This site is the digital home of our neighborhood poetry box and the nature-planted poetry in San Diego. With the intention of spreading just a bit more beauty into the world, we share poetry and, sometimes, artwork. Feel free to comment here, but most importantly, enjoy the sharing of beauty.
The Actor’s Vow — from Elia Kazan I will take my rightful place on the stageand I will be myself.I am not a cosmic orphan.I have no reason to be timid.I will respond as I feel;awkwardly, vulgarly, but respond.I will have my throat open,I will have my heart open,I will
In that first hardly noticed moment in which you wake,coming back to this life from the othermore secret, moveable and frighteningly honest worldwhere everything began,there is a small opening into the new daywhich closes the moment you begin your plans. What you can plan is too small for you to
I am making a home inside myself. A shelter
of kindness where everything
is forgiven, everything allowed—a quiet patch
of sunlight to stretch out without hurry,
where all that has been banished
and buried is welcomed, spoken, listened to—released.
God speaks to each of us as she makes us
then walks with us silently out of the night
These are the words we dimly hear.
You, sent out beyond your recall
go to the limits of your longing
Embody me
Flare up like flame
and make big shadows I can move in
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror
Just keep going. No feeling is final
Don’t let yourself lose me
Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its intensity
Give me your hand
– Rilke
Book of Hours – Love poems to God (trans J. Macy)
There’s a thread you follow. It goes amongthings that change. But it doesn’t change.People wonder about what you are pursuing.You have to explain about the thread.But it is hard for others to see.While you hold it you can’t get lost.Tragedies happen; people get hurtor die; and you suffer and get
Self Portrait It doesn’t interest me if there is one GodOr many gods.I want to know if you belong — or feel abandoned;If you know despairOr can see it in others.I want to knowIf you are prepared to live in the worldWith its harsh need to change you;If you can
Our deepest fear
is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear
is that we are
powerful beyond measure.
Now I Become Myself Now I become myself. It’s takenTime, many years and places;I have been dissolved and shaken,Worn other people’s faces,Run madly, as if Time were there,Terribly old, crying a warning,“Hurry, you will be dead before—”(What? Before you reach the morning?Or the end of the poem is clear?Or love
There are moments that cry out to be fulfilled. Like, telling someone you love them. Or giving your money away, all of it. Your heart is beating, isn’t it? You’re not in chains, are you? There is nothing more pathetic than caution when headlong might save a life, even, possibly,
If— — By Rudyard Kipling If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Communal Acts of Beauty 