#poemsformindfulness

Partner Gazing

dreamstime_s_12658279 Out beyond our ideas of wrongdoing and right-doing there is a field
I will meet you there
When the soul lies down in that grass
The world is too full to talk about
Ideas, language, even the words each other
Doesn’t make any sense.

Rumi

(Working with a partner, take turns either with a hand on their back or shoulder or gazing at them with their eyes closed, then switch)

Know that this person before you has had the full range of human experience
They have known joy and they have known sorrow
They have known grief

They have known success and they have known failure
They have been praised and they have been blamed
There have been times of gain and times of loss

They have known sickness and they have known health
They have known bodily pain and they have bodily pleasure
They have known agitation and they have known calm

They have known love and they have known hatred
They have known friendship and they have known loneliness
They have known passion and they have known indifference

They have known loyalty and they have known betrayal
They have known kindness and they have known cruelty
They have known beauty and they have known ugliness

There are things that they are proud of and things they are ashamed of
They have known fear and they have known courage

All the experiences that a human being is capable of this person has probably known.
The circumstances may have been different, but the feelings much the same.

(It is helpful to end with awareness of breath or loving kindness meditation)

DOWNLOAD PARTNER GAZING HERE

“Thanks Robert Frost” by David Ray

“Thanks Robert Frost” by David Ray
from: Music of Time: Selected and New Poems

Do you have hope for the future?
someone asked Robert Frost, toward the end.
Yes, and even for the past, he replied,
that it will turn out to have been all right
for what it was, something we can accept,
mistakes made by the selves we had to be,
not able to be, perhaps, what we wished,
or what looking back half the time it seems
we could so easily have been, or ought…
The future, yes, and even for the past,
that it will become something we can bear.
And I too, and my children, so I hope,
will recall as not too heavy the tug
of those albatrosses I sadly placed
upon their tender necks. Hope for the past,
yes, old Frost, your words provide that courage,
and it brings strange peace that itself passes
into past, easier to bear because
you said it, rather casually, as snow
went on falling in Vermont years ago.

DOWNLOAD HERE

An interesting reflection on this poem can be found here:

ON BEING

“Kindness” by Naomi Shihab Nye, 1952

“Kindness” by Naomi Shihab Nye, 1952
from “Words Under the Words: Selected Poems”

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.

DOWNLOAD HERE

“Allow” by Danna Faulds

There is no controlling life.
Try corralling a lightning bolt, containing a tornado.
Dam a stream and it will create a new channel.
Resist, and the tide will sweep you off your feet.

Allow, and grace will carry you to higher ground.
The only safety lies in letting it all in –
the wild and the weak –
fear, fantasies, failures, and success.

When loss rips off the doors of the heart
or sadness veils your vision with despair,
practice becomes simply bearing the truth.
In the choice to let go of your known way of being,
the whole world is revealed to your new eyes.

Uh Huh by Holly Near

I feel so sad…ah ha
I feel so bad…ah ha
I feel so mad…ah ha – Breathe in, breathe out

My mind is here..ah ha
My mind is there…ah ha
Life is unfair….ah ha – Breathe in, breathe out

I feel so blue…ah ha
Too much to do…ah ha
I’m blaming you…ah ha – Breathe in, breathe out

It moves so fast…ah ha
And nothing lasts…ah ha
Just let it pass…ah ha – Breathe in, breathe out

I want to kill..I want to kill
Afraid I will…afraid I will
Try to be still…try to be still – Breathe in, breathe out

Come back to here…ah ha
Let go of fear…ah ha
My mind is clear…ah ha – Breathe in, breathe out

I feel so sad
I feel so bad
I feel so mad – Breathe in, breathe out…AHHHH HAAAA

“With that Moon Language” by Hafiz

Admit something:

Everyone you see, you say to them, “love me”
of course you do not do this out loud,
otherwise someone would call the cops.

Still though, think about this, this great pull in us to connect.
why not become the one who lives with a full moon in each eye
that is always saying,
with that sweet moon language,
What every other eye in this world is dying to hear?

DOWNLOAD 3 Poems

“Coconut” by Paul Hostovsky from Bird in the Hand

Bear with me I
want to tell you
something about
happiness
it’s hard to get at
but the thing is
I wasn’t looking
I was looking
somewhere else
when my son found it
in the fruit section
and came running
holding it out
in his small hands
asking me what
it was and could we
keep it, it only
cost 99 cents
hairy and brown
hard as a rock
and something swishing
around inside
and what on earth
and where on earth
and this was happiness
this little ball
of interest beating
inside his chest
this interestedness
beaming out
from his face pleading
happiness
and because I wasn’t
happy I said
to put it back
because I didn’t want it
because we didn’t need it
and because he was happy
he started to cry
right there in aisle
five so when we
got home we
put it in the middle
of the kitchen table
and sat on either
side of it and began
to consider how
to get inside of it