Image / Dmitriy Cherevko


The Need to Win
by Chuang Tzu

When an archer is shooting for nothing
He has all his skill.
If he shoots for a brass buckle
He is already nervous.
If he shoots for a prize of gold
He goes blind
Or sees two targets ---
He is out of his mind!

His skill has not changed. But the prize
Divides him. He cares.
He thinks more of winning
Than of shooting ---
And the need to win
Drains him of power.

Translated from the Chinese by Thomas Merton


Dana Wyss Healing Arts
Breathe deeply, practice often, be well.
www.danawyss.com

Image / Pichaya Peanpattanangkul


Utterance
by W.S. Merwin

Sitting over words
very late I have heard a kind of whispered singing
not far
like a night wind in pines or like the sea in the dark
the echo of everything that has ever
been spoken
still spinning its one syllable
between the earth and silence


- from A Book of Luminous Things
edited by Czeslaw Milosz


Dana Wyss Healing Arts
Breathe deeply, practice often, be well.
www.danawyss.com

Image / Leonid Tit


Witness
by Denise Levertov

Sometimes the mountain
is hidden from me in veils
of cloud, sometimes
I am hidden from the mountain
in veils of inattention, apathy, fatigue,
when I forget or refuse to go down to the shore or a few yards
up the road, on a clear day,
to reconfirm
that witnessing presence.


- from  A Book of Luminous Things
edited by Czeslaw Milosz


Dana Wyss Healing Arts
Breathe deeply, practice often, be well.
www.danawyss.com

Image/ Benoit Daoust 


The Meaning of Simplicity
by Yannis Ritsos

I hide myself behind simple objects so you may find me,
if you do not find me, you will find the objects,
you will touch those objects my hand has touched
the traces of our hands will mingle.
The August moon gleams like a tin kitchen kettle
(what I am telling you becomes like that),
it lights the empty table and silence kneeling in the house
silence is always kneeling.
Every single word is an exodus
for a meeting, cancelled many times,
it is a true word when it insists on the meeting.

- Translated by Rae Dalven


Dana Wyss Healing Arts
Breathe deeply, practice often, be well.
www.danawyss.com

Image / Derek Audette


Wolves disappeared from Yellowstone, the world's first national park, in the 1920's. When they left, the entire ecosystem changed. Elk herds in the park increased their numbers  and began to make quite a meal of the aspens, willows, and cottonwoods that lined the streams. Vegetation declined and animals that depended on the trees left. The wolves were absent for seventy years.

When they returned, the elks' languorous browsing days were over. As the wolf packs kept the herds on the move, browsing diminished, and the trees sprang back. The roots of cottonwoods and willows once again stabilized stream banks and slowed the flow of water. This, in turn, created space for animals such as beavers to return. These industrious builders could now find the materials they needed to construct their lodges and raise their families. The animals that depended on the riparian meadows came back, as well.

The wolves turned out to be better stewards of the land than people, creating conditions that allowed the trees to grow and exert their influence on the landscape.

My hope is that the wolves' stewardship of natural processes in Yellowstone will help people appreciate the complex ways that trees interact with their environment, how our interactions with forests affect their success, and the role forests play in making our world the kind of place where we want to live.

Apart from that, forests hide wonders that we are only just beginning to explore.

- Peter Wohlleben, from The Hidden Life of Trees



Dana Wyss Healing Arts
Breathe deeply, practice often, be well.
www.danawyss.com