I want to start the year in a nice way. No, I won’t be talking about New Year’s resolutions. That you see written and talked about all over the place, so I won’t bore you with that kind of thing.
Instead, I want to start the year off right, in a Low Density Lifestyle kind of way. For this entire week, before I begin writing on a specific series, which I will do next week, I will feature poetry.
Life is Poetry – poetry can make us feel lighter of body, mind and spirit, and often can speak to our soul. It talks to us in ways that prose often cannot, in rhythms and cadences that can reverberate and resonate with our deepest longings.
It can also help us be more in touch with the innate low density nature we all carry within. It is this instinct that propels us forward in life; it is a natural drive we all have, one that desires happiness, love, joy and peace.
Unfortunately, it gets muddied up and lost. And it is poetry that can help us find it.
And so, each day of this week we’ll hear from a different poet.
Today’s poet is David Tucker. I’ll let David tell you about himself:
“I am a poet who lives in Vermont where I struggle to dig from the rock of mundanity formed by the details and disappointments of life the images that will startle us and remind us how we are connected to each other and to all the universe.”
Here are some poems of David’s, to help us ring in the New Year and put us in a Low Density Lifestyle frame of mind.
David’s email address is davidshawnee@mac.com.
To Learn How to Love
It is so beautiful,
this life,
the sun,
Vermont,
evening creeping in
over the Green Mountains.
It is light,
sweet,
so beautiful,
this life,
that we are given
that we might
learn how to love.
A simple lesson
I cannot catch.
A lovely butterfly
too light and quick.
For weeks now
I grab
and cannot hold
how beautiful,
how sweet,
how light
is this life
we learn
how to love.
As the Morning Glory
buckles into the night
I crumple into
fear,
anger,
darkness.
I think
I may die soon.
I think
How quickly it passes.
I think
What have I accomplished?
I think
It is not fair.
I have forgotten.
I came here
to learn how to love
and
in the evening light,
in the sweet approach of night,
I remember,
this minute
is enough,
to love
is what I came to learn.
It is enough.
Sabbath,
For Catherine
I woke this morning
paused
only a minute,
ate a tiny slice of peace,
sipped a thimble of light,
jumped up
and put on
my harness,
walked to the field,
head down,
up to the plow,
snapped on the line,
flexed my thighs
and prepared to pull.
Then stopped,
staring at the clods
and broken sod.
What, oh Creator
do you have planned
for me
today?
Pulling this plow
is my idea.
I looked up,
unsnapped the line
and
suddenly
the air was full
of butterflys,
cobalt blue wings
with
eyes as gold
as daffodils.
I broke up
the plow and made a drum.
We danced,
stepping and leaping
on the hard ground,
broke it into velvet loam.
Ready
to receive
the seed.
Meditation
You cannot trap
the sunshine
or
capture love
Maybe
for a minute
or a night
but
time
always shows up
cuts their chains
and
they escape
into the hills
Relax
stop pushing
let it go
let it all go
There is a trap door
in the top
of every second
Lift
Enter
The Gods will pour
cups of quiet
tap the drum of peace
fish diamonds from your soul
and
kiss the scales
off your eyes
till
you see
this is the only place
your enemy
time
cannot enter
to steal
your sunshine
and
your love.