Some Poems Frequently Used in Workshops:

Invocation, John Seed

Work Song, Part 2: A Vision, Wendell Berry

De Rerum Virtute (excerpt), Robinson Jeffers

Two Threnodies and a Psalm, Denise Levertov

Unconditional, Jennifer Welwood

Prayer for the Great Turning, Joanne Sunshower

The Great Turning, Christine Fry

I Take to Myself, Bill Johnston

A Thousand Years of Healing, Susa Silvermarie

A Warrior Has No Safety Net, Kirstin George

Questo muro, Anita Barrows

Common Sense (excerpts), Paul Williams

The Book of Endings, Sam Taylor

Prayer for Entering the Book of Sorrow

Hokusai says, Roger Keyes

In the rapids now

Poems from Councils of All Beings

Glacier Speaks

Gorilla Speaks: Message to the Naked Ones

Full Moon Speaks

Some favorites from our translations of Rilke

The following poems come from Joanna Macy's and Anita Barrows' translations of Ranier Maria Rilke's Book of Hours and his Sonnets to Orpheus and Duino Elegies

"God speaks to each of us as he makes us" (I,59)

"Dear Darkening Ground" (I,61)

"I thank you, deep power" (I,62)

"You come and go. The doors swing closed" (I,45)

"You who let yourselves feel: enter the breathing" (Sonnet 4, Part One)

"Erect no gravestone. Just let the rose" (Sonnet 5, Part One)

"Breath, you invisible poem!" (Sonnet 1, Part Two)

"The Machine endangers all we have made" (Sonnet 10, Part Two)

"Be ahead of all parting, as if it had already happened" (Sonnet 13, Part Two)

"Does Time, as it passes, really destroy?" (Sonnet 27, Part Two)

"Quiet friend, who has come so far" (Sonnet 29, Part Two)

Eighth Duino Elegy

Ninth Duino Elegy

Other Poems Frequently Used in Workshops

Invocation

John Seed

We ask for the presence of the spirit of Gaia and pray that the breath of life continues to caress this planet home.

May we grow into true understanding — a deep understanding that inspires us to protect the tree on which we bloom, and the water, soil and atmosphere without which we have no existence.

May we turn inwards and stumble upon our true roots in the intertwining biology of this exquisite planet. May nourishment and power pulse through these roots, and fierce determination to continue the billion-year dance.

May love well up and burst forth from our hearts.

May there be a new dispensation of pure and powerful consciousness and the charter to witness and facilitate the healing of the tattered biosphere.

We ask for the presence of the spirit of Gaia to be with us here. To reveal to us all that we need to see, for our own highest good and for the highest good of all.

We call upon the spirit of evolution, the miraculous force that inspires rocks and dust to weave themselves into biology. You have stood by us for millions and billions of years — do not forsake us now. Empower us and awaken in us pure and dazzling creativity. You that can turn scales into feathers, seawater to blood, caterpillars to butterflies, metamorphose our species, awaken in us the powers that we need to survive the present crisis and evolve into more aeons of our solar journey.

Awaken in us a sense of who we truly are: tiny ephemeral blossoms on the Tree of Life. Make the purposes and destiny of that tree our own purpose and destiny.

Fill each of us with love for our true Self, which includes all of the creatures and plants and landscapes of the world. Fill us with a powerful urge for the well-being and continual unfolding of this Self.

May we speak in all human councils on behalf of the animals and plants and landscapes of the Earth.

May we shine with a pure inner passion that will spread rapidly through these leaden times.

May we all awaken to our true and only nature — none other than the nature of Gaia, this living planet Earth.

We call upon the power which sustains the planets in their orbits, that wheels our Milky Way in its 200-million-year spiral, to imbue our personalities and our relationships with harmony, endurance and joy. Fill us with a sense of immense time so that our brief, flickering lives may truly reflect the work of vast ages past and also the millions of years of evolution whose potential lies in our trembling hands.

O stars, lend us your burning passion.

O silence, give weight to our voice.

We ask for the presence of the spirit of Gaia.

