A Year of Being Here: the mindfulness of nature and art.

I recently had a poem published in A Year of Being Here.This marvelous blog posts a poem a day, all of them "mindfulness poetry." Most are by contemporary poets, some by relatively unknown poets (like me) and others whose work you've no doubt heard of or read. Some of the voices reach farther back in time, too, to Wordsworth and Meister Eckhart and Rumi.

Mindfulness, as I understand it, is just about being in the present moment, in the here and now. While the site isn't focused on nature poetry, you'll notice that many of the poems, and accompanying artwork, are often about or set in or referencing the more-than-human world.

This is understandable, since the natural world gives us ample models of being present. Just watch a bird or tree or wild being of any kind, and you'll notice that they live their lives (as far as I can tell) always in the present moment. They don't worry about or plan the future, and they don't gnaw on what happened in the past. They do not, as the poet Wendell Berry once wrote, "tax their lives with forethought of grief."

And art: the best inspiration I've ever had has come when I am present, fully present, to whatever is going on right here and now, right in front of me. The mind eases out of the chatter of past/future thinking, and something new opens up, some new slant of light slips in.

So, mindfulness, art, nature - it's all intertwined, all same-same. And this blog, A Year of Being Here, is full to bursting with some of the most inspiring poetry I've ever read. As the curator of the blog, Phyllis Cole-Dai, writes:

If you enjoy the taste of the wild berries I’ve picked, grab a pail of your own and head for light. That’s where these poems grow; there, and in the dappled dark of the woods. You’ll have a fine time, searching for them amongst the bushes and the brambles, so long as you go slow and watch out for thorns and bears.