Poems can be a doorway into another world. Each one, a simple arrangement of otherwise ordinary words, that together evoke presence, wonder, possibility. So here is an invitation to pause, let the words wash over you and glimpse the world they offer you…
It’s a growing collection, and we’d love to hear which ones resonate with you and why, and find out about your favourites. Here is an index of our Words of Wonder.
There is nothing more innocent than the still-unformed creature I find beneath the soil, neither of us knowing what it will become in the abundance of the planet. It makes a living only by remaining still in its niche. One day it might struggle out of its tender pearl of blind skin with a wing…
Clouds are flowing in the river, waves are flying in the sky. Life is laughing in a pebble. Does a pebble ever die? Flowers grow out of garbage, such a miracle to see. What seems dead and what seems dying makes for butterflies to be. Life is laughing in a pebble, flowers bathe in the…
grace gives me a day too beautiful I had thought to stay indoors & yet washing my dishes straightening my shelves finally throwing out the wilted onions shrunken garlic cloves I discover I am happy to be inside looking out. This, I think, is wealth. Just this choosing of how a beautiful day is spent.…
Love means to learn to look at yourself The way one looks at distant things For you are only one thing among many. And whoever sees that way heals his heart, Without knowing it, from various ills. A bird and a tree say to him: Friend. Then he wants to use himself and things So…
This magnificent refuge is inside you. Enter. Shatter the darkness that shrouds the doorway. Be bold. Be humble. Put away the incense and forget the incantations they taught you. Ask no permission from the authorities. Close your eyes and follow your breath to the still place that leads to the invisible path that leads you…
When despair for the world grows in meand I wake in the night at the least soundin fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,I go and lie down where the wood drakerests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.I come into the peace of wild thingswho do…
Love the earth like a mole,fur-near. Nearsighted,hold close the clods,their fine-print headlines.Pat them with soft hands — Like spades, but pink and loving; theybreak rock, nudge giants aside,affable plow.Fields are to touch;each day nuzzle your way. Tomorrow the world. by William Stafford Just back from teaching on Holy Isle, my earth-love is very much…
I Do not Want to step so quickly Over a beautiful line on God’s palm As I move through the earth’s Marketplace Today. I do not want to touch any object in this world Without my eyes testifying to the truth That everything is My Beloved. Something has happened To my understanding of…
Let go of what has passed. Let go of what may come. Let go of what is happening now. Don’t try to figure anything out. Don’t try to make anything happen. Relax, right now, and rest. by Tilopa (translated by Ken McLeod) These words from the 10th century Indian master Tilopa have clearly…