Poetry

December Days: Making peace with our earth for a new year by Colleen Keating

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Friday December 30th  2022

Joan Chittister in The Monastic Way writes:

 

The Christmas message of peace
reminds us that resistance to evil
does not require power;
it only requires courage.

Then peace can final- ly come.
As Arundhati Roy says,
“There can be no real peace without justice.
And without resistance there will be no justice.”

 

Today on the morning air
the crows are restless
small birds are hiding
there is a frenzy of arkkkk king

we know thieves of the night 
broken eggs fallen from trees
a reminder  war rages
while we sing family joy
around our laden Christmas tables
while we celebrate what? 
we acknowledge our luck  our blessings
with family and friends
while we celebrate what?

Is it war we hide  from or peace?

So, are we simply kidding ourselves? 
Will the world ever really come to peace?
In fact, is there really any such thing as peace?
And, most of all,
what do we have to do with it? 
What are we singing about?

Is all of this so-called feast
nothing more than a too stark reminder
that Karl Marx was right
that religion really is
“the opium of the people”

replace religion with capitalism 
fuel  it with adds
for what everyone needs
confused with conspiracy
and fake truth or not
lull it with  sedatives
not just zoloft or prozac
the escapism  we sell to people
either to help them survive the worst
or to help them deny it?

For now with war raging in Ukraine,
with children dying of hungar as I write ,
with seventy million ( the pop of England )
adrift on a sea of the world with out home 
 some holding on to planks of charity
some with only air to gulp to call life
some sinking in the hunger, some in despair

fifty million in modern slavery
euphonize by any other name 
we have to  believe in the critical mass
like Peace Warriors who have gone before
in the Hope of Peace

Mary Olive again pulls me up 
and out of my well
of powerlessness . . . .

‘I Go Down to the Shore’ by Mary Oliver

 A Reflection
I go down to the shore in the morning
and depending on the hour the waves
are rolling in or moving out,
and I say, oh, I am miserable,
what shall –
what should I do? And the sea says
in its lovely voice:
Excuse me, I have work to do.

Mary Oliver 
from A Thousand Mornings, 2012

There’s no doubt about it, Mary Oliver has that gift in her poetry for keeping us on our toes. With a sense of ease she can draw us into an intimate setting, position us carefully, then without warning pull the carpet right from under our feet. One moment we can be lamenting our sorrowful lot to Mother Nature anticipating sympathetic response. The next, by means of a gracious but firm rebuff, we’re pushed back onto our own resources. The opening expectation in this poem is completely upended by the last line: ‘Excuse me, I have work to do.’ For a substance so fluid and supple, the sea’s character is yet unyielding and resolute. Whilst not rejecting our troubled, searching self, it courteously reminds us that to be fully human means learning to swim in all seasonal tides. This includes encountering really difficult undercurrents. The sea carries this knowledge in its own ebb and flow; communicates it via ‘its lovely voice.’

I love pondering the epigraphs, those quotes chosen by Mary Oliver to preface each volume of her poetry. They contextualise her work in a wider literary sphere, invite a lens from which to view the poems in each volume. These epigraphs also give us a clue to her own mindset at particular stages in her life. I Go Down to the Shore is from the volume: A Thousand Mornings. This volume has two epigraphs: The life that I could still live, I should live, and the thoughts that I could still think, I should think – C.J, Jung, The Red Book and Anything worth thinking about is worth singing about – Bob Dylan, The Essential Interviews

One of my favourites is the line prefacing her volume Evidence: We create ourselves by our choices – Kierkegaard

Both these volumes of poetry were published in the years soon after the death of Mary Oliver’s partner for over 40 years, Molly Malone Cook in 2005. Increasingly Mary Oliver’s poetry urges the reader to choose to live a life that contains empathy, connection, presence, this ‘only once’ experience of life. It also invites us to turn our attention towards those things which are sustaining, nourishing, offer beauty. Suffering is real, lament is necessary, but so too more life-giving is our capacity for joy and re-awakening. This happens when we intuitively identify with that ‘wild silky part of ourselves.’ Noticing, as in her poem Little Dog’s Rhapsody in the Night, the ‘expressive sounds’ a dog makes when ‘he turns upside down, his four paws in the air /and his eyes dark and fervent’ (Dog Songs p51), the motion of a swan over water, as in her poem The Swan, and their ‘miraculous muscles’ and ‘clouds’ of wings. (Owls and Other Fantasies p10) – by noticing such in the world we are then able to respond with gestures that are honourable, partake in dialogues that are loving.
Why do we go down to the shore? To seek consolation, to hear echoes of our own ‘miserable’ state? Or to be re-awakened into choosing to live in a way that may not be prescribed, but is signified by kindness, by singing, by empathy and connection? And therefore risk being reimagined, recreated into a more fully alive human being.

