BEAUTIFUL POETRY MAKES BEAUTIFUL HEARTS & SOULS NOW

WHEN GIVING IS ALL WE HAVE

One river gives

Its journey to the next.

 

We give because someone gave to us.

We give because nobody gave to us.

We give because giving has changed us.

We give because giving could have changed us.

We have been better for it,

We have been wounded by it—

 

Giving has many faces: It is loud and quiet,

Big, though small, diamond in wood-nails.

Its story is old, the plot worn and the pages too,

But we read this book, anyway, over and again:

 

Giving is, first and every time, hand to hand,

Mine to yours, yours to mine.

You gave me blue and I gave you yellow.

Together we are simple green. You gave me

What you did not have, and I gave you

What I had to give—together, we made

Something greater from the difference.

--- Alberto Ríos

THE SOUL

The soul is like a little mouse.

He hides inside the body’s house

With anxious eyes and twitchy nose

As in and out he comes and goes,

A friendly, inoffensive ghost

Who lives on tea and buttered toast.

He is so delicate and small

Perhaps he is not there at all;

Long-headed chaps who ought to know

Assure us it cannot be so.

But sometimes, as I lie in bed,

I think I hear inside my head

His soft ethereal song whose words

Are in some language of the birds,

An air-borne poetry and prose

Whose liquid grammar no one knows.

So we go on, my soul and I,

Until, the day I have to die,

He packs his bags, puts on his hat

And leaves for ever. Just like that.

--- John Whitworth

I KNOW MY SOUL

I plucked my soul out of its secret place,

And held it to the mirror of my eye,

To see it like a star against the sky,

A twitching body quivering in space,

A spark of passion shining on my face.

And I explored it to determine why

This awful key to my infinity

Conspires to rob me of sweet joy and grace.

And if the sign may not be fully read,

If I can comprehend but not control,

I need not gloom my days with futile dread,

Because I see a part and not the whole.

Contemplating the strange, I’m comforted

By this narcotic thought: I know my soul.

--- Claude McKay

ON THE EXISTENCE OF THE SOUL

How confident I am it is there. Don’t I bring it,   

As if it were enclosed in a fine leather case,   

To particular places solely for its own sake?   

Haven’t I set it down before the variegated canyon   

And the undeviating bald salt dome?   

Don’t I feed it on ivory calcium and ruffled   

Shell bellies, shore boulders, on the sight   

Of the petrel motionless over the sea, its splayed   

Feet hanging? Don’t I make sure it apprehends   

The invisibly fine spray more than once?

 

I have seen that it takes in every detail

I can manage concerning the garden wall and its borders.

I have listed for it the comings and goings

Of one hundred species of insects explicitly described.

I have named the chartreuse stripe

And the fimbriated antenna, the bulbed thorax   

And the multiple eye. I have sketched

The brilliant wings of the trumpet vine and invented

New vocabularies describing the interchanges between rocks   

And their crevices, between the holly lip   

And its concept of itself.

 

And if not for its sake, why would I go

Out into the night alone and stare deliberately   

Straight up into 15 billion years ago and more?

 

I have cherished it. I have named it.   

By my own solicitations   

I have proof of its presence.

--- Pattiann Rogers

Read more about Beautiful Poetry now, during National Poetry Month, in Read more about Beautiful Poetry in 10 Most Beautiful New Poetry Books Now, The Beautiful Nature of Poetry Now, Poetry as Food For Love & Love for Food is Beautiful Now, The Beautiful Art of Poetry Now andBeautiful Poems About Beautiful Places Now and Beautiful Poetry Makes Life More Beautiful Now.

And check out more beautiful things happening now in BN Arts/Design, Nature/Science, Food/Drink, Place/Time, Mind/Body, and Soul/Impact Daily Fix posts.

IMAGE CREDITS:

1. Image: by Kris Williams. Glacial Waters - Skaftafell, Iceland.
2. Image: by Nick Kenrick. If I could be anything in the world that flew …
3. Image: by Tom Hall. Star.
4. Image: by BMcIvr. The Runner.
5. Image: by smilla4. Evening in My Mother's Garden.
6. Image: by Piknic. Jewels of the Sea.
7. Image: by Fiona in Eden. Sparrow in Blossom.
8. Image: by Leo Vähä. MilkyRama.
9. Image: by BN App - Download now!
10. Image: by Indigo Skies Photography. Milky Way Above Elmore.