Work Song, part 2: A Vision

If we will have the wisdom to survive,
to stand like slow growing trees
on a ruined place, renewing, enriching it...
then a long time after we are dead
the lives our lives prepare will live
here, their houses strongly placed
upon the valley sides...
The river will run
clear, as we will never know it...
On the steeps where greed and ignorance cut down
the old forest, an old forest will stand,
its rich leaf-fall drifting on its roots.
The veins of forgotten springs will have opened.
Families will be singing in the fields...
Memory,
native to this valley, will spread over it
like a grove, and memory will grow
into legend, legend into song, song
into sacrament. The abundance of this place,
the songs of its people and its birds,
will be health and wisdom and indwelling
light. This is no paradisal dream.
Its hardship is its reality.

- Wendell Berry

from De Rerum Virtute

...I believe the first living cell had echoes of the future in it
And felt direction and the great animals
The deep green forest and whale's track sea.
I believe this globed earth not all by chance and fortune
Brings forth her broods
But feels and chooses.
And the galaxy, the firewheel on which we are pinned
The whirlwind of stars in which our sun is one dust grain
One electron, this giant atom of the universe
Is not blind force
But fulfills its life, and intends its course.

- Robinson Jeffers

Two Threnodies and a Psalm

I

It is not approaching.
It has arrived.
We are not circumventing it.

It is happening.
It is happening now.
We are not preventing it.
We are within it.

The sound of its happening
is splitting other ears.
The sight of its happening
is searing other eyes.
The grip of its happening
is strangling other throats.

Without intermissions it spins,
without cessation we circle its edge
as leaf or crumb will float circling
a long time at the other rim
before centripetal force
tugs it down.

II

The body being savaged
is alive.
It is our own.
While the eagle-vulture
tears the earth's liver,
while the heart-worm burrows
into earth's heart.

Extremities, we are in
unacknowledged extremis.
We feel only
a chill as the pulse of life
recedes.

We don't beat off the devouring beak,
the talons. We don't dig out what burrows
into our core. It is not
our heart, we think (but do not say).
It is the world's, poor world, but I
am other.

III

Our clear water
one with the infested water

women walk miles to
each day they live.

One with the rivers tainted with detritus

of our ambitions,

and with the dishonored ocean.
Our unbroken skin
one with the ripped skin of the tortured,

the shot-down, bombed, napalmed,
the burned alive.

One with the sore and filthy skin of the destitute.

We utter the words
we are one
but their truth
is not real to us.

Spirit, waken
our understanding.
Out of the stasis
in which we perish,
the sullen immobility
to which the lead weight of our disbelief
condemns us,
only your rushing wind
can lift us.

Our flesh and theirs
one with the flesh of fruit and tree.

Our blood
one with the blood of whale and sparrow.

Our bones
ash and cinder of star-fire.

Our being
tinder for primal light.

Lift us, Spirit, impel
our rising
into that knowledge.

Make truth real to us,
flame on our lips.
Lift us to seize the present,
wrench it
out of its downspin.

- Denise Levertov

Unconditional

Willing to experience aloneness,
I discover connection everywhere;
Turning to face my fear,
I meet the warrior who lives within;
Opening to my loss,
I gain the embrace of the universe;
Surrendering into emptiness,
I find fullness without end.
Each condition I flee from pursues me,
Each condition I welcome transforms me
And becomes itself transformed
Into its radiant jewel-like essence.
I bow to the one who has made it so,
Who has crafted this Master Game.
To play it is purest delight;
To honor its form--true devotion.

- Jennifer Welwood

PRAYER FOR THE GREAT TURNING

May the turning of the Earth save us.
May the turning of the seasons & the turning of the leaves save us.
May we be saved by the worms, the beetles & the microbes turning the soil.
May we be saved by the turning of vegetation into compost
& the turning of compost into rich soil.
May the turning of seeds into plants & the turning of flowers
into fruits save us.
May the grasses & weeds, the vines & mosses all conspire to save us.
May we be saved by the turning of sprouts into saplings, of saplings into trees,
& the trees into forests.
May the scurrying, foraging, pouncing & lumbering of the animals save us.

May the breath of heaven in the breezes & the stormy winds save us.
May the dance of the butterflies, & the musical flight & return
of the birds save us.
May we be saved by vapors turning into clouds & by the turning of
the ever-changing clouds into rain.
May the waters flowing from springs into the lakes save us.
May the streams flowing into rivers, the rivers into seas,
& the great heaving of the oceans save us.
May we be saved by the patient turning of the rocks, the hills,
the mountains, & the volcanoes.
May the metabolism of the climates of the Earth save us.
May the turnings of all Beings great & small move us to find wisdom in our own turnings.

