The Journey  by Mary Oliver 
         
        One day you finally knew 
        what you had to do, and began, 
        though the voices around you 
        kept shouting 
        their bad advice-- 
        though the whole house 
        began to tremble 
        and you felt the old tug 
        at your ankles. 
        "Mend my life!" 
        each voice cried. 
        But you didn't stop. 
        You knew what you had to do, 
        though the wind pried 
        with its stiff fingers 
        at the very foundations, 
        though their melancholy 
        was terrible. 
        It was already late 
        enough, and a wild night, 
        and the road full of fallen 
        branches and stones. 
        But little by little, 
        as you left their voices behind, 
        the stars began to burn 
        through the sheets of clouds, 
        and there was a new voice 
        which you slowly 
        recognized as your own, 
        that kept you company 
        as you strode deeper and deeper 
        into the world, 
        determined to do 
        the only thing you could do-- 
        determined to save 
        the only life you could save. 
       To be of use  
       Marge Piercy 
        
       The people I love the best 
       jump into work head first 
       without dallying in the shallows 
       and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight. 
       They seem to become natives of that element, 
       the black sleek heads of seals 
       bouncing like half-submerged balls. 
        
       I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart, 
       who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience, 
       who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward, 
       who do what has to be done, again and again. 
        
       I want to be with people who submerge  
       in the task, who go into the fields to harvest  
       and work in a row and pass the bags along, 
       who are not parlor generals and field deserters 
       but move in a common rhythm 
       when the food must come in or the fire be put out. 
        
       The work of the world is common as mud. 
       Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust. 
       But the thing worth doing well done 
       has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident. 
       Greek amphoras for wine or oil, 
       Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums 
       but you know they were made to be used. 
       The pitcher cries for water to carry 
       and a person for work that is real. 
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
       The Clause  
       C.K. Williams 
        
       This entity I call my mind, this hive of restlessness, 
       this wedge of want my mind calls self, 
       this self which doubts so much and which keeps reaching, 
       keeps referring, keeps aspiring, longing, towards some state 
       from which ambiguity would be banished, uncertainty expunged; 
        
       this implement my mind and self imagine they might make together, 
       which would have everything accessible to it, 
       all our doings and undoings all at once before it, 
       so it would have at last the right to bless, or blame, 
       for without everything before you, all at once, how bless, how blame? 
        
       this capacity imagination, self and mind conceive might be the "soul," 
       which would be able to regard such matters as creation and 
            destruction, 
       origin and extinction, of species, peoples, even families, even mine, 
       of equal consequence, and might finally solve the quandary 
       of this thing of being, and this other thing of not; 
        
       these layers, these divisions, these meanings or the lack thereof, 
       these fissures and abysses beside which I stumble, over which I reel: 
       is the place, the space, they constitute, 
       which I never satisfactorily experience but from which the fear 
       I might be torn away appalls me, me, or what might most be me? 
        
       Even mine, I say, as if I might ever believe such a thing; 
       bless and blame, I say, as though I could ever not. 
       This ramshackle, this unwieldy, this jerry-built assemblage, 
       this unfelt always felt disarray: is this the sum of me, 
       is this where I'm meant to end, exactly where I started out?  
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
       "Lost" [by David Wagoner] 
       Lost 
       Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you 
       Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here, 
       And you must treat it as a powerful stranger, 
       Must ask permission to know it and be known. 
       The forest breathes. Listen. It answers, 
       I have made this place around you. 
       If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here. 
       No two trees are the same to Raven. 
       No two branches are the same to Wren. 
       If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you, 
       You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows 
       Where you are. You must let it find you. 
       -- David Wagoner  
       (1999)