For me voicing poetry and writing poetry is transformative. It requires presence and breath. It requires acceptance of one’s experience in this moment and gives the gift of a changed experience through the very act of reading or creating. Here is a poem I wrote about one such moment of awareness.

Pond Cleaning.

After this winter
of cruel stories
The hungry bandits.
Decimation.
To find frog eggs
tiny fish
breath unbreathed
lives to be yet sung.
The smallest frog:
the loudest croak.
I am still here.

It was the quietness of your voice
your hands in the dark pond
sitting soundless together
that left me
with the soft cloak
of possibility.

and here is one from Rilke, translated by Joanna Macy.
Part Two, Sonnet XXIX

Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,

what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.

In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.

And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent Earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.