Here are two poems for you today. One is from Buddhist teacher Joseph Goldstein; the other, poet Marjorie Saiser, with both poems inspired by the planet Venus. The first I came across from a newsletter from author and podcaster Dan Harris; the second, blogger Anne Bennett, who shared Saiser’s poem on her blog on Sunday. I then shared with her Goldstein’s poem and now both with you. Maybe they will resonate with you as well.

Venus in the Western Sky

My companion in its brightest month
A diamond cool radiance
Lingers above the horizon
Reminding me (in the words of the poet)
To care
And not to care
As all the earth-bound madness
Engulfs our lives.
Steady, faithful
A light in the darkness
As the day
Morphs into night

-- Joseph Goldstein

When Life Seems a To-Do List

When the squares of the week fill
with musts and shoulds,
when I swim in the heaviness of it,
the headlines, the fear and hate,

then with luck, something like a slice  
of moon will arrive clean as bone and 
beside it on that dark slate
a star will lodge near the cusp

and with luck I will have you 
to see it with, the two of us,
fools stepping out 
the backdoor in our pajamas.
 
Is that Venus? -- I think so -- 
Let's call  it Venus, 
cuddling up to the moon 
and there are stars further away

sending out rays that will not reach us 
in our lifetimes but we are choosing, 
before the chaos starts up again, 
to stand in this particular light.

-- Marjorie Saiser