Poems For These Times
Just When You Need an Uplift…the Best Poem Ever Appears
The beloved poet Mark Nepo has written 20 books, including his perennially best-selling The Book of Awakening. I find refuge and inspiration in his deeply compassionate and human perspective when times seem the direst and darkest. Below are several of my current favorite poems, offered in the hope of finding the light at the end […]
When You Find You’re Weary
Most everyone is getting a bit weary these days, at least in moments. Long moments of enduring staying at home for fear of the coronavirus; tense moments of scrambling to sort out – safe to send kids to school? Safe to meet face-to-face with colleagues at work? Safe to walk on the beach? Or jog […]
Poems that Stir the Heart and Shake Up the Soul
Ten of us in my Gourmet Poets Society met by Zoom last weekend; the gentle inauguration of my August sabbatical. Clearly, I’m not fully immersed in that sabbatical yet. Here are three of the poems shared that evening, illustrating the depth and range of poetry shared with each other for 20 years now. David Whyte’s Self-Portrait, a […]
“Love in Action”
The last public event I attended with friends in March 2020 was the screening of the film #Anne Frank: Parallel Stories, Helen Mirren reading excerpts from Anne’s diary from the attic (now a museum) where Anne and her family hid for 25 months from the Nazi occupation (and deportation of Jews) in Holland. Four days […]
A Modest Hope for the Future in the Midst of So Much Uncertainty
We’re swimming in a lot of disconcerting and contradictory “news” these days, whether it’s yet safe to invite friends over for dinner, visit the dentist/hairdresser/local bar, return to school in the fall. And many of the “rules” we have trusted to be the safety nets of our personal, family, community, national, global lives seem to […]
The Times They Are A-Changin’ – Faster Than You Can Possibly Believe
When the European Union opens its borders tomorrow, within the E.U. and to foreign travelers, the United States may not be on the list of countries whose citizens will be allowed to enter. We haven’t controlled the coronavirus to levels of risk considered safe. (China, Uganda, Cuba, Vietnam, yes. The U.S., Russia, Brazil, no.) The […]
Let this young black woman’s voice be the one you listen to today…
Spoiler alert. This poem is a hard-hitting one. Raw, real, important for right now, not to turn away. Christabel Nunoo gives voice to the truth of the pain and anger of young black men and women today. Re-printed here with her permission. The back-story: Laurie, a member of my mindful self-compassion class years ago, has […]
Poetry Is Not A Luxury, Not in These Times, Not in Any Time
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… [from Wendell Berry’s “The Peace of Wild Things”] I find refuge in the poets who words give life and meaning to our lives and our […]
Poetry Tilling the Soil for Activism
Poetry is not politics. And science is not economics. Yet when I found myself a bit woozy and disoriented last week from the week’s news, I found refuge once again in the deep metaphorical wisdom of great poets. I’ve included below “I Look at the World” by the revered Langston Hughes and “And Still I […]
It Is I Who Must Begin
The Czech playwright Vaclav Havel wrote this poem during the activist protests and uprisings that toppled communist rule in Czechoslovakia in 1989. He was the first democratically elected president of Czechoslovakia 1989-1992 and the first president of the new Czech Republic 1993-2003. It is I Who Must Begin It is I who must begin. Once […]