Anna Akhmatova

Sunday morning, October 31, 2010 -- I have many chores to do and yet I cannot put down this book of poetry, this book of answers. I flip through the voluminous Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova for a thank you/gratitude poem for the friend who gave me this book. I know Akhmatova’s poems from ’96, when my passionate, painter lover sent me:

2

And as if by mistake
I used the familiar: “Ty…”
And the shadow of a smile lit up
Your sweet features.

From slips such as these
Such glances can blaze…
I love you like forty
Fond sisters.

Page 115, I tore a scrap of paper from my to-do list to remember, just a small piece to mark a moment between chores, a memory. I must get back to work. The coffee is cold. I am cold. Having stripped the bed for wash and not turned on the heat, I put in a load of laundry. Feeling less guilty, I open the book again. Shouldn’t I feel guilty that I haven’t written anything but lesson plans and meeting minutes for over a month? I am the poet. My friend gave me this book because I am the poet and yet I skim the shorter poems thinking I really don’t have all day. I should buy Halloween candy and write this thank you note. Where is the poem of gratitude?

Maybe page 93? But first, some context. My friend bought this book for my birthday. I turned 50 this last May. We, just two weeks ago, October 15th, found time to finally meet. She joined me for another birthday, six months of sobriety and brought me this book. I was grateful to have her there to honor six months of ridding myself of those profligate companions, whiskey & wine. The challenge, oh the challenge of saying goodbye to my toxic love. There is no replacement right now, only faith that “placid happiness” will again lead to some form of sober bliss. Thank you, Karen, for recognizing both of my birthdays:

When you’re drunk it’s so much fun –
Your stories don’t make sense.
An early fall has strung
The elms with yellow flags.

We’ve strayed in to the land of deceit
And we’re repenting bitterly,
Why then are we smiling these
Strange and frozen smiles?

We wanted piercing anguish
Instead of placid happiness…
I won’t abandon my comrade,
So dissolute and mild.

A woman in my recovery group was asking if this contentment and serenity was pretty much it or would she ever again experience those adrenaline rushes she identified as happiness. I worry about that for myself. What if the quivering passion I’ve known in the past was purely alcohol induced and I will never write another love poem or even marvel at the warm night breath on the other side of the pillow, so much so that I never wish to sleep again.
Such a thunderstorm, of course,
Promised me little joy,
I learned about the eyes of happiness
Accidently.

I cannot choreograph my happiness, but I am aware, this chilly morning, that poetry and music are stirring something richer, sweeter than wine in me.

Broad and yellow is the evening light,
Tender the April coolness.
You are so many years late,
Nevertheless I am glad you came.

Sit here closer to me
And look on joyfully:
Here is a blue composition book –
With the poems of my childhood.

Forgive me that I ignored the sun
And that I lived in sorrow.
Forgive, forgive, that I
Mistook too many others for you.

After my lover introduced me to Akhmatova, I ingested as many of her poems as I could. Given that I am not Russian, not political, do not read Pushkin or Brodsky, I wondered, at first, if I could find any connection to this poet. Then I found her love poems. She understood the dialectic nature of love. She reminded me that a lover was not my ticket to happiness. She wrote what I couldn’t say, that conflict in me of “I want, I want, I want, but not too close, not too long, not too deep to rip open those old scars.” I battle my need for love and companionship every day. I fight this desire to belong to just one and the pain of exclusion when I discover I am only one of many. I DO NOT NEED anyone. I know the absurdity of that statement. I know I will love again and again and again. By the time I die, my heart will be stitched together so many times, patches upon patches, that even Goodwill will refuse its capacity to warm anyone anymore.

Love

Now, like a little snake, it curls into a ball,
Bewitching your heart,
Then for days it will coo like a dove
On the little white windowsill.

Or it will flash as bright frost,
Drowse like a gillyflower
But surely and stealthily it will lead you away
From joy and from tranquility.

It knows how to sob so sweetly
In the prayer of a yearning violin,
And how fearful to divine it
In a still unfamiliar smile.