Reflection by Carol O’Connor

A Thousand Mornings: Poems by Mary Oliver

Evidence: Poems by Mary Oliver

Dog Songs: Poems by Mary Oliver

Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays by Mary Oliver

 

 

Gardeners of Hope by Colleen Keating

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Gardeners of hope

Photo credit: Alicia Jo McMahan/Freeimages.com

Christmas beckons us to be the gardeners of hope, says Sydney poet Colleen Keating.
Gardeners of Hopeperhaps when we are caught
in the world’s tumultwhen we see the edge
falling away from under us

perhaps in time of overwhelm
in this wrecked and shimmering world

when we seem to be   in between  times
with hope   a misty horizon

we can wall our hearts
put on armour of fear
turn away complacently

yet it is “the tiny not the immense”*
Francis Webb reminds us
will teach our seeking eyes

Christmas beckons us
to be the gardeners of hope
tending the earth  nurturing the soil
with love  art  beauty  poetry

it calls us
to be the ones waiting
for the miracle to come

by Colleen Keating

* From “Five Days Old” in Collected Poems Francis Webb

Previously published in The Good Oil  journal SGS

Vale Robert Adamson May loving arms hold Juno through this time

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December 18th 2022

Vale Robert Adamson.

One of Australia’s great poets and  poet of our Hawkesbury River. An inspiration to so many of us. My friend  asked me to share this poem with all who mourn his loss. She wrote it in 2013 when she was reading on a platform with Robert. She sent it to Robert and he replied with his thanks and affirmation. Now our love focuses on dear Juno for the empty space will take time to reconcile.
Enjoy Pip’s poem:
The poet redux
(for Robert Adamson)
Love is what he’s about
this gentle man
who draws birds
writes poems about them
and the woman
who told him once
to choose between
the drugs and her.
Whatever he was then
she could see
the love in him.
He gives it now to us
words dancing
from his fingers
from his lips
and from his generous poetic heart.
©Pip Griffin 22 September 2013
Clear Water Reckoning
I write into the long black morning,
out here on the end of the point,
far from my wife in Budapest –
as the river cuts through a mountain
in Sydney a poet is launching
his new volume Under Berlin
and I feel like Catullus on Rome’s edge
but this passes and I turn to face
the oncoming dawn, the house
breathes tidal air as the night
fires outside with barking owls,
marsupials rustling, the prawn bird
beginning its taunting dawn whistle;
I burn the electricity
and measure hours by the lines –
I have strewn words around the living room,
taken them out from their
sentences, left them unused wherever
they fell; they are the bait –
I hunch over my desk and start to row,
let the tide flow in, watch
the window, with the door locked now
I wait – hear satin bowerbirds
scratching out the seeds from bottlebrush.
Dawn is a thin slit of illuminated
bowerbird blue along mountain lines,
in this year of cock and bull
celebration the TV goes on unwatched
upstairs, I hear it congratulating us
for making Australia what it is –
the heater breathes out a steady stream
of heated air – I go deeper
into my head, I see the Hawkesbury
flowing through Budapest, the Hungarians
do not seem to mind, they are bemused,
the river parts around their spires and domes,
I see other cities, whole cultures
drawn from territories within,
though with this freedom
comes a feeling of strange panic
for the real; so I get on
with it, writing out from this egg
holding my thought in a turbulent knot,
a bunched-up octopus. I steer
away from anything confessional,
thinking of Robert Lowell crafting
lines of intelligent blues,
his Jelly Roll of a self-caught mess
deep in spiritual distress.
Outside the river pulls me back,
shafts of light disintegrate into clues,
flecked symbols shine with order –
the bowerbirds have woven colour
around the house, through
bushes blue patterns of themselves
traced about the place; half
the moon can topple a mountain,
anything is possible here
I remind myself and begin to hum,
flattening out all the words that were
impossible to write today. I hum
out all the poems I should have
written, I hum away now also
the desire to write from memory –
there is enough sorrow in the present.
I look out over the incoming tide, dark racks
of oysters jut from its ink.
– Published in The Clean Dark 1989

DECEMBER 16: December days by Colleen Keating

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Friday 16th December

Day 16   

We took a picnic and did a lovely reflective walk around the lake today.

