The Resemblance Between Your Life and a Dog

Dusty Dog


We just had a baby deer born in our yard this morning.
Dusty is not very pleased!!! Mark woke me up at 7am so I could see.....I was
really tired because I just worked evenings and went to bed about 1:45 am....but it was worth the early wake up call. Marko doesn't like me to sleep in either...he was knocking on
our door on Saturday at 7:30am being a goof and saying "housekeeping."
Anyway, the baby and mommy deer were so beautiful....and so is the poem below!!
Have a great day!!!
love,
Michele

The Resemblance Between Your Life and a Dog

I never intended to have this life, believe me -
It just happened. You know how dogs turn up
At a farm, and they wag but can't explain.

It's good if you can accept your life - you'll notice
Your face has become deranged trying to adjust
To it. Your face thought your life would look

Like your bedroom mirror when you were ten.
That was a clear river touched by mountain wind.
Even your parents can't believe how much you've changed.

Sparrows in winter, if you've ever held one, all feathers,
Burst out of your hand with a fiery glee.
You see them later in hedges. Teachers praise you,

But you can't quite get back to the winter sparrow.
Your life is a dog. He's been hungry for miles.
Doesn't particularly like you, but gives up, and comes in.

~ Robert Bly ~

beauty

Isn't this picture beautiful? I got to talk with some good friends last night.
I never seem to get to see them much anymore now that our kids are getting older
and we are all working.
Anyway, these are my dear friends Laveena, Anil and Natasha.....not sure where their other daughter was at the time I took this picture.
Laveena is like the best cook in the whole world!!! I love Indian food!!

Speaking of beautiful....read this poem below....I stumbled across it when I went looking for
something else by Robert Bly. (the truth is something you stumble into when you think you are
going somewhere else-Jerry Garcia)
It is one of the most beautiful poems I have read in a long long time.
Namaste,
Michele





Looking at Stars
by Robert Bly


I still think about the shepherds, how many stars
They saw. We owe our love of God to these sheep
That had to be followed, or companioned, all night.
What else could we do? You can't let them run.

Sometimes people like you and me took over
At midnight, after the stars had already become
Huge talkers. That's how we got our love of the intan-
Gible, so that sheep turds didn't seem all there were.

Those of us who are parents, getting older,
Long, as tonight, for our children to stand
With us, looking at the stars. Here it is,
Eight thousand years later, and I still remember.

What god are bad people?
A man told me once that all the bad people
Were needed. Maybe not all, but your fingernails
You need; they are really claws, and we know
Claws. The sharks-what about them?
They make other fish swim faster. The hard-faced men
In black coats who chase you for hours
In dreams-that's the only way to get you
To the shore. Sometimes those hard women
Who abandon you get you to say, "You."
A lazy part of us is like a tumbleweed.
It doesn't move on its own. It takes sometimes
A lot of Depression to get tumbleweeds moving.
Then they blow across three or four States.
This man told me that things work together.
Bad handwriting sometimes leads to new ideas;
And careless god-who refuses to let you
Eat from the Tree of Knowledge-can lead
To books, and eventually to us. We write
Poems with lies in them, but they help a little.

Macho Macho Man

By the time a man is 35,
he knows that the images of the right man,
the tough man, the true man which he received in high school
do not work in life.
Robert Bly


I like the man being real......or anyone being "real" with me.
love,
Michele

For My Son Noah, Ten Years Old

For My Son Noah, Ten Years Old
By Robert Bly

Night and day arrive and day after day goes by,
and what is old remains old, and what is young remains
young and grows old,
and the lumber pile does not grow younger, nor the
weathered two-by-fours lose their darkness,
but the old tree goes on, the barn stands without help so
many years,
the advocate of darkness and night is not lost.

The horse swings around on one leg, steps, and turns,
the chicken flapping claws onto the roost, its wings whelping
and whalloping,
but what is primitive is not to be shot out into the night and
the dark.
And slowly the kind man comes closer, loses his rage, sits
down at table.

So I am proud only of those days that we pass in undivided
tenderness,
when you sit drawing, or making books, stapled, with
messages to the world...
or coloring a man with fire coming out of his hair.
Or we sit at a table, with small tea carefully poured;
so we pass our time together, calm and delighted.

Kabir

Kabir is a poet from India...the 14th century....feels like it could have been written today!!! Love, Michele


Friend, hope for the Guest while you are alive.
Jump into experience while you are alive!
Think...and think... while you are alive.
If you don't break your ropes while you're alive,
do you think
ghosts will do it after?
The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic
just because the body is rotten --
that is all fantasy.
What is found now is found then.
If you find nothing now,
you will simply end up with an apartment in the City
of Death.
If you make love with the divine now, in the next life
you will have the face of satisfied desire.
So plunge into the truth, find out who the Teacher is,
Believe in the Great Sound!
Kabir says this: When the Guest is being searched for,
it is the intensity of the longing for the Guest that
does all the work.
Look at me, and you will see a slave of that intensity.

-Kabir
(translated by Robert Bly)

Sister Golden Hair Surprise

Mira took this picture in our front yard with a pinhole camera. It kinda looks like a dream to me or a watercolor painting. have a great day.
love, Michele




Are you looking for me?
I am in the next seat.
My shoulder is against yours.
You will not find me in stupas, not in Indian shrine rooms,
nor in synagogues, nor in cathedrals:
not in masses, nor kirtans, not in legs winding around your own neck,
nor in eating nothing but vegetables.
When you really look for me, you will see me instantly
—you will find me in the tiniest house of time.
Kabir says: Student, tell me, what is God?
--the breath inside the breath.
(translated by Robert Bly)

Inside you

Don’t go outside your house to see flowers.

My friend, don’t bother with that excursion.

Inside your body there are flowers. One flower has a thousand petals.

That will do for a place to sit.

Sitting there you will have a glimpse of beauty inside the body and out of it,

before gardens and after gardens.

The Kabir Book

Robert Bly version