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.
Whether or not you know that you are beautiful, the flowers gaze at you whenever you walk by. When your heart feels like stone and you’ve lost sight of the gifts being given, you are still held by the earth beneath you and kissed by the breath of the trees. When you’ve convinced yourself that…
Go inside a stone That would be my way. Let somebody else become a dove Or gnash with a tiger’s tooth. I am happy to be a stone. From the outside the stone is a riddle: No one knows how to answer it. Yet within, it must be cool and quiet Even though a cow…
I’ve lost: Three hours of work on the last chapter Friends I thought I had for life The golden cross pendant my godmother gave me Faith in God Frequently, my equanimity I almost lost: The way out of the woods My passport and smartphone at the Dutch tulip show My virginity before I was ready…
It was spring and finally I heard him among the first leaves – then I saw him clutching the limb in an island of shade with his red-brown feathers all trim and neat for the new year. First, I stood still and thought of nothing. Then I began to listen. Then I was filled with…
We look with uncertainty beyond the old choices for clear-cut answers to a softer, more permeable aliveness which is every moment at the brink of death; for something new is being born in us if we but let it. We stand at a new doorway, awaiting that which comes… daring to be human creatures, vulnerable…
And the Great Mother said: Come my child and give me all that you are. I am not afraid of your strength and darkness, of your fear and pain. Give me your tears. They will be my rushing rivers and roaring oceans. Give me your rage. It will erupt into my molten volcanoes and rolling…
The optometrist says my eyes are getting better each year. Soon he’ll have to lower my prescription. What’s next? The light step I had at six? All the gray hairs back to brown? Skin taut as a drum? My improved eyes and I walked around town and celebrated. We took in the letters of the…
When I consider how in this world all is falling blossom – what then must become of this self? This world – strung jewels of dew on the frail thread a spider spins by Saigyō, translated by Meredith McKinney I find these poems so incredibly potent. In a few words the…
She who reconciles the ill-matched threads of her life, and weaves them gratefully into a single cloth— it’s she who drives the loudmouths from the hall and clears it for a different celebration where the one guest is you. In the softness of evening it’s you she receives. You are the partner of her loneliness,…