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Three Poems
(and a letter)


December 5, 2005

Dear Rik,
 
Yesterday's gathering was truly historic! That is what I want you to hear from me. Thank you and Barbara so much for all your efforts and vision in making that possible. This is going to continue to be productive and to work!
 
I am attaching three poems for the CFIDS website, which each have something to do with that "silver lining" of consciousness gained.
 
I also wanted you to see a beautiful poem by a spiritual friend, called "I am America". It is such a compassionate view of the truth of who we are as Americans, all sides of this, that it really touched me. It is a heartening view at this time! (The author, Julie Redstone, is happy to have this poem shared. If anyone would like to give her feedback on it, I included her email, which she also conveyed.)
 
All my best to you,
 
Cecelia Blair


TRUSTING

I can’t keep up!
I want to be loved!
Neither is necessary.
All ambitions now fail.
Whatever aims I achieve or do not
Dissolve into me,
My pain and my unity.
I am joined to the world,
United in living—common life
Receives me without conditions;
I belong.
I rise and fall on its tides;
The muddy flats rise beneath me
Meeting my feet. The waters are
Gentle and warm--I will not drown.


                                    Cecelia Blair

 

MOVING FORWARD

The deep parts of my life pour onward,
As if the river shores were opening out.
It seems that things are more like me now,
That I can see farther into paintings.
I feel closer to what language can’t reach.
With my senses, as with birds, I climb
Into the windy heaven, out of the oak,
And in the ponds broken off from the sky
My feeling sinks, as if standing on fishes.

                                       Rainer Maria Rilke
                                                translated by Robert Bly

 

In the half sky and the warp of branches,
Let us make peace with our tiredness.
Let us have talk with roots
And with disenchanted waves.
Let us forget about hurry,
The teeth of the efficient.
Let us forget the shadowy
Miscellany of those who wish us ill.
Let us make a profession of being earthbound.
Let us touch the earth with our being.

                                          Pablo Neruda