No wonder AA suggests people in recovery not enter love relationships until at least a year. And yet, the irony, if God is love, and in AA we surrender to a loving God, we surrender our hearts, first thing, to both the dove and the snake. Yes? Hmmm…maybe that IS the point of that little Eden/Apple story! Where is the freedom in this understanding?

One heart isn’t chained to another,
If you want to – leave!
There’s lots of happiness in store
For one who’s free

I’m not weeping, I’m not complaining,
Happiness is not for me.
Don’t kiss me. I am weary –
Death will kiss me.

Days of gnawing tedium endured
With the winter snow.
Why, oh why should you
Be better than the one I chose?

Okay, I hear the sarcasm in this poem and the implication that the only true freedom is death. I was drinking myself to death. I wanted to die, not obviously by my hand, but surreptitiously, so I might be able to include others in the killing and blame; obliquely, “they” led me to this…all those who would not claim me as their number one love and concern. (Can you tell I’m working on Step 4?) Well, Akhmatova has a poem for that, too.
Page 99. Ironically, the lover who introduced me to Akhmatova, also introduced me to the pain of ultimate exclusion, returning to her husband, introducing me to the bitter cheap penny side of her love.

To the Muse

The Muse, my sister, looked into my face,
Her glance was bright and clear,
And she took away the golden ring,
The first springtime gift.

Muse! You see how happy they all are,
Girls, wives, widows…
Better to perish on the wheel,
But not these chains.

I know: yes, no, even I must tear off
The delicate daisy petals.
Everyone on earth is destined to feel
The torments of love.

I keep the candle burning in the window till dawn
And I don’t long for anyone,
But I don’t want, don’t want, don’t want
To know how they kiss each other.

Page 99. The tears of loss brewed again, trouncing on this morning’s hunger pains. Ten years gone by and still I cry on to page 99; “a blissful bird” has not yet “sang his fill/About the way we define our love.” And yet, I am finally able to say that I DO want again. I am willing to drain out that blanket of inebriation that kept me from feeling pain OR joy. I am willing to confess honestly, my needs and my manipulations.

It is 2:15 and I still haven’t eaten, still in my pajamas, still a bit dry-mouthed from the fear of exposure and the fear of rejection that I feel certain will come from these Step 4 admissions and from putting off what I think others expect me to do today. But I am the poet and I am the lover and maybe today, October 31st, I should not wear any other costume. – the independent Girl Scout, the dutiful daughter, the empathetic healer, the conscientious teacher, the stone butch, the housekeeper, the even keeled grownup, the overly generous friend…Just me today. The tears have cleansed me, readied me for the banal, the laundry. Thank you, Akhmatova. Thank you, Karen.

Frienemies

Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace
-David Rakoff

Nathan, at one of the outlying tables,
his feet tangled up in the disk jockey's cables,
surveyed the room as unseen as a ghost
while he mulled over what he might say for his toast.
That the couple had asked him for this benediction
seemed at odds with them parking him here by the kitchen.
That he turned up at all was still a surprise,
and not just to him, it was there in the eyes
of the guests who had seen the mirage and drew near
and then covered their shock with a "Nathan, you're here.."
and then, silence, they had nothing to say beyond that.
A few of the braver souls lingered to chat.
They all knew...
It was neither a secret nor mystery
that he and the couple had quite an odd history.
Their bonds were a tangle of friendship and sex.
Josh, his best pal once, and Patty, his ex.

For awhile he could barely go out in the city
without being a punchline or object of pity.
"Poor Nathan" had virtually become his new name.
And so he showed up, just to show he was game,
though, his invite was late, a forgotten addendum.
For Nate, there could be no more clear referendum
that he need but endure through this evening and then
He would likely not see Josh and Patty again.
Josh's sister was speaking, a princess in peach.
Nathan dug in his pocket to study his speech.
He'd pored over bartlets for couplets to filch,
he'd stayed up until three, still came up with zilch,
except for instructions he'd underscored twice,
just two words in length and those words were: "Be Nice"

