OOH LA LA! #10
Poems are not words after all, but fires for the cold
Here’s what I know to be true. Our brains are so hard-wired for survival that on a day-to-day basis, especially when we are heartbroken or depressed or struggling or in grief, we will literally forget about all the beautiful and wonderful things that exist right in front of us. Pain can be a blindfold.
We have to actively be reawakened, day by day, sometimes minute by minute, to the cosmic miracle that we are alive, and that we are not alone. One of the fastest ways I know to help remove the blindfold is through poetry. I mean this is the most sincerest way I know how to say it: what is saving my life right now are poems.
“For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.”
- Mary Oliver
In honor of crossing into double-digits for OOH LA LA!, I’m sharing just one very important OOH LA LA this week and it’s simply a collection of some of my current favorite poems. For me, as Mary Oliver has said, poems are not words, but breads in the pockets of the hungry. Poems are not about an experience but are the experience itself and that is why I find it so healing.
I feel the same about all art forms, really.
Art is our most essential, earnest expression of our experience and without it, we would famish and die. And we want to live! May these poems be a balm for you today, as they have been for me this week. I love you. Thanks for being here.
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THIS SPRING - James A Pearson
How can I love this spring
when it’s pulling me through my life faster
than any time before it?
When five separate dooms
are promised this decade
and here I am, just trying
to watch a bumblebee cling
to its first purple flower.
I cannot save this world.
But look how it’s trying,
once again, to save me.
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Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
-Rumi
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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.
*I first heard this poem, which is inspired by a story from a Native American teaching tradition, from an interview with David Whyte who said, “How do you know that you’re on your path? Because it disappears. How do you know you’re doing something radical? Because you can’t see where you’re going.” What do you do when you’re lost? You stand still.
(Go to 5:10 in the video link to hear David read the poem)
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A prayer for the
living trying
to breathe
another breathe - Chiara Francesca
Among incredible pain,
pleasure
Among the sharpest loneliness,
connection
Among pervasive panic,
courage
Among unbearable heartbreak,
love
Among stifling ugliness-
a single blade of grass
contains all the ingredients
of life itself
it is not the absence of pain
we must seek
it is the presence of aliveness
among all that tells us
that death and despair
are the only possible outcomes
of our days
Above,
the shape of a cloud suggests
the existence of another breath
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Thanks for reading!
I’d love to know about your OOH LA LA! somethings.
Reply to this email with 1-3 sentences about your current obsessions, passions, and pleasures and why you love it, or send me a poem or a photo!
XOXO,
LJ
Last night I swear I saw a unicorn in the East River. Do you see it?