How to Open your Heart
Jeff Foster

Do not try to open your Heart. That would be a subtle movement of aggression toward your immediate embodied experience. Never tell a closed Heart it must be more open; it will shut more tightly to protect itself, feeling your resistance and disapproval. A Heart unfurls only when conditions are right; your demand for openness invites closure. This is the supreme intelligence of the Heart.

Instead, bow to the Heart in its current state. If it’s closed, let it be closed; sanctify the closure. Make it safe; safe even to feel unsafe.

Trust that when the Heart is ready, and not a moment before, it will open, like a flower in the warmth of the sun. There is no rush for the Heart.

Trust the opening and the closing too, the expansion and the contraction; this is the Heart’s way of breathing; safe, unsafe, safe, unsafe; the beautiful fragility of being human, and all held in the most perfect love.

Desire
Alice Walker

My desire is always the same; wherever Life
deposits me:
I want to stick my toe
and soon my whole body
into the water.
I want to shake out a fat broom
and sweep dried leaves
bruised blossoms
dead insects
and dust.
I want to grow
something.
It seems impossible that desire
can sometimes transform into devotion;
but this has happened.
And that is how I've survived:
how the hole
I carefully tended
in the garden of my heart
grew a heart
to fill it.

Love after Love
Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

I know the way you can get
Hafiz

I know the way you can get
When you have not had a drink of Love: Your face hardens,
Your sweet muscles cramp.
Children become concerned
About a strange look that appears in your eyes Which even begins to worry your own mirror
And nose.

Squirrels and birds sense your sadness
And call an important conference in a tall tree.
They decide which secret code to chant
To help your mind and soul.

Even angels fear that brand of madness
That arrays itself against the world
And throws sharp stones and spears into
The innocent
And into one's self.

O I know the way you can get
If you have not been drinking Love:

You might rip apart
Every sentence your friends and teachers say,
Looking for hidden clauses.

You might weigh every word on a scale
Like a dead fish.

You might pull out a ruler to measure
From every angle in your darkness
The beautiful dimensions of a heart you once
Trusted.

I know the way you can get
If you have not had a drink from Love's
Hands.

That is why all the Great Ones speak of
The vital need
To keep remembering God,
So you will come to know and see Him
As being so playful
And wanting,
Just wanting to help.

That is why Hafiz says:
Bring your cup near me.
For all I care about
Is quenching your thirst for freedom!

All a Sane man can ever care about
Is giving Love.

Guided Meditations >