From an idea by Rachael Salmon, Massage Therapist, at www.getthemassage.co.uk.
I have purposely chosen this collection of five poems by different authors because they delve into the raw, intense moments that shape our lives, moments when emotions run deep, and words are not enough to capture the weight of our experiences.
In these poems, the writers lend their voices to the powerful feelings we often keep just at the edge of our awareness. Through their witnessing of their own suffering, we can perhaps find a way to honour and explore these emotions, to sit longer with what we might usually shy away from.
I hope you find something that meets where you are right now, in the way these poems speak directly to the heart, quiet companions for the soul.
The Poems
The Guest House – Rumi
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
The Invitation – Oriah Mountain Dreamer
It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.
It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon.
I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain.
I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it, or fade it, or fix it.
I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own; if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, remember the limitations of being human.
It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true.
I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.
I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence.
I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, ‘Yes.’
It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children.
It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back.
It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.
I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.
Wild Geese – By Mary Oliver
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Afterparty – Becky Hemsley (from the book When I Am Gone: Poems for Times of Loss and Grief)
I held a party the other week and grief came.
She wasn’t invited but she came anyway – barged her way in through the door and settled down like she was here to stay.
And then she introduced me to the friends she’d brought with her – Anger. Fear. Frustration. Guilt. Hopelessness.
And they sang in the loudest voices, took up space in every corner of the room and spoke over anyone else that tried to talk.
They made it messy and loud and uncomfortable.
But finally, they left.
And long afterwards, when I was all alone,
I realised there was still someone here.
Quietly clearing up after the rest.
I asked who she was and she told me, “Love.”
And I assumed that’s why she looked familiar – because I had met her before.
“Or perhaps,” she said, “it’s because I’ve been here the whole time.”
And I was confused then because I hadn’t seen her all evening.
But when I looked more closely,
when I looked into her eyes,
I realised quietly that she had been here.
All the time.
She’d just been dressed as grief.
Song of a Man Who Has Come Through – by D H Lawrence
Not I, not I, but the wind that blows through me!
A fine wind is blowing the new direction of Time.
If only I let it bear me, carry me, if only it carry me!
If only I am sensitive, subtle, oh, delicate, a winged gift!
If only, most lovely of all, I yield myself and am borrowed
By the fine, fine, wind that takes its course through the chaos of the world
Like a fine, an exquisite chisel, a wedge-blade inserted;
If only I am keen and hard like the sheer tip of a wedge
Driven by invisible blows,
The rock will split, we shall come at the wonder, we shall find the Hesperides.
Oh, for the wonder that bubbles into my soul,
I would be a good fountain, a good well-head,
Would blur no whisper, spoil no expression.
What is the knocking?
What is the knocking at the door in the night?
It is somebody wants to do us harm.
No, no, it is the three strange angels.
Admit them, admit them.