Today’s healing offering for all of our friends near & far… from the beautiful mind of Czeslaw Milosz; translated by Robert Hass & Milosz (and recommended by Cassidy) Czeslaw Milosz (1911-2004) Not soon, as late as the approach of my ninetieth year, I felt a...
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Poetry Rx | “Small Kindnesses” by Danusha Laméris
I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walkdown a crowded aisle, people pull in their legsto let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”when someone sneezes, a leftoverfrom the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.And sometimes, when you spill...
Poetry Rx | “The Star” by Richard Bauckham
We first saw it on a night pitch as a dungeon, the world’s midnight. It appeared the only brightness in the universe, a bird of pure light soaring, a crystal ship sailing the dark deluge, a dazzling denizen of heaven leaping the vast vault towards our long lost world....
Poetry Rx | “Chemotherapy” by Julia Darling
Julia Darling (1956-2005) I did not imagine being bald at forty four. I didn’t have a plan. Perhaps a scar or two from growing old, hot flushes. I’d sit fluttering a fan. But I am bald, and hardly ever walk by day, I’m the invalid of these rooms, stirring soups, awake...
Poetry Rx | “From Cedi la Strada Agli Alberi” by Franco Arminio
From Cedi la Strada Agli Alberi Franco Arminio (b. 1960) Translated by Sarah Lambert-Porter We need farmers, poets, people who know how to make bread, who love trees and recognize the wind. More than a year of growth, it would take a year of attention. Attention to...
Poetry Rx | “Sorrow Is Not My Name” by Ross Gay
“Sorrow Is Not My Name” Ross Gay (b. 1974) — after Gwendolyn Brooks No matter the pull toward brink. No matter the florid, deep sleep awaits. There is a time for everything. Look, just this morning a vulture nodded his red, grizzled head at me, and I looked at him,...
Our Friends | Do You Remember Barbara
“Remember Barbara,” begins a wonderful poem by Jacques Prevert about love and war: the Second World War and the destruction of the French port, Brest; the love of Barbara and the desolate loss of that love. It reminded me of my friend, Barbara, and the Alzheimer's...
Poetry Rx | “My Heart Can Take on Any Form” by Ibn Arabi
My heart can take on any form: A meadow for gazelles, A cloister for monks, For the idols, sacred ground, Ka'ba for the circling pilgrim, The tables of the Torah, The scrolls of the Quran. My creed is Love; Wherever its caravan turns along the way, That is my belief,...
Poetry Rx | “Affirmation” by Donald Hall
To grow old is to lose everything. Aging, everybody knows it. Even when we are young, we glimpse it sometimes, and nod our heads when a grandfather dies. Then we row for years on the midsummer pond, ignorant and content. But a marriage, that began without harm, scatters into debris on the shore, and a […]
Did You Know That Walt Whitman Served as a Nurse during the Civil War?
Walt Whitman (1819–1892) was born May 31, 1819 into a working-class family in Long Island, New York. He worked throughout his life as a teacher and in the publishing and printing trades. Whitman also served as a nurse during the American Civil War, 1861–1865, which he...