Such a poem about a dogfish

Some kind of relaxed and beautiful thing
kept flickering in with the tide
and looking around.
Black as a fisherman's boot,
with a white belly.

If you asked for a picture I would have to draw a smile
under the perfectly round eyes and above the chin,
which was rough
as a thousand sharpened nails.

And you know
what a smile means,
don't you?

*

I wanted the past to go away, I wanted
to leave it, like another country; I wanted
my life to close, and open
like a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the song
where it falls
down over the rocks: an explosion, a discovery;
I wanted
to hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know,

whoever I was, I was

alive
for a little while.

*

It was evening, and no longer summer.
Three small fish, I don't know what they were,
huddled in the highest of ripples as it came swimming in again, effortless, the whole body
one gesture, one black sleeve
that could fit easily around
the bodies of three small fish.

*

Also I wanted
to be able to love.  And we all know
how that one goes,
don't we?

Slowly

*

the dogfish tore open the soft basins of water.

You don't want to hear the story
of my life, and anyway
I don't want to tell it, I want to listen

to the enormous waterfalls of the sun.

And anyway it's the same old story---
a few people just trying,
one way or another,
to survive.

Mostly, I want to be kind.
And nobody, of course, is kind,
or mean,
for a simple reason.

And nobody gets out of it, having to
swim through the fires to stay in
this world.

*

And look! look! look! I think those little fish
better wake up and dash themselves away
from the hopeless future that is
bulging toward them.

*

And probably,
if they don't waste time
looking for an easier world,

they can do it.

~Mary Oliver

not in my own strength

In the dark I rest,
unready for the light which dawns
day after day,
eager to be shared.
Black silk, shelter me.
I need
more of the night before I open
eyes and heart
to illumination. I must still
grow in the dark like a root
not ready, not ready at all.

~Denise Levertov

VIII (from Sonnets to Orpheus) Rilke

Where praise already is is the only place Grief
ought to go, that water spirit of the pools of tears;
she watches over our defeats to make sure
the water rises clear from the same rock

that holds up the huge doors and the alters.
You can see, around her motionless shoulders, a feeling
dawns--we sense more and more that she
is the youngest of the three sisters we have inside.

Rejoicing has lost her doubts, and longing broods on her error,
Only grief still learns: she spends the whole night
counting up our evil inheritance with her small hands.

She is awkward, but all at once
she makes our voice rise, sideways, like a constellation
into the sky, not troubled by her breath.

dreams

a hymn

Psalm 114

1 When Israel came out of Egypt,

the house of Jacob from a people of

foreign tongue,

2 Judah became God's sanctuary,

Israel his dominion.

3 The sea looked and fled,

the Jordan turned back;

4 the mountains skipped like rams,

the hills like lambs.

5 Why was it, O sea, that you fled,

O Jordan, that you turned back,

6 you mountains, that you skipped like rams,

you hills, like lambs?

7 Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the

Lord,

at the presence of the God of Jacob,

8 who turned the rock into a pool,

the hard rock into springs of water.

words of a yeoman, a tenant farmer from tennessee

(speaking with Robert Coles)

...I talk to my land, you know. I ask it to be good; each year at the start I do. And each year at the end I say, thank you and amen...

...But I've always believed that when we leave our house and start in out there on the land, we're meeting God and doing all we can to show Him we can hear Him and we can believe in Him; and the proof is that He's there, helping us with the gift of His land, you see, and His sun you see, and His good, good rain, His precious rain that He sends us just when we need it and sometimes in between and to spare. It's up to us to go out and do our best by Him...

...There are times when I wish the good Lord would say to Himself that He should treat us all like we're in His Garden, and He should help the good people along, and take up the bad people, the weeds, and put them someplace else -- maybe up on one of the stars, way away. Then the weeds could have another chance there, to start over and not turn into weeds, you might say. I don't want people to be killed, as if they could only be weeds and nothing else!"

on being a metaphor to a child

Integrative Project Presentations 2011 - Abigail Vizcarra Perez from Mars Hill Graduate School on Vimeo.