Achtsamkeit Archive

Everything is beautiful

and I am so sad.

This is how the heart makes

a duet of wonder and grief.

The light spraying

through the lace of the fern

is as delicate

as the fibers of memory

forming their web

around the knot in my throat.

The breeze

makes the birds move

from branch to branch

as this ache makes me look

for those I’ve lost

in the next room,

in the next song,

in the laugh

of the next stranger.

In the very center,

under it all,

what we have

that no one can take away

and all that we’ve lost

face each other.

It is there that I’m adrift,

feeling punctured

by a holiness

that exists inside everything.

I am so sad

and everything is beautiful.

by Mark Nepo

Somewhere
a black bear
has just risen from sleep
and is staring

down the mountain.
All night
in the brisk and shallow restlessness
of early spring

I think of her,
her four black fists
flicking the gravel,
her tongue

like a red fire
touching the grass,
the cold water.
There is only one question:

how to love this world.
I think of her
rising
like a black and leafy ledge

to sharpen her claws against
the silence
of the trees.
Whatever else

my life is
with its poems
and its music
and its glass cities,

it is also this dazzling darkness
coming
down the mountain,
breathing and tasting;

all day I think of her -—
her white teeth,
her wordlessness,
her perfect love.

Spring – a poem by Mary Oliver