JOY CHOSE YOU (by Donna Ashworth)

Joy does not arrive with a fanfare,

on a red carpet strewn with the flowers of a perfect life.

 

Joy sneaks in, as you pour a cup of coffee,

watching the sun hit your favourite tree, just right.

 

And you usher joy away,

because you are not ready for it.

Your house is not as it must be,

for such a distinguished guest.

 

But joy cares nothing for your messy home,

or your bank-balance,

or your waistline, you see.

 

Joy is supposed to slither through the cracks of your imperfect life,

that’s how joy works.

 

You cannot invite her, you can only be ready when she appears.

 

And hug her with meaning,

 

because in this very moment,

 

joy chose you.

Do not be ashamed (by Wendell Berry)

You will be walking some night
in the comfortable dark of your yard
and suddenly a great light will shine
round about you, and behind you
will be a wall you never saw before.
It will be clear to you suddenly
that you were about to escape,
and that you are guilty: you misread
the complex instructions, you are not
a member, you lost your card
or never had one. And you will know
that they have been there all along,
their eyes on your letters and books,
their hands in your pockets,
their ears wired to your bed.
Though you have done nothing shameful,
they will want you to be ashamed.
They will want you to kneel and weep
and say you should have been like them.
And once you say you are ashamed,
reading the page they hold out to you,
then such light as you have made
in your history will leave you.
They will no longer need to pursue you.
You will pursue them, begging forgiveness.
They will not forgive you.
There is no power against them.
It is only candor that is aloof from them,
only an inward clarity, unashamed,
that they cannot reach. Be ready.
When their light has picked you out
and their questions are asked, say to them:
"I am not ashamed." A sure horizon
will come around you. The heron will begin
his evening flight from the hilltop.

(June 1967)

The River Clarion (by Mary Oliver)

 

1.

I don’t know who God is exactly.
But I’ll tell you this.
I was sitting in the river named Clarion, on a water splashed stone
and all afternoon I listened to the voices of the river talking.
Whenever the water struck a stone it had something to say,
and the water itself, and even the mosses trailing under the water.
And slowly, very slowly, it became clear to me what they were saying.
Said the river I am part of holiness.
And I too, said the stone. And I too, whispered the moss beneath the water.

I’d been to the river before, a few times.
Don’t blame the river that nothing happened quickly.
You don’t hear such voices in an hour or a day.
You don’t hear them at all if selfhood has stuffed your ears.
And it’s difficult to hear anything anyway, through all the traffic, the ambition.

2.

If God exists he isn’t just butter and good luck.
He’s also the tick that killed my wonderful dog Luke.
Said the river: imagine everything you can imagine, then keep on going.

Imagine how the lily (who may also be a part of God) would sing to you if it could sing,
if you would pause to hear it.
And how are you so certain anyway that it doesn’t sing?

If God exists he isn’t just churches and mathematics.
He’s the forest, He’s the desert.
He’s the ice caps, that are dying.
He’s the ghetto and the Museum of Fine Arts.

He’s van Gogh and Allen Ginsberg and Robert Motherwell.
He’s the many desperate hands, cleaning and preparing their weapons.
He’s every one of us, potentially.
The leaf of grass, the genius, the politician, the poet.
And if this is true, isn’t it something very important?

Yes, it could be that I am a tiny piece of God, and each of you too, or at least
of his intention and his hope.
Which is a delight beyond measure.
I don’t know how you get to suspect such an idea.
I only know that the river kept singing.
It wasn’t a persuasion, it was all the river’s own constant joy
which was better by far than a lecture, which was comfortable, exciting, unforgettable.

3.

Of course for each of us, there is the daily life.
Let us live it, gesture by gesture.
When we cut the ripe melon, should we not give it thanks?
And should we not thank the knife also?
We do not live in a simple world.

4.

There was someone I loved who grew old and ill
One by one I watched the fires go out.
There was nothing I could do

except to remember
that we receive
then we give back.

5.

My dog Luke lies in a grave in the forest, she is given back.
But the river Clarion still flows from wherever it comes from
to where it has been told to go.
I pray for the desperate earth.
I pray for the desperate world.
I do the little each person can do, it isn’t much.
Sometimes the river murmurs, sometimes it raves.

6.

Along its shores were, may I say, very intense cardinal flowers.
And trees, and birds that have wings to uphold them, for heaven’s sakes–
the lucky ones: they have such deep natures,
they are so happily obedient.
While I sit here in a house filled with books,
ideas, doubts, hesitations.

7.

And still, pressed deep into my mind, the river
keeps coming, touching me, passing by on its
long journey, its pale, infallible voice
singing.

From Evidence: Poems, by Mary Oliver, published by Beacon Press. © 2009.

 

For M (by Mikko Harvey)

 

​I don’t
want you
to be
nervous. Maybe
thinking of
a walrus
would help.
Have you
seen the
video of
the penguin
accidentally stepping
on a
sleeping walrus?
It thought
it was
a rock.
The walrus
wakes up
like what
the fuck
and the
penguin scurries
off like
oh shit.
Sometimes it’s
funny watching
a surprise
happen, and
not just
funny but
kind of
amazing — like,
you never
really know
what’s what
when it
comes to
this planet.
Then again,
when it’s
you getting
surprised, that’s
different. Especially
for tender
ones like
us. What
are we
supposed to
do? It’s
bad for
our hearts,
you know.
I hope
you won’t
need pills
like I
do. I
think I
get so
scared because
I’m greedy — 
I want
to hold
onto everything,
the world
wants to
take it
away. What
the fuck.
The number
of hours
we have
together is
actually not
so large.
Please linger
near the
door uncomfortably
instead of
just leaving.
Please forget
your scarf
in my
life and
come back
later for
it. 

from Let the World Have You (House of Anansi, 2022)

 

 

Peace Is This Moment Without Judgment (by Dorothy Hunt)

 

Do you think peace requires an end to war?

