acceptance

Return to the most human

/ Bill Schulz / Leave a comment

Return, return to the deep sources, nothing less
Will teach the stiff hands a new way to serve,
To carve into our lives the forms of tenderness
And still that ancient necessary pain preserve.

We must go down into the dungeons of the heart,
To the dark places where modern mind imprisons
All that is not defined and thought apart.
We must let out the terrible creative visions.

Return to the most human, nothing less
Will teach the angry spirit, the bewildered heart,
The torn mind, to accept the whole of its duress,
And pierced with anguish, at last act for love.
– May Sarton, Santos: New Mexico

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October Day – Rainer Maria Rilke

/ Bill Schulz / Leave a comment

Oh Lord, it’s time, it’s time. It was a great summer.
Lay your shadow now on the sundials,
and on the open fields let the winds go!

Give the tardy fruits the hint to fill;
give them two more Mediterranean days,
drive them on into their greatness, and press
the final sweetness into the heavy wine.

Whoever has no house by now will not build.
Whoever is alone now will remain alone,
will wait up, read, write long letters,
and walk along sidewalks under large trees,
not going home, as the leaves fall and blow away.
(translated by Robert Bly)

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And so I go on trying to walk…

/ Bill Schulz / Leave a comment

And so I go on trying to walk on the waters of the breakdown. Worse than ever before and better than ever before. It is always painful and reassuring when he who I am not is visibly destroyed by the hand of God in order that the simplicity in the depths of me, which is His image, may be set free to serve Him in peace. – Thomas Merton, journal entry October 22, 1952

three new poems from New Mexico

/ Bill Schulz / 1 Comment

Smoke

smoke in Chama Canyon
surrounds me like the ghosts
of all the dead I’ve ever known

somewhere close a lone cow bellows
echoes sound far upriver

in the dusk her calf replies
too late too late
from the other side

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Morning – Chama River
For you are mist that appears for a little while
and then vanishes.  – James 4:14

the silence
of breaking clouds

the little ones hiding
in side canyons

breaking free
above the river

a raven laughs
and drops a feather

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Evening – Chama River

Love means to learn to look at yourself
The way one looks at distant things
– Czelslaw Milosz

Pulling back the blankets tonight
I found a small cricket
quiet and shy
hiding under my pillow.

Oh, I know better.
Like me, though, it seemed alone
and in need of a companion
to get through the dark alive.

So, I’ll awaken before dawn
and give thanks if we’re still here
like the moths that flew to the light just now
when I opened the door to check for rain.

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Mr. or Mrs. Nobody – William Stafford

/ Bill Schulz / Leave a comment

Some days when you look out, the land
is heavy, following its hills, dim
where the road bends. There are days when
having the world is a mistake.
But then you think, “Well, anyway, it wasn’t
my idea,” and it’s OK again.

Suppose that a person who knows you happens
to see you going by, and it’s one of those days –
for a minute you have to carry the load
for them, you’ve got to lift the whole
heavy world, even without knowing it,
being a hero, stumbling along.
Some days it’s like that. And maybe
today. And maybe all of the time.

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