The card I had received when we arrived  was called NATURE; AND THE INSTRUCTION “TAKE A WALK . LET THE BEAUTY OF NATURE FEED YOU”

And that’s what I did today. 

The Black Swans were close up on our side of Tuggerah Lake . They graze the wrck and reeds as do the cormorants and herons and ibis  but they realise there is enough for all, 

There is a poem here but it has not come as yet,

However  sitting here , reflecting,  watching the pelican, cormorants, black swans and lots of other birds on and around the lake demonstrates a peacefulness .  

List of remembered birds on our walk to the lake today:  ducks and cute ducklings, magpies, willy wag tails, butcher birds, native miners,  ibis , swallows, wrens, raven, kookaburra, plovers  and mudlarks . 

Accepting each other and letting be is one way to peacefulness. 

Live and let live.  

 

DECEMBER 12: OUR MONTH TO BE AT PEACE WITH THE WORLD by Colleen Keating

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Monday 12th  DECEMBER

Day 12

Poetry is a life-cherishing force. For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry – Mary Oliver from  A  Poetry Handbook

1.When you feel conflicted    read Wild Geese

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

2. When you are feeling down or grieving   read Starlings in Winter

I want to think again
dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful
 and afraid of nothing, 
as though I had wings.

3. When you want to put up boundaries  read Lead

I tell you this to break your heart,
by which I mean 
only that it break open 
and never close again
to rest of the world.  

4. When you feel you are living without purpose  read The Summer Day 

Tell me, 
what is it you plan to do 
with your one wild and precious life?

5. When you are too caught up in your own thoughts and worries   read  I Go Down to the Shore

I go down to the shore in the morning
 and depending on the hour 
the waves are rolling in or moving out, 
and I say,

Oh, I am miserable,
what shall  –
what should I do?
And the sea says in its lovely voice,
Excuse me, I have work to do . 

On a practical level we had one of our youngest grandchildren staying with us for the weekend. 

Today, Sunday morning, began with reading of books in my bed, a game of banana using the letters in patterns, then building, then finding a target to shoot foam bullets , then he needed the plank set up and to play cars with Pa. And it was only 9 oclock. so setting out on the adventure slowed us down a little, except the weather was wild with blue sky changing to a wild windy storm gone as quickly as it arrived.

We took him on an adventure  – three train, one train took in 4 stations to Beecroft with an awesome childrens park . Then train  with 5 stations to Hornsby and a visit to the library with a great childrens section for reading, and train three of one station and walk home. We were all very tired at the end of the adveneture.    Back home it was playdough then  colouring in a monster.  (for about 10mins. ) coits , and then we stopped . Then his dad arrived from an appointment he had in city and they set back off for Coffs Harbour,

    

  1. Playing cars on Pa’s special ramp.  2. Adventure a train ride to the Hornsby library .

DECEMBER 9: OUR MONTH TO BE AT PEACE WITH THE WORLD by Colleen Keating

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Friday 9th DECEMBER

Day 9

The Swan

Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air –
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music – like the rain pelting the trees – like a waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds –
A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet
Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?

– Mary Oliver

How did I feel , in my heart, today as I met my dear friend and confidente and school friend from many decades back and as I received a text from another dear friend with her sharing of a tree she saw on her morning walk . . . its leaves in the light, breathtaking? 

And have I finally figured out what beauty is for ? 

I can only say I have come a little closer to those questions and as one poet says I am living into the answers. 

One thing I do know  Nature  for my friends and I is saviour . And with my friends we both agree from our deep spiritual awareness, Nature speaks to us   as the one who helps show us the way and nature is our chapel, church and cathedral.

Buildings where we once felt secure do nothing now for us compared to  the shape, colour, texture, smell, story, feel of  nature especially a tree.

And in this beauty  is peace. Peace for all the world??

Each of us cannot make that happen. We can only work towards it in the place where we stand.

