David Whyte’s poem about life and home so inspired me / broke my heart (in a good way) at the beginning of the pandemic that I bought a signed print off his site (support artists directly!) and eco-framed in for the front of my home.

Here’s his reading. The second to last line applies to the Buddhist Notion of Love, and Loneliness, fully. Please watch the full video poem and put aside all distractions, first, it can only inspire us if we let it.

Full screen it, and focus, and relax, and let it happen:

Another poem, different, but equally special, that inspires me when all the world seems tense and hurt, uncertain, scary, awfully confusing, ucky-icky, not-so-good:

The Peace of Wild Things

~ Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

And, finally, my Favorite Poem from my youth.