Poetry Chaikhana Blog

Monet Refuses the Operation
by Lisel Mueller

Doctor, you say that there are no haloes
around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction.
I tell you it has taken me all my life
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
to soften and blur and finally banish
the edges you regret I don’t see,
to learn that the line I called the horizon
does not exist and sky and water,
so long apart, are the same state of being.
Fifty-four years before I could see
Rouen cathedral is built
of parallel shafts of sun,
and now you want to restore
my youthful errors: fixed
notions of top and bottom,
the illusion of three-dimensional space,
wisteria separate
from the bridge it covers.
What can I say to convince you
the Houses of Parliament dissolve
night after night to become
the fluid dream of the Thames?
I will not return to a universe
of objects that don’t know each other,
as if islands were not the lost children
of one great continent. The world
is flux, and light becomes what it touches,
becomes water, lilies on water,
above and below water,
becomes lilac and mauve and yellow
and white and cerulean lamps,
small fists passing sunlight
so quickly to one another
that it would take long, streaming hair
inside my brush to catch it.
To paint the speed of light!
Our weighted shapes, these verticals,
burn to mix with air
and changes our bones, skin, clothes
to gases. Doctor,
if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world, blue vapor without end.

— from Second Language: Poems, by Lisel Mueller

/ Image by Nik Shuliahin /

A rare Sunday poem this week. Last week was especially full with work and dental appointments, so I didn’t get to the poem on Friday. I received several thoughtful emails following the previous week’s poem, and I didn’t get many responses out — but I read them all.

Here’s something to remind us of the hidden glory in aging. (A big thank you to Mirabai Starr and her email newsletter for remind me of this poem.)

Permission, I suppose, to be a little less focused and a little more present. I hope you feel the heavenly nearness in those haloed lamps!

Recommended Books: Lisel Mueller

Alive Together: New and Selected Poems	Second Language: Poems	The Need to Hold Still: Poems	Dependencies: Poems

Lisel Mueller US & Germany (1924 – ) Secular or Eclectic

More poetry by Lisel Mueller

May our eyes see, though our hearts break.
May our hearts break, that they may open.
May our hearts bleed, that we know
life flows through them.

First dawn
by Ivan M. Granger

First dawn. Even the
birds in the tallest pines are
surprised by the sun.

— from Real Thirst: Poetry of the Spiritual Journey, by Ivan M. Granger

/ Image by Evgeni Dinev /

I have been enjoying the spring mornings here in Eugene, Oregon. Some mornings there is a light rain falling, the world is sleepy and self-enclosed, then on other days we get morning sunshine, everything glistens and awakens to a sense of celebration. Sometimes before we begin work, my wife and I will go to a local coffee shop. I’ll get a warm cup of tea. We read and chat, listening to the hum of the community, people talking in hushed tones, the life of our small city recognizing itself. Such moments are nourishing to the soul.

I am especially appreciative of all this because of a few milestones in my life. Last week I had my birthday. I turned 55. The number feels foreign to me. It’s as if time stopped when I was 35. I haven’t really aged. My hair has just gotten grayer. Can anyone else relate to that feeling?

The other milestone: I was just honored at my work for 30 years of employment. For someone who has moved around the country and, because of health issues, has not always been able to work full time hours in the week, I am amazed — and grateful — to have found early on an employer who has been stable and adaptable and accepting. Wherever I’ve lived and whatever my work rhythms, they were always there, so I never felt the need to move on.

The renewal of springtime and these experiences invite me to reflect back on the year and a half since my wife and I moved back to Eugene. We have had so many wonderful moments returning to our childhood hometown, but the year following our move was also quite challenging. At the beginning of last year my wife was hospitalized and kept in the ICU for several days following a severe asthma attack. As she recovered, we were able to get her on new medication, and the change has been profound. It was a year of difficult finances, requiring me to put as many hours as possible into my day job. At times I felt badly, as if I have been neglecting you, the Poetry Chaikhana community, as a result. I hope to be able to do more with the Poetry Chaikhana in the future.

We never really control the circumstances of our lives. We make plans, formulate expectations, and try to build the daily structures of our lives that will lead to those outcomes — but then life plays out as it will. That regular, steady, structural process has not been my strongest suit, though I have gotten better at it in those timeless twenty years from 35 to 55. Where I have found strength, however, is in the ability to ride the flow of life, even when the details have gotten messy.

I look outside the window. It’s a cloudy morning. The ground is still damp with last night’s rainfall. But the birds are cautiously emerging and sharing their song. We have the promise of a beautiful day. That’s when our work begins, amidst the requirements of life, to discover for ourselves the beauty waiting for us.

Recommended Books: Ivan M. Granger

The Longing in Between: Sacred Poetry from Around the World (A Poetry Chaikhana Anthology)	This Dance of Bliss: Ecstatic Poetry from Around the World	Real Thirst: Poetry of the Spiritual Journey	For Lovers of God Everywhere: Poems of the Christian Mystics	Diamond Cutters: Visionary Poets in America, Britain & Oceania
More Books >>

Ivan M. Granger US (1969 – ) Secular or Eclectic Yoga / Hindu : Advaita / Non-Dualist

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