Too often, he thought, our emotions and betray us
and reason departs once we're up on the dais.
He'd witnessed uncomfortable moments where others had lost their way quickly,
where sisters and brothers had gotten too prickly,
and peppered their babbling
with stories of benders,or lesbian dabbling,
or spot-on impressions of mothers-in-law,
which, True, Nathan thought, always garnered guffaws
but the price seemed too high, with the laughs seldom cloaking
hostility masquerading as joking.
No, he'd swallow his rage and he'd bank all his fire,
he knew that in his case, the bar was set higher.
Folks were just waiting for him to erupt.
They'd be hungry for blood even though they had supped.
They'd want tears or some other unsightly reaction
and Nathan would not give them that satisfaction.
Though Patty, a harlot, and Josh was a lout,
At least Nathan knew what he'd not talk about.
"I won't wish them divorce, that they wither and sicken
or tonight that they choke on their salmon or chicken.
I won't mention that time when the cottage lost power
in that storm on the cape and they left for an hour.
And they thought it was just the cleverest ruse
to pretend it took that long to reset the fuse.
Or that time Josh advised me with so much insistence
that I should grant Patty a little more distance.
That the worst I could do was to hamper and crowd her
that if Patty felt stifled, she'd just take a powder.
That a plant needs its space just as much as its water.
and that I shouldn't give Patty that ring that I bought her.
Which, in retrospect only elicits a 'Gosh,
I hardly deserved a friend like you, Josh'.

No, I won't spill those beans or make myself foolish
to satisfy appetites venal and ghoulish.
I will not be the blot on this hellish affair."
And with that, Nathan pushed out and rose from his chair.
and just by the tapping of knife against crystal,
all eyes turned his way, like he'd fired off a pistol.
"Mmmhmm, Joshua, Patricia, dear family and friends,
A few words, if you will, before everything ends.
You've promised to honor, to love and obey.
We've quaffed our champagne and been cleansed by sorbet,
all in endorsement of your ‘hers and his-dom’.
So now let me add my two cents worth of wisdom.
I was racking my brain sitting here at this table,
until I remembered this suitable fable
that gets at a truth, though it may well distort us,
so herewith the tale of the scorpion and tortoise:
The scorpion was hamstrung, his tail all aquiver;
just how would he manage to get across the river?
“The water’s so deep,” he observed with a sigh,
which pricked at the ears of the tortoise nearby.
“Well why don’t you swim?” asked the slow-moving fellow,
“unless you’re afraid. I mean, what are you, yellow?”
“It isn’t a matter of fear or of whim,”
said the scorpion,
“but that i don’t know how to swim.”
“Ah, forgive me. I didn’t mean to be glib when
i said that. I figured you were an amphibian.”
“No offense taken,” the scorpion replied,
“but how about you help me to reach the far side?
You swim like a dream, and you have what I lack.
Let’s say you take me across on your back?”
“I’m really not sure that’s the best thing to do,”
said the tortoise, “now that i see that it’s you.
You’ve a less than ideal reputation preceding:
there’s talk of your victims all poisoned and bleeding.
You’re the scorpion — and how can I say this — but, well,
I just don’t feel safe with you riding my shell.”
The scorpion replied, “What would killing you prove?
We’d both drown, so tell me: how would that behoove
me to basically die at my very own hand
when all I desire is to be on dry land?”
The tortoise considered the scorpion’s defense.
When he gave it some thought, it made perfect sense.
The niggling voice in his mind he ignored,
and he swam to the bank and called out: “Climb aboard!”
But just a few moments from when they set sail,
the scorpion lashed out with his venomous tail.
The tortoise too late understood that he’d blundered
when he felt his flesh stabbed and his carapace sundered.
As he fought for his life, he said, “tell me why
you have done this! For now we will surely both die!”
“I don’t know!” cried the scorpion. “You never should trust
a creature like me because poison I must!
I’d claim some remorse or at least some compunction,
but I just can’t help it; my form is my function.
You thought I’d behave like my cousin, the crab,
but unlike him, it is but my nature to stab.”
The tortoise expired with one final quiver.
And then both of them sank, swallowed up by the river.
The tortoise was wrong to ignore all his doubts —
because in the end, friends, our natures will out.
So: what can we learn from their watery ends?
Is there some lesson on how to be friends?
I think what it means is that central to living
a life that is good is a life that’s forgiving.
We’re creatures of contact, regardless of whether
we kiss or we wound. Still, we must come together.
Though it may spell destruction, we still ask for more —
since it beats staying dry but so lonely on shore.
So we make ourselves open while knowing full well
it’s essentially saying, “please, come pierce my shell.”