May we be saved by our waking & sleeping, by the rhythms of our blood
& our appetites, by the cycles of birthing & nurturing, injury & healing,
mating & nesting, loss & discovery, joy & mourning.
May we find in time the grace to turn to one another, & may this turning
also become our salvation.
May we learn to benefit the life of Earth with peace, humble in our needs,
& generous in our giving.
May we learn to celebrate the abundance of life with gratitude, & to embrace
the Earth with our bodies in return.

-- Joanne Sunshower

THE GREAT TURNING

You've asked me to tell you of The Great Turning, of how we saved the world from disaster.
The answer is both simple and complex.
We turned.

For hundreds of years we had turned away as life on earth grew more precarious.
We turned away from the homeless men on the streets, the stench from the river, the children orphaned in Iraq, the mothers dying of AIDS in Africa.

We turned away because that is what we had been taught.
To turn away, from our pain, from the hurt in another's eyes, from the drunken father or the friend betrayed.

Always we were told, in actions louder than words, to turn away, turn away. And so we became a lonely people caught up in a world moving too quickly, too mindlessly towards its own demise.

Until it seemed as if there was no safe place to turn. No place, inside or out, that did not remind us of fear or terror, despair and loss, anger and grief.

Yet on one of those days someone did turn.

Turned to face the pain. Turned to face the stranger. Tuned to look at the smoldering world and the hatred seething in too many eyes. Turned to face himself, herself.

And then another turned. And another. And another. And as they wept, they took each other's hands.

Until whole groups of peole were turning. Young and old, gay and straight. People of all colors, all nations, all religions. Turning not only to the pain and hurt hut to beauty, gratitude and love, Turning to one another with forgiveness and a longing for peace in their hearts...

-- Christine Fry (October 19, 2004)

I take to myself

I take to myself
my broken self:
my guilt, my peace,
my folly and joy,
my sickness, my health;
in laughter and agony,
hating and loving,
my fear and my birthing--
and I am made whole.

I take to myself
you, my neighbor,
cupping your life
within my hands:
your broken self
pure gift to me;
not burden, gift,
as mine to you--
and I am made whole.

I take to myself
you, broken Earth;
stripped and abused,
paved over and poisoned,
you mother so freely,
abundant in grace:
clasp in your mercy,
surprise into tears--
and I am made whole.

I take to myself
your broken self,
my dear, near God;
broken for broken,
for lost and for spent.
As fragmented love
and nectar of life,
you come, gentle God--
and I am made whole.

- Bill Johnston

A Thousand Years of Healing

From whence my hope, I cannot say,
except it grows in the cells of my skin,
in my envelope of mysteries it hums.
In this sheath so akin to the surface of the earth
it whispers. Beneath
the wail and dissonance in the world,
hope’s song grows. Until I know
that with this turning
we put a broken age to rest.
We who are alive at such a cusp
now usher in
one thousand years of healing!

Winged ones and four-leggeds,
grasses and mountains and each tree,
all the swimming creatures,
even we, wary two-leggeds
hum, and call, and create
the Changing Song. We remake
all our relations. We convert
our minds to the earth. In this turning time
we finally learn to chime and blend,
attune our voices; sing the vision
of the Great Magic we move within.
We begin
the new habit, getting up glad
for a thousand years of healing.

© - Susa Silvermarie

A Warrior Has No Safety Net

I walk on the precarious edge
of the new and the old,
wanting to shed
the locks and liesof a mechanical world,
eager to diveinto the smooth coolwater of abundant life.

*********
I am young,
I am a woman,
I live in a land where I can choose.

There are disco lights
and magnetic forces
pulling me into The Tunnel--
The Tunnel where everyone goes.

Almost everyone.

It vacuums up mall shoppers
and telemarketers,
executives and bartenders.
It promises clean sheets
and Mickey Mouse vacations,
automatic garage doors
and cell phone communications.
If you choose The Tunnel
you will never have to be cold
or hungry or alone.
There are pills to erase headaches
and drinks to drown hearthaches.

There are movies to make you laugh
and cars to move you fast.

If you don't like your face,
surgery will change its shape.
There is no need for God
The Tunnel will keep you safe.

But if you stop believing,
oh! If you stop believing...
The Tunnel will disintegrate
and leave you swimming in a septic tank.

