Mark Nepo is a well-known and gifted poet, teacher and storyteller. He is the author of many books, including The Book of Awakening, The One Life We’re Given, Reduced to Joy, and Seven Thousand Ways to Listen. Mark’s poems and reflections also grace our three poetry books, Teaching with Fire, Leading from Within, and Teaching with Heart.

We’re delighted to be partnering with Mark to create a week of blog posts based on his poetry and reflections. It will be a week of beauty and inspiration!

I am fortunate to count Mark Nepo as a dear friend. This not only means that I’ve had many fun times and insightful conversations with him over the years, but when he writes a new book, it magically appears in my mailbox. Many have struck deep chords with me, his New York Times best-selling, The Book of Awakening, with its daily reflections and thoughtful questions is one my favorite gift books.

His latest, The Way Under the Way, recently found its way to my mailbox and already it is one of my favorites.  This collection includes three books of his poetry, gathering together 217 poems written over the past twenty years.

There is something about the poems, even the cover itself, which calls to me. I don’t have the words to describe… but found that in his introduction, Mark puts my feelings into words. “For me, the poems arrive with their wisdom. I retrieve them, more than create them, and they become my teachers.  What they have to say becomes my inner curriculum and, by staying in conversation with the poems, I learn and grow… After all these years I’ve learned that, in the deepest sense, poetry is a way of engaging the world with our being and care. And more than understanding whatever a poet might mean in any given poem, the poetry is there to ignite your own exploration of aliveness.”

Our thanks to Mark for sharing the following poems with us.

Seeing It Through

To see it and walk through it
when it opens is everything. It’s
how Picasso discovered cubism.
How Miles Davis stumbled onto
Dolphin Street. How Derek Jeter
knew the relay would land between
first base and home and no one else
would be there. It’s through this
opening that Albert Schweitzer
saw his hospital in Africa long
before he was a doctor. It’s here
that we all see love waiting in its
open field, though there are storms
all around. It’s what a whale goes
for each time it breaches. It’s how
the kind know how to help.

The Moment of Poetry

When the sweet ache of being alive,
lodged between who you are
and who you will be,
is awakened,
befriend this moment.
It will guide you.
Its sweetness is what holds you.
Its ache is what moves you on.

 

With such a taste, I’m sure you’re wanting more… you can order The Way Under the Way on Amazon.com.

 

Mark Nepo

Mark Nepo is a poet and philosopher who devotes his writing and teaching to the journey of inner transformation and the life of relationship. He has taught for more than forty years in the fields of poetry and spirituality. The #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Awakening, he has published eighteen books. For more, visit marknepo.com.