Breitenbush Labyrinth

Grasshopper in the Rain

Before you enter the stone labyrinth you ask, “What’s next?”
With palms pressed together in prayer
you step in; step by intentional step
toward the first curve, the next bend.

Eyes to the ground, you repeat, “What’s next?”
A new job, a move, the laundry?
Stay focused, breathe one foot in front
of the other. Breathe, “What’s next?”

A row of cairns piled along the stone wall,
worries piled among weeds,
and a penny placed purposefully heads up.

That northwest rain pelts your head
and the Breitenbush River tumults past,
a raging river of want, you are
afraid of the rain, a reminder of what’s next:

winter depression, isolation, loneliness.
Stay focused, breathe, one heavy foot
in front of the other, “What’s next?”
The calm center of the labyrinth

and an alter of plastic Mary’s,
more pennies
and Queen Anne’s Lace.

On your return from center, a grasshopper
springs across your path, portending
both scourge and abundance. “Take a chance,”
she chirps with tympanic rubbing.

“Get off your haunches and move. Trust
the inner voice.” How is it she appears
in this shivering rain? A grasshopper
is sunshine and warmth,

but in this moment, this now,
there is only river flow, cloud release,
and the question,

“What’s next?” A grasshopper never
leaps backwards, so you press your heel
into rain-soaked loam, then the ball
of your foot rolls to the first toe, weight

shifts, anxiety shifts, your mind shifts
into another step forward, palms open.
You look up through droplets on your lashes
and realize that what’s next is simply now.

Saturday Night

There's No Getting Over the Loss

Rain strokes the nape of her neck,
trickles down the furrow of her spine,
washing her clean of mourning.
Rain is her boy child, grown only in spirit,
his first smile caresses her wet cheek.

She baths in a night pool, weak with wonder.
Sword ferns and zebra grass sway.
Rain is the poplar, re-seeding. Rain
upon her bare shoulder, she blinks away
heavy droplets, eyelash kisses of relief,

and opens her body to remembering.

Sunday Morning

Wet web of morning
a delicate greeting
from the space between.
We do not oppose the weaving
nor protest the capture
of last night's tears,
glistening in today's
un-foretold light.

Confessions

Don't kick my shadow

such a shady story

in the bright light of day

elongated like an El Greco painting

pained in purple gray

or stumped into secrecy

my shadow

is as much a part of me

as the detail you see

in the face

facing you

in all honesty

Sentry Dream

Unbridled chestnut

mare. Forehead to forehead, we

press in reunion.

Then she comforts me with her head in my lap

as I stroke her long neck and the cleft between her breasts.

What I Lost

Spirit of Spirits

With my lover, the barefoot bandit, I lost

that wretched gift of time,

swallowing only a liquid limbo

until the fog of inebriation cloaked

that wretched gift of time,

and I, soused and insouciant,

until the fog of inebriation cloaked

wanton wanting with languorous longing.

And I, soused and insouciant,

embodied a poverty of spirit,

wanton wanting with languorous longing,

my soul, yes, but this glass, never empty.

Embodied in a poverty of spirit,

sweet grapes, divine:

my soul, yes, but this glass, never empty,

a timelessness without bitter absolute.

Sweet grapes, divine:

nourish me that I might become full,

a timelessness without bitter absolute,

fermented in celestial firmament.

nourish me that I might become full,

quenched and clean, my barefoot lover,

fermented in celestial firmament.

But with this masked bandit, I cannot see,

quenched and clean, my barefoot lover,

the blurred delusion of naked surrender.

But with this masked bandit, I cannot see

adorned thieves who break in and steal

the blurred delusion of naked surrender.

I am still clothed in want and need

while adorned thieves break in and steal.

