Poetry

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Enjoy some of the favorite Shem Center poems presented here.

We Shake With Joy

Mary Oliver

— Mary Oliver

We shake with joy, we shake with grief.
What a time they have, these two,
Housed as they are in the same body.

The Blessing of the Morning Light

— David Whyte
In Memoriam John O’Donohue
Easter Morning 2015

The blessing of the morning light to you,
may it find you even in your invisible
appearances, may you be seen to have risen
from some other place you know and have known
in the darkness and that that carries all you need.

May you see what is hidden in you
as a place of hospitality and shadowed shelter,
may what is hidden in you become your gift to give:
may you hold that shadow to the light
and the silence of that shelter to the word of the light,
may you join every previous disappearance
with this new appearance, this new morning,
this being seen again, new and newly alive.

Blessing for the Morning Light
From
David Whyte : Essentials
2020 © David Whyte and Many Rivers Press
Dawn Light

Photo © David Whyte
Barga, Province of Lucca, Italy
October 2015

The Hill We Climb

Amanda Gorman

Amanda Gorman was the first person to be named National Youth Poet Laureate. On January 20, 2021, she delivered her poem "The Hill We Climb" at the inauguration of the 46th President of the United State of America, Joseph R. Biden, Jr.

— Amanda Gorman

Mr President, Dr Biden, Madam Vice President, Mr Emhoff, Americans and the world: when day comes we ask ourselves where can we find light in this never-ending shade? The loss we carry, a sea we must wade. We’ve braved the belly of the beast. We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace. In the norms and notions of what just is, isn’t always justice. And yet, the dawn is ours before we knew it. Somehow we do it. Somehow we’ve weathered and witnessed a nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished. We, the successors of a country and a time where a skinny black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president only to find herself reciting for one.

And yes, we are far from polished, far from pristine, but that doesn’t mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect. We are striving to forge our union with purpose. To compose a country committed to all cultures, colours, characters, and conditions of man. And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us, but what stands before us. We close the divide because we know to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside. We lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms to one another. We seek harm to none and harmony for all. Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true. That even as we grieved, we grew. That even as we hurt, we hoped. That even as we tired, we tried that will forever be tied together victorious. Not because we will never again know defeat, but because we will never again sow division.

Scripture tells us to envision that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree and no one shall make them afraid. If we’re to live up to her own time, then victory won’t lie in the blade, but in all the bridges we’ve made. That is the promise to glade, the hill we climb if only we dare. It’s because being American is more than a pride we inherit. It’s the past we step into and how we repair it. We’ve seen a forest that would shatter our nation rather than share it. Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy. This effort very nearly succeeded.

But while democracy can be periodically delayed, it can never be permanently defeated. In this truth, in this faith we trust for while we have our eyes on the future, history has its eyes on us. This is the era of just redemption. We feared it at its inception. We did not feel prepared to be the heirs of such a terrifying hour, but within it, we found the power to author a new chapter, to offer hope and laughter to ourselves so while once we asked, how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe? Now we assert, how could catastrophe possibly
prevail over us?

We will not march back to what was, but move to what shall be a country that is bruised, but whole, benevolent, but bold, fierce, and free. We will not be turned around or interrupted by intimidation because we know our inaction and inertia will be the inheritance of the next generation. Our blunders become their burdens. But one thing is certain, if we merge mercy with might and might with right, then love becomes our legacy and change our children’s birthright.

So let us leave behind a country better than one we were left with. Every breath from my bronzepounded chest we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one. We will rise from the hills of the West. We will rise from the wind-swept Northeast where our forefathers first realised revolution. We will rise from the lake rim cities of the Midwestern states. We will rise from the sun-baked South. We will rebuild, reconcile and recover in every known nook of our nation, in every corner called our country our people diverse and beautiful will emerge battered and beautiful. When day comes, we step out of the shade aflame and unafraid. The new dawn blooms as we free it. For there is always light. If only we’re brave enough to see it. If only we’re brave enough to be it.

“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times.
But that is not for them to decide.
All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

This is It
and I am It
and You are It
and so is That
and He is It
and She is It
and It is It
and That is That.
O It is This
and It is Thus
and It is Them
and It is Us
and It is Now
and here It is
and here We are
so This is It.

― James Broughton

The Peace of Wild Things

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.

― Wendell Barry

Listen to Wendell Barry read "The Peace of Wild Things"

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