*********
My choice is clear.
I am stepping slowly
into the quiet open land beyond.

There are no roads, no maps, no guides.
There is no insurance coverage, no training school.
Edible vegetation is sparse.

Rain trickles down my back
as I fumble with reeds to make a hat.
Through the mist
I catch a thread of song
and rise to see a band of barefoot sisters
approach with open arms.

With nothing more than faith and grace,
our dance has just begun.

- Kirstin George

Questo muro

Quando mi vide star pur fermo e duro turbato un poco disse: "Or vedi figlio: tra Beatrice e te e questo muro."

- Dante, Purgatorio XXVII

You will come at a turning of the trail
to a wall of flame

After the hard climb & the exhausted dreaming

you will come to a place where he
with whom you have walked this far
will stop, will stand

beside you on the treacherous steep path
& stare as you shiver at the moving wall, the flame

that blocks your vision of what
comes after. And that one
who you thought would accompany you always,

who held your face
tenderly a little while in his hands---
who pressed the palms of his hands into drenched grass
& washed from your cheeks the soot, the tear-tracks---

he is telling you now
that all that stands between you
& everything you have known since the beginning

is this: this wall. Between yourself
& the beloved, between yourself & your joy,
the riverbank swaying with wildflowers, the shaft

of sunlight on the rock, the song.
Will you pass through it now, will you let it consume

whatever solidness this is
you call your life, & send
you out, a treamor of heat,

a radiance, a changed
flickering thing?

- Anita Barrows

Excerpts from Common Sense

We have been born
into a moment
of unprecedented danger and opportunity.

Our failure to act
is itself a choice.

There is nowhere to hide
from this awareness.

It is time.

Our purpose here
is to build a bridge.

The purpose of the bridge
is to span the distance
between our present situation
and our vision of a better world.

The beauty of a bridge is that,
once it is in place,
anyone can walk on it.

A few people can build a bridge
that can be walked on by many.

. . .

On the edge of the dream
we face our deepest doubts.

Now that it all is almost real
a terrible fear of success takes hold
and we grab desperately, incontrollably, for failure.

One last chance to get off easy.

Who among us really wants to save the world,
to be born again into two thousand more years
of struggle?

How much sweeter to be the doomed generation,
floating gently on the errors and villainy of others,
towards some glorious apocalypse now . . .

Hallelujah! It's not my fault--
Bring on the end times!

We hate our enemies
to provide ourselves in advance
with excuses for possible failure.

Only when we give up
the comforts of pessimism
the luxury of enemies
the sweetness of helplessness
can we see beyond our own doubts.

I am speaking today of a great possibility
a chance to return to life
a chance to create a world for our children
not worse than the one we have

How dare I be discouraged in the work
by anything so trivial
as the fear of personal failure?

. . .

There are bridges to build
new maps of consciousness to be delivered
to every planetary address
in every planetary language.

We are ironworkers, skywalkers,
stubborn messengers
of light and life.

O friends
don't forget
why we're here!

The truth is, we have the skills
and we have the courage
if we could only keep our minds
on what we really want.

. . .
How to prevent world catastrophe:

1) Admit that it could happen.
2) Decide that it will not happen.
3) Commit your vision and energy to number two

without ever forgetting number one.

To choose to build a bridge

is the essential act of love.

- Paul Williams

Poems from Councils of All Beings

Glacier Speaks

Humans - hear me!
I speak for the glacier beings:
ice and gravel, crevasse, snowbridge,
rushing water.

Watch how we move. May watching bring you peace.
Think of the making of mountains, gorges,
ponds, rivers without end.
That is how we move.
Bonded together, turning over time,
great and lasting forms.

Our glacier ways are the old ways.
We are kin to the dew on the grass, the icicles
hanging from your gutters, the irrigation for your"
farmlands, the bubbles in your fountains.
Crystal and vapor are beautiful ways
we touch the face of the earth.

Two-legged beings, frantic and sad ones,
follow my path downstream from the mountains,
cascade and river current, flowing through marshes
and out to sea. Taking that journey over and over
I pass by you as cloud and rain and snow.
You are the frozen ones, believing yourselves
apart from each other and other life forms.

With your hears, listen for the voices
deep inside the glacier. They will teach you songs of
the power of melting.

- Anne Wescott

- Roger Keyes