Oh, but they cannot triumph over the undressed poor.

I am still clothed in want and need,

so more quickly ensnared, I

cannot triumph over the undressed poor

who live un-seized by desire.

So more quickly ensnared, I

am defeated at the vine by the ones

who live un-seized by desire.

With my lover, Barefoot Bandit, I lost.

August 11 Feast Day to St. Claire of Assisi

Goodnight Chiara

Last night I knelt at her feet.

Straw poked and scratched my knees.

I couldn’t see.

With palms pressed together at my lips,

I blew in three hot breaths

then placed my hands on the top of her feet ---

just as she had taught me.

Are you warm enough?

Was all I asked. I wanted to ask,

How many miles did you walk?

Did your soles crack and split in winter?

Did you ever wish, just once, for someone else

to bathe your feet?

I shifted, inching quietly on my knees.

I couldn’t see,

but I knew the distance of her leg

and rested when I reached her hip.

The twin bones, palpable in the dark,

ridged through her robe like rocky cliffs

above cypress trees and the sea.

I placed my hands,

palms flat in the cave of her belly,

fingertips toward the moon ---

just as she had taught me.

Are you hungry?

Was all I asked. I wanted to ask

Are you sorry about the babies you never had?

How red was your blood when you bled?

Was it clear, like almost ripe tomatoes

or black scarlet?

I slid one hand to rest on her sparrow ribs.

The other hand

under

between straw and robe

to hold the sacred bone ---

just as she had taught me.

Are you comfortable?

I asked as my hip tingled with sleep,

and straw poked and scratched my wrist.

  

Did you really sing for Christ

or did you sing for the sensation of your lungs

open,

your mouth open

so wide.

Your throat wide.

Wide enough to reach the darkness inside.

Wide enough for a scream?

Are you thirsty?

Did you ever want to scream?

Stand in the center of the silent sisters

and scream.

What are we doing?

We could be feasting in our fathers’ houses

or dancing in olive groves.

What are we doing?

Barren bellies to the ground,

forehead against cold stone,

when we could be touching

not just in sickness,

touching in health,

touching

in love.

Don’t you miss touching in love?

Dawn. The crucifix on the wall

swollen in the early shadows,

larger than it really was.

I shifted to sit at her head

and put her hair in my hands ---

just as she had taught me.

Fingertips on the memory place,

I asked

Do you miss life before Francis?

Chiara?

Was all I asked.

Chiara, can you hear me?

Her lips opened

slight.

One light puff.

Yes,

she whispered.

Yes.

from 1999

Demi Mondes de la Port

Who are you?

Soiled doves.

   Snapping black eyes, but

      otherwise,

            Un-

            certain

            features

Faceless maidens in the Palace of Sweets.

Who are you?

Destitute doves.

   Dining on apothecary ethers,

      sulfur spermacides

            Cat-

            nip

            cure!

Miss ~

Carry you back to the crib,

   Bleeding, but certain

            who

            you

            are.

Naughty ladies

With red-light inclinations

            you

            are

Miss Lily, Miss Rose, and Madame Marie

            Satisfaction

            guaranteed!

More abandon

A Bandon: Finding Liberation

I pace the edge between begin and end

beyond the tether of self created.

I am not afraid to move.

I am afraid of standing still,

utterly still in this gray silence --

this 2:00 a.m. space

where the crow has long since cawed away

the busyness of a day --

where my purpose of being

is not yet linked to memory or knowing.

Absolute stillness, before the morning dove

has begun her lament,

I am awake,

whirling in the space between --

vertigo of the soul.

East opens beyond the sun

and west, an ocean abyss,

I am direction-less.

North and south,

a fading filament.

In this center threshold,

this 2:00 a.m. space, I am

at the same time,

both leaving and left behind.

Self and other.

I desert and am deserted,

defined in my defining.

I am both form and motion,

noun and verb,

I abandon and am abandoned.

