Awakening Now

by Danna Faulds

Why wait for your awakening?

The moment your eyes are open, seize the day.

Would you hold back when the Beloved beckons?

Would you deliver your litany of sins like a child’s collection of sea shells, prized and labeled?

“No, I can’t step across the threshold,” you say, eyes downcast.

“I’m not worthy” I’m afraid, and my motives aren’t pure.

I’m not perfect, and surely I haven’t practiced nearly enough.

My meditation isn’t deep, and my prayers are sometimes insincere.

I still chew my fingernails, and the refrigerator isn’t clean.

“Do you value your reasons for staying small more than the light shining through the open door?

Forgive yourself.

Now is the only time you have to be whole.

Now is the sole moment that exists to live in the light of your true Self.
Perfection is not a prerequisite for anything but pain.

Please, oh please, don’t continue to believe in your disbelief.

This is the day of your awakening.

From: Go In and In:
Poems From the Heart of Yoga

Downpour By Billy Collins

Last night we ended up on the couch
trying to remember
all of the friends who had died so far,

and this morning I wrote them down
in alphabetical order
on the flip side of a shopping list
you had left on the kitchen table.

So many of them had been swept away
as if by a hand from the sky,
it was good to recall them,
I was thinking
under the cold lights of a supermarket
as I guided a cart with a wobbly wheel
up and down the long strident aisles.

I was on the lookout for blueberries,
English muffins, linguini, heavy cream,
light bulbs, apples, Canadian bacon,
and whatever else was on the list,
which I managed to keep grocery side up,

until I had passed through the electric doors,
where I stopped to realize,
as I turned the list over,
that I had forgotten Terry O’Shea
as well as the bananas and the bread.

It was pouring by then,
spilling, as they say in Ireland,
people splashing across the lot to their cars.
And that is when I set out,
walking slowly and precisely,
a soaking-wet man
bearing bags of groceries,
walking as if in a procession honoring the dead.

I felt I owed this to Terry,
who was such a strong painter,
for almost forgetting him
and to all the others who had formed
a circle around him on the screen in my head.

I was walking more slowly now
in the presence of the compassion
the dead were extending to a comrade,

plus I was in no hurry to return
to the kitchen, where I would have to tell you
all about Terry and the bananas and the bread.

Love and Dread By Rachel Hadas

A desiccated daffodil.
A pigeon cooing on the sill.
The old cat lives on love and water.
Your mother’s balanced by your daughter:
one faces death, one will give birth.
The fulcrum is our life on earth,
beginning, ending in a bed.
We have to marry love and dread.
Dark clouds are roiling in the sky.
The daily drumbeat of the lie,
steady—no, crescendoing.
This premature deceptive spring,
forsythia’s in bloom already.
The challenge: balance. Keep it steady,
now sniffing daffodils’ aroma,
now Googling a rare sarcoma.
The ghost cat’s weightless on my lap.
My mother’s ghost floats through my nap,
as, dearest heart, we lie in bed.
Oh, we must marry love and dread:
must shield our senses from the glare
and clamor of chaos everywhere.
Life bestows gifts past expectation.
It’s time to plan a celebration:
dance at the wedding, drink and sing,
certain that summer follows spring,
that new life blossoms from the past.
The baby is the youngest guest.
But just how long can we depend
on a recurrence without end?
Everything changes, even change.
The tapestry of seasons strange-
ly stirs in an uneasy wind
that teases dreamlike through the mind.
I reach for you across the bed.
Oh, how to marry love and dread?