Or tigers eating only vegetables?

Does peace require an absence from

your boss, your spouse, yourself?...

Do you think peace will come some other place than here?

Some other time than Now?

In some other heart than yours?

 

Peace is this moment without judgment.

That is all. This moment in the Heart-space

where everything that is is welcome.

Peace is this moment without thinking

that it should be some other way,

that you should feel some other thing,

that your life should unfold according to your plans.

 

Peace is this moment without judgment,

this moment in the Heart-space where

everything that is is welcome.

 

COMPLINE PRAYER (by Fred LaMotte)

 

I pray that you will flower

in darkness,

planted in the grace

of your body.

Freedom is your nature,

joy your birthright,

healing the rhythm

of your heartbeat.

Every proton in your flesh

is the kiss of an ancient star,

Each electron a wave

on the ocean of compassion.

Whose compassion?

Don't ask.

Names don't count

in this moment between

waking and sleep.

Who sleeps?

Don't ask.

Feel only an exquisite tenderness

for those who insist you have

no right to be happy.

May the golden fingers

of your vagus nerve

hold you like an offering

of delicious fruit.

All night, be breathed.

 

The photography of Acacia Johnson (a Psyche film, 12 mins)

‘It’s unreal – in the best way.’ Acacia captures visual poetry at Earth’s poles

Somewhere in the Arctic Circle, Acacia Johnson waits for a photograph. It’s not always something she can plan, or articulate, but she knows it when she sees it. Her favourite images are the ones that make you question what you have seen, snapping you from the complacency of knowing – the way you stop when you think you’ve witnessed something supernatural. ‘The polar regions are full of phenomena that classify as otherworldly,’ says Johnson. The landscapes are ‘unreal – in the best way’.

Growing up in Alaska, in a family for whom flying in small planes over glaciers was a regular activity, and later working as a guide in Antarctica, Johnson’s relationship with polar landscapes is personal. But as that landscape shifts and changes under the effects of the climate crisis, and the human cultures that depend on it adjust, it is inherently political too. In this film, which honours her work as winner of the 2022 International Center of Photography Infinity Award for Documentary Practice and Photojournalism, she explains how she is compelled to record life in polar landscapes, and show ‘why it matters, why it is worth protecting. Or why it’s just beautiful.’

As she ventures with her camera across regions at both extremes of Earth, the viewer experiences their sublime, diverse beauty: alongside sculptural icebergs are aquamarine ice caves, pockmarked like bubble-wrap; glades of moss-furred boulders; jagged formations that, at a glance, could be wintery Cappadocia. Even in the Arctic winter – something some viewers might dread or fear – Johnson captures what brings humans comfort: the stars are luminous, the phases of the Moon are deeply felt, and the outside world takes on an intense and surprising hue.

Much of Johnson’s work recording polar life centres the human. Her photographs urge the viewer not to dismiss the regions as uninhabitable wastelands of ice and snow, but as centres of long, continuous human culture. She shows not only how the climate crisis will affect populations of bears, but why disappearing sea ice matters to people. In photographing the igloo-building, seal-hunting traditions of Indigenous peoples, her work has the subversive power to recast the wilderness as home. While some of Johnson’s photographs are more obviously documentary, others capture a palpable sense of magic: footprints appear and disappear. Ice crystalises into jewels. Waterfalls are like beams of sunlight, so startling they seem to carry a message. For the viewer in a city thousands of miles away, the world might seem, for a moment, re-enchanted. Perhaps they stir in you the memory of the fairy tales of childhood, full of magical happenings in ancient forests, and leave you wondering what those foundational, magical stories meant; what they had to teach us; how they helped us survive.

In the podcast Between the Covers: Conversations with Writers, the American poet Jorie Graham in 2021 discussed art’s unique capacity to make people feel, and awaken them to the climate emergency. To understand something intellectually, Graham stressed, is not enough to motivate action; one has to feel it in one’s body, as something real. One must be moved, to be moved to act:

There are still people who, if they love something, will give up something to save it. So how do you make people feel, that that stuff you’re talking about, is sensorially real? … The function of art at this point is how to use imagination … in order to make people feel ‘that’s my reality. That’s mine. I can’t let that be hurt. I love it.’

It’s a sentiment that Johnson shares. For her, ‘photography is a way to make people feel something’ and her task as photographer is sometimes simply to capture ‘what a place felt like’. You can almost feel the moisture in the air, the soft texture of lichen, the heat of your blood as you enter an ice-melt lake. Notice how even her descriptions of place begin to take on the incantatory rhythm of a spoken word poem: ‘the silvery colour of rain reflecting light off green sea-grasses’. Notice how they land in your body, and change it, like a spell.

Written by Nicola Williams

The photography of Acacia Johnson | Psyche Films