Poems can be a doorway into another world. Each one, a simple arrangement of otherwise ordinary words, that together evoke presence, wonder, possibility. So here is an invitation to pause, let the words wash over you and glimpse the world they offer you…
It’s a growing collection, and we’d love to hear which ones resonate with you and why, and find out about your favourites. Here is an index of our Words of Wonder.
Remember who you are. Not the shape others have put on you, not the story they handed you, not the lies or needs that were pressed into your psyche. Not even your own imagined ideas of what you should be. But the real you, the wild innate you that is breathing under all those should…
Among deep mountains the heart’s moon shines pure and I see within that mirror the whole world enlightened Saigyō, translated from Japanese by Meredith McKinney This is a Tanka poem by Japanese hermit Saigyō Hōshi who lived in the 12th Century. Saigyō is very widely known and much loved for his poetry of renunciation…
Dhammadinna – She Who Has Given Herself to the Dhamma For so long I thought only of the river’s end. Then one morning, I set my paddle down to watch the sun rise over the eastern hills – only to find myself floating – somehow gently upstream. I promise it was not what I had…
I’ve learned to live simply, wisely, To look at the sky and pray to God, And to take long walks before evening To wear out this useless anxiety. When the burdocks rustle in the ravine And the yellow-red clusters of rowan nod, I compose happy verses About mortal life, mortal and beautiful life. I return.…
Finally on my way to yes I bump into all the places where I said no to my life all the untended wounds the red and purple scars those hieroglyphs of pain carved into my skin, my bones, those coded messages that send me down the wrong street again and again where I find them…
Vijaya – Victor When everyone else was meditating, I’d be outside circling the hall. Finally I went to confess. I’m hopeless, I said. The elder nun smiled. Just keep going, she said. Nothing stays in orbit forever. If this circling is all you have, why not make this circling your home? I did as she…
Bird at the top of the world, who knew it would come to this? What are you singing? What are you singing for? Perhaps you just can’t help yourself. Over the entire hemisphere your flute-phrases fall, announcing spring again – our northern spring, stirring deep and dark within bare forests, advancing across plains toward great…
To pray you open your whole self To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon To one whole voice that is you. And know there is more That you can’t see, can’t hear; Can’t know except in moments Steadily growing, and in languages That aren’t always sound but other Circles of motion. Like eagle that…
Contemplation on No-Coming and No-Going This body is not me. I am not limited by this body, I am life without boundaries. I have never been born, and I have never died. Look at the ocean and the sky filled with stars, manifestations from my wondrous true mind. Since before time, I have been free.…
Have you ever seen anything in your life more wonderful than the way the sun, every evening, relaxed and easy, floats toward the horizon and into the clouds or the hills, or the rumpled sea, and is gone– and how it slides again out of the blackness, every morning, on the other side of the…
In that first hardly noticed moment in which you wake, coming back to this life from the other more secret, moveable and frighteningly honest world where everything began, there is a small opening into the new day that closes the moment you begin your plans. What you can plan is too small for you to…
Each day before our surroundings become flat with familiarity and the shapes of our lives click into place, dimensionless and average as Tetris cubes, before hunger knocks from our bellies like a cantankerous old man and the duties of the day stack up like dishes and the architecture of our basic needs commissions all thought…
I cannot tell you how the light comes. What I know is that it is more ancient than imagining. That it travels across an astounding expanse to reach us. That it loves searching out what is hidden what is lost what is forgotten or in peril or in pain. That it has a fondness for…
I like when the music happens like this: Something in His eye grabs hold of a tambourine in me, then I turn and lift a violin in someone else, and they turn, and this turning continues; it has reached you now. Isn’t that something? by Rumi, interpreted by Daniel Ladinsky What is it for…
“One practice that I use sometimes – say, in my dentist’s waiting-room – I call The ABCs of Grateful Living: I go through the alphabet and note for each letter the first word that comes to my mind. Then, I try to make a connection between that word and my practice of grateful living. It’s a…
Our hands imbibe like roots, so I place them on what is beautiful in this world. And I fold them in prayer, and they draw from the heavens light. by St Francis of Assisi interpreted by Daniel Ladinsky A few days ago I was sitting and practicing with a sadness I felt around how…
(to listen to the author speaking this poem, please click here) my brain and heart divorced a decade ago over who was to blame about how big of a mess I have become eventually, they couldn’t be in the same room with each other now my head and heart share custody of me stay with…
If you put your hands on this oar with me, they will never harm another, and they will come to find they hold everything you want. If you put your hands on this oar with me, they would no longer lift anything to your mouth that might wound your precious land – that sacred earth…
Sing, my tongue; sing, my hand; sing, my feet; my knee, my loins, my whole body. Indeed I am His choir. by St. Thomas Aquinas When I rest in body awareness, I allow the field of experience which is my body to speak to me. I hold the intention to listen with gentleness. This…
Forget about ‘transcending’ the body. Love it instead! Let go of the idea of ‘letting go’. Instead, let love go deep into the tender places, the parts that ache. Breathe into your sadness. Let your fear move deep within. Bow to your uncertainty. There is an untouchable place in you that fearlessly allows itself to…
Just sit there right now Don’t do a thing. Just rest. For your separation from God is the hardest work in this world. Let me bring you trays of food and something that you like to drink. You can use my soft words as a cushion for your head. Daniel Ladinsky rendition of Hafiz …
Hope is the belief that one hand reaching to another can eventually touch the moon, allowing the light to guide us through the night. by Nicholas Mazza In this week before COP26 starts, I found myself reflecting on hope, where to find it when it feels illusive, and on the role it plays in…
Balance is noticed most when almost failed of — in an elephant’s delicate wavering on her circus stool, for instance, or that moment when a ladder starts to tip but steadies back. There are, too, its mysterious departures. Hours after the dishes are washed and stacked, a metal bowl clangs to the floor, the weight…
And whom do I call my enemy? An enemy must be worthy of engagement. I turn in the direction of the sun and keep walking. It’s the heart that asks the question, not my furious mind. The heart is the smaller cousin of the sun. It sees and knows everything. It hears the gnashing even…
just to fall back on the grass and be just to fall down on my bed and stay to be just a being on this earth my head objects: there’s a life to be lived a path to be followed a skill to be learned a friend to be seen a change to be made…
The river is famous to the fish. The loud voice is famous to silence, which knew it would inherit the earth before anybody said so. The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds watching him from the birdhouse. The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek. The idea you carry close to…
Release the harsh and pointed inner voice. it’s just a throwback to the past, and holds no truth about this moment. Let go of self-judgment, the old, learned ways of beating yourself up for each imagined inadequacy. Allow the dialogue within the mind to grow friendlier, and quiet. Shift out of inner criticism and life…
Like the little stream Making its way Through the mossy crevices I, too, quietly Turn clear and transparent. by Ryokan, translated by John Stevens Sitting by this little babbling stream in my mind’s eye takes me back to times when I used to cycle out of Glasgow and into the countryside, stopping and sitting…
“Which is bigger,” he asks me, “the ocean or sky,” and I want to tell him the heart, which even today has been practicing vastness, is learning to say yes in new languages, learning to stretch beyond the center, beyond the lips, learning to be more moon and less woman, to reflect light without owning…
I many times thought Peace had come When peace was far away, As wrecked men deem they sight the land When far at sea they stay. And struggle slacker, but to prove, As hopelessly as I, That many the fictitious shores Before the harbour lie. I had a fleeting moment when reflecting on the…