"Sojourns in the Parallel World": Poems for the Solstice

I woke early, on this longest day:

the light rose among

 the green conversation 

of  trees, a fading star, exultant starlings,

  two grey squirrels 

performing their morning ritual

greeting the only God 

they know, 

the Sun

Lauren Raine (2014)

SOJOURNS IN THE PARALLEL WORLD

We live our lives of human passions,

cruelties, dreams, concepts,

crimes and the exercise of virtue

in, and beside, a world 

devoid of our preoccupations, free

from apprehension—though affected,

certainly, by our actions.

 A world parallel to our own though overlapping.

We call it “Nature”; only reluctantly

admitting ourselves to be “Nature” too.

Whenever we lose track of our own obsessions,

our self-concerns, when we drift for a minute,

an hour even, of pure (almost pure)

response to that insouciant life:

cloud, bird, fox, the flow of light, the dancing

pilgrimage of water, vast stillness

of spellbound ephemerae on a lit windowpane,

animal voices, mineral hum, wind

conversing with rain, ocean with rock, stuttering

of fire to coal—then something tethered

in us, hobbled like a donkey on its patch

of gnawed grass and thistles, breaks free.

No one discovers

just where we’ve been, when we’re caught up again

into our own sphere (where we must

return, indeed, to evolve our destinies)

—but we have changed, a little.

by Denise Levertov

2014:  A HYMN

 Our prophets lead our people on

    fast to the promised land,

and where we pass, the green of grass

    turns to bare brown sand.

So high our cities' towers soar

    above the deep-set fault,

immense they rise into the skies,

    pillars of cloud and salt.

Impatient with the patient day,

    we rush to gain tomorrow,

Our ships that plough the seas with nets

    leave a long and empty furrow.

Our quick inventions spend our time

    faster and ever faster, 

while kind and unforgiving Earth

    endures our brief disaster.

For all we do is nothing to

    Her bright eons of days.

So let my dark tune turn and end

    as all song should, in praise.

And in the hope of wisdom yet,

    I'll sing the hymn that praises

Earth's greater life that gives us life,

    the grace that still amazes.

Ursula K. Leguin 

(from Late in the Day: Poems 2010 -2014)

 

PRAISE THE DAY

 

The colors and taste of it!

Praise the light, dappled among amber leaves,

the light framed by an open window.

And all things blue!

Praise, praise summer skies,

their endless exaltation,

and all waters reflecting blue,

and a blue-eyed cat, sleeping on the windowsill.

Oh, praise the light, and all windows!

 

Praise the sand between my feet:

Praise the Song the ocean sings

today and forever, with or without me to listen.

Praise these ears, praise all eyes,

 

praise to the pearl of sweat

on your brown arm,

Praise, praise to you!

And praise to the woman

who regards me from mirrors.

Praise to the dark eyed waitress,

the bus driver, the cashier,

a child in a yellow sweater

running among the trees.

 

Praise them all!

All those I've loved,

the ones gone, the ones that remain -

the multitudes I've walked among

the company that's shaped me:

Praise, Praise the Day!

 

Lauren Raine (1998)