We can only make it in the person we are and let it radiate out from there and hoping  there are enough of us that feel and act that way so that  it hits the tipping point  for peaceful ways, peaceful answers, peaceful solutions rather than always falling back into fighting and wars.  Peace can reign and life is happy for both sides of any conflict when resolutions are worked on. 

Paperbarks on my Lake Walk

speak in theirs tones of browns and cream and buff
their conversations stance all unique, feminine and real,
their rootedness, grounding and sense of place

reminding me to be present to every moment of the day 
their texture that encourage me to race home and write
and in the sound of their leaves rustling in the breeze

DECEMBER 5: OUR MONTH TO BE THE PEACE WE WISH FOR by Colleen Keating  

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MONDAY 5TH DECEMBER

Day 5

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

― Rainer Maria Rilke

Finding paradox while watering the garden

under the lower shady leaves
it hides
wanting only time
cycle time
clues left in the nibbled holes
on my green osmocoted leaves
on my  salmon rose that makes me sing
Mary Olivers words –
Sunshine and showers . . .
its morning and again
I am that lucky person who is in it .

i spent yesterday mesmerised
by white butterflies
somersaulting around the garden
in intoxicated revelry
and they too made me sing –
Mary Olivers words
its morning and again
I am that lucky person who is in it .

today  I find my rose
caught in time cycles
cocoons  pouches of eggs
i say   not on my rose
and it reveals itself
humbly like a koen
in my searching hands
still making me sing
Mary Oliver words –
I am that lucky person who is in it

Also a  family birthday for our 11 year old grandson with family, food and fun. Lovely to watch the grandchildren growing up so beautifully under the guidance of our children.

 

DECEMBER 4: OUR MONTH TO BE THE PEACE WE WISH FOR by Colleen Keating  

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SUNDAY 4TH  DECEMBER

It was fun having two of our grandchildren, 10 year old cousins, one from Coffs Harbour and one from Sydney with us. Our lego table is always popular for play and  catching up with each other what ever age.

Day 4:  It isn’t enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it.

And it isn’t enough to believe in it.

One must work at it. 

Eleanor Roosevelt from 1951 Voice of America  broadcast

Working at peace is an every day work. . . believing in it when the day seems dim and allowing each new day to be a magpie dawn,  feel its joy and begin again.

Peace is not something we achieve , somethong we win, it is something that is always ‘a becoming ‘  something we need to believe in  and work at.  In a family peace is rewarding because it means you are more relaxed and more joyful .

Peace in a family is something to sing  for and about with gratitude  each new day.

Children sit and play lego, and chat together but they are listening to the adult talk the whole time. That is how they learn to become adults.

 

.

 

 

 

DECEMBER 3: OUR MONTH TO BE THE PEACE WE WISH FOR by Colleen Keating  

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FRIDAY 3rd DECEMBER

Watching the lilies open slowly  for the next few December mornings  reminds me peace is always becoming

Day 3  Peace is a day-to-day problem, the product of a multitude of events and judgement.

Peace is not an ‘is’ it is a ‘becoming’

Hale Selassie

while doing a grocery shop  

you suggested buying flowers

i chose the day lilies 

long slender stems tightly budded

their colour yet to be revealed

a navy blue vase

the last gift from my mother  

i arranged them  

to await the first peep of colour

they would open as they chose

we patiently watered  waited

worked and dined 

at the table with them

the buds stirred  

blossomed   each a surprise

some yellow  some white

lightly speckled petals

every time i noticed them 

they made me smile

you suggested buying flowers –

that has doubled the pleasure

Colleen Keating  from my upcoming book ‘The Light Gets In‘ to be published early 2024

Photos  taken in the last lockdown as I followed each bud open and found gratitude singing in me.

DECEMBER 2: OUR MONTH TO BE THE PEACE WE WISH FOR by Colleen Keating  

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FRIDAY 2nd DECEMBER

Lovely drive out to Swains Garden Centre to buy a few plants including a new Peace Lily.  Returned home to do some gardening. Photo is one of some of our plantings today. Lettuce, Endives, hopefully ready in Christmas week.   

Day 2   To be at peace with the world, we must come to see the world differently.

Working in the garden, being in nature, is one way to see the world differently.  The white butterflies and bees flirting around the Petunias, the tiny buds on the Kangaroo Paws, the curly greens of the parsley and the wonderful aroma of the lemon balm, the simplicity of each bud on the Peace Lily brings us to that inner place of centring   . . . of being from where peace comes  . . .