[About the video: Monk’s “Ruby, My Dear” inspired one of the two Billy Collins poems below; he might have been listening to it while creating the other, too.]
From whiskey river:
Calendars
Back in the blue chair in front of the green studio
another year has passed, or so they say, but calendars lie.
They’re a kind of cosmic business machine like
their cousin clocks but break down at inopportune times.
Fifty years ago I learned to jump off the calendar
but I kept getting drawn back on for reasons
of greed and my imperishable stupidity.
Of late I’ve escaped those fatal squares
with their razor-sharp numbers for longer and longer.
I had to become the moving water I already am,
falling back into the human shape in order
not to frighten my children, grandchildren, dogs and friends.
Our old cat doesn’t care. He laps the water where my face used to be.
(Jim Harrison [source])
…and:
This [year], mend a quarrel. Seek out a forgotten friend. Dismiss suspicion and replace it with trust. Write a letter. Give a soft answer. Encourage youth. Keep a promise. Forgo a grudge. Forgive an enemy. Apologize. Try to understand. Examine your demands on others. Think first of someone else. Be kind. Be gentle. Laugh a little more. Express your gratitude. Welcome a stranger. Gladden the heart of a child. Take pleasure in the beauty and wonder of the earth. Speak your love and then speak it again.
(Howard W. Hunter [source])
…and (in different format, without the first stanza):
Blessing in the Chaos
To all that is chaotic
in you,
let there come silence.Let there be
a calming
of the clamoring,
a stilling
of the voices that
have laid their claim
on you,
that have made their
home in you,that go with you
even to the
holy places
but will not
let you rest,
will not let you
hear your life
with wholeness
or feel the grace
that fashioned you.Let what distracts you
cease.
Let what divides you
cease.
Let there come an end
to what diminishes
and demeans,
and let depart
all that keeps you
in its cage.Let there be
an opening
into the quiet
that lies beneath
the chaos,
where you find
the peace
you did not think
possible
and see what shimmers
within the storm.
(John O’Donohue Jan Richardson [source])
Not from whiskey river:
Days
Each one is a gift, no doubt,
mysteriously placed in your waking hand
or set upon your forehead
moments before you open your eyes.Today begins cold and bright,
the ground heavy with snow
and the thick masonry of ice,
the sun glinting off the turrets of clouds.Through the calm eye of the window
everything is in its place
but so precariously
this day might be resting somehowon the one before it,
all the days of the past stacked high
like the impossible tower of dishes
entertainers used to build on stage.No wonder you find yourself
perched on the top of a tall ladder
hoping to add one more.
Just another Wednesdayyou whisper,
then holding your breath,
place this cup on yesterday’s saucer
without the slightest clink.
(Billy Collins [source])
…and:
Snow
I cannot help noticing how this slow Monk solo
seems to go somehow
with the snow
that is coming down this morning,how the notes and the spaces accompany
its easy falling
on the geometry of the ground,
on the flagstone path,
the slanted roof,
and the angles of the split rail fenceas if he had imagined a winter scene
as he sat at the piano
late one night at the Five Spot
playing “Ruby, My Dear.”Then again, it’s the kind of song
that would go easily with rain
or a tumult of leaves,and for that matter it’s a snow
that could attend
an adagio for strings,
the best of the Ronettes,
or George Thorogood and the Destroyers.It falls so indifferently
into the spacious white parlor of the world,
if I were sitting here reading
in silence,
reading the morning paper
or reading Being and Nothingness,
not even letting the spoon
touch the inside of the cup,
I have a feeling
the snow would go perfectly with that.
(Billy Collins [source])
…and:
When I was six or seven years old, growing up in Pittsburgh, I used to take a precious penny of my own and hide it for someone else to find. It was a curious compulsion; sadly, I’ve never been seized by it since. For some reason I always “hid” the penny along the same stretch of sidewalk up the street. I would cradle it at the roots of a sycamore, say, or in a hole left by a chipped-off piece of sidewalk. Then I would take a piece of chalk, and, staring at either end of the block, draw huge arrows leading up to the penny from both directions. After I learned to write I labeled the arrows: SURPRISE AHEAD or MONEY THIS WAY. I was greatly excited, during all this arrow-drawing, at the thought of the first lucky passer-by who would receive in this way, regardless of merit, a free gift from the universe…
It is still the first week in January, and I’ve got great plans. I’ve been thinking about seeing. There are lots of things to see, unwrapped gifts and free surprises. The world is fairly studded and strewn with pennies cast broadside from a generous hand. But—and this is the point—who gets excited by a mere penny? If you follow one arrow, if you crouch motionless on a bank to watch a tremulous ripple thrill on the water and are rewarded by the sight of a muskrat kit paddling from its den, will you count that sight a chip of copper only, an go your rueful way? It is dire poverty indeed when a man is so malnourished and fatigued that he won’t stoop to pick up a penny. But if you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, since the world is in fact planted in pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days. It is that simple. What you see is what you get.
(Annie Dillard [source])
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