Poetry at Nature Haven

If you are perhaps looking for something original, boy are you in the wrong place! I cannot write poetry, but I can surely appreciate it and pass on to you the ones that I like. Now, it is true that you may not like what I like, but I think poetry, like a painting, is subjective.

The Art of Peace begins with you.
Work on yourself and your
Appointed task in the Art of Peace.
Everyone has a spirit that
Can be refined, a body that
Can be trained in some manner,
A suitable path to follow.
You are here for no other purpose than
To realize your inner divinity and
Manifest your innate enlightenment.
Foster peace in your own life and
Then apply the Art to all that you encounter.

--- Morehei Ueshiba

The Grasshopper and Cricket

The poetry of earth is never dead;
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;
That is the Grasshopper's - he takes the lead
In summer luxury, - he has never done
With his delights; for when tired out with fun
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
The poetry of earth is ceasing never:
On a lone winter evening, when the frost
Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills
The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever,
And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,
The Grasshopper's among some grassy hills.

--- John Keats

Sagehood has nothing
To do with governing others
But is a matter of ordering oneself.
Nobility has nothing
To do with power and rank,
But is a matter of self realization;
Attain self-realization,
And the whole world
Is found in the self.
Happiness has nothing
To do with wealth and status,
But is a matter of harmony.

--- Lao-tze

My teacher said to me,
The treasure house
within you contains everything,
and you are free to use it.
You don’t need to seek outside.

--- Dazhu

Fabric
I try to live each day
In such a way
That when tomorrow makes today a yesterday
I will have woven into the fabric of my life
Some gay design,
Some patch of color,
Bright, to please the eye.
So that, in the graying years to come,
When all the quick responsive senses dull,
I may look back across the patterns of my past
And, in my memory,
Live the joys and pains
Of all my yesterdays.

--- Don Blanding

A single moon
Bright and clear
In an unclouded sky;
Yet still we stumble
In the world’s darkness.

--- Ikkyu

when you look into the elephant's eye
you see into the depths of her soul
from generations past, knowledge of life,
she sees the way and guides her herd
listen, listen she has learned

when you look into the elephant's eye
you see the reflections of her children
Her heart, her soul
mindful of their ways, she guides them
through to another day

when you look into the elephant's eye
you see that she knows the way to go
pass through the earth gently
for others will come behind you
another day, another time

--- me (hope it doesn't suck too bad)