To surrender

A Bandon: Finding Fibonacci

To be in my power, I must now yield,

relinquish my claim to the all knowing,

my fight for self-reliance; I must spin

with abandon in a wildflower field,

spin like a mad child until dizzy and glowing

with emptiness and trust. I must forfeit

my ego, concede to sunflower revealed,

to swallowtail on my shoulder, fleeting.

I must lay down sovereignty and submit

                to the moral order of pinecones.

Sensual Abundance of Summer

Watermelon 

You know
what summer
tastes like-the pink flesh
of a generous earth,
this rounded life
fully ripe, fully flavored.
How could you be ashamed
at the tug of desire?
The world has opened itself to you,
season after season.
What is summer's sweetness
but an invitation to respond?
There is only one way
to eat a watermelon.
Bury your face
in the wetness
of that rosy slab
and bite.

-Lynn Ungar from Blessing the Bread 

Summer observation

An Ornamental Friendship

To stroll among them is immense:

Himalayan blue and Blood red poppies,

their stems tangled like lovers’ legs,

in fecund nearness, remembrance of ease.

And yet, such a trembling distance

as if the poverty of winter froze

their roots while the whorl of stamen

reveals black eyes, slow to apologize.

The bees’ gossipy buzz stifles

promises of garden resurrection,

one ardent opiate of spring.

Their message: summer has begun and some

cerulean petals lie still,

crumpled in jaded testicular buds,

their 7-pointed stars hanging

down toward fertile ground, as some blushing

persistent petals mark their place

in the sun, briefly, then lie flat

before falling away, uncut,

into fantasies of eternal sleep. 

In Response to JJ's paintings

Re-entry

I peer up from the bottom of the sea

and see a watercolor fantasy

through slivers of a blue moon.

“Be still in lavender streaks of sleep tonight,”

the Buddha winks.  “Tomorrow you will see.”

I’m feeling teal today,

my tongue a Phoenix flame,

a fuchsia pyre of words unspoken.

My poise of mind lost, hidden deep

like a crystal scepter in a galaxy of rage.

Once I was cut into three,

A patch of bad, a swirling orange crush.

I held on and wailed, “Don’t go.  Don’t go!”

until my burgundy heart bled black and I sunk

to the bottom of the sea.

But today I rise from an absence of color,

surface to body surf on an ocean path.

Untitled solar flares greet me.

I squint and sway to a conch shell refrain,

the sound of infinity.

The Buddha grins

because although three black squares

once divided Heaven and Earth,

today has turned metallious gold

with a boundary-less horizon.

“Look, I see you,” the Buddha laughs.

“Can you see?”  An inestimable burst,

unbound spectrum, fields of color and swirl,

 “I see you.  Can you see? That’s you

in the resplendent prisms of love and letting go.”

What lies beyond?

Beyond Time

There is a future, lined

on the back of her sundrenched hand,

but she cannot read its then or now or then.

Her time, uncharted in this emerald light

of one summer afternoon, late,

a hiatus between lavender sachets

and honeybees who settle in for long sucking

while the rope hammock sways away 

each moment to shadowed slants beyond 

beyond that poem, unfinished, there is time,

unparsed but for the comma added

then deleted or the ‘burning act’

revised to ‘bitter and burning’,

but for cuts that remain unscarred

and wine glasses never emptied. That poem balances

unwritten, never danced to bed, to climax,

that poem, her time, suspends like a champagne bubble

on crystal’s lip, never to release, never to be tongued.

A collective poem from Sitka writing workshop

Twelve Steps to Surrender at Sitka

1. 1)      First, sit under the trickster pole ~ raven atop coyote, who wraps his tail around a ceder bowl, the center of the universe. Don’t be fooled.
2. 2)      Drink deeply.  Drink slightly succulent spring beauties. Drink raindrops from roadside lupine.
3. 3)      Salute the sword fern.
4. 4)      Stitch a lichen blanket and curl up like fern fronds.
5. 5)      Speak only star-lit speeches and
6. 6)      trust the magical varnish of time.
7. 7)      Interview the maple; count her many rings.
8. 8)      Listen for the imaginary ring of the bell-shaped salal.
9. 9)      Listen again to drum beats and down pours.
10. 10)   Silence that perverse pride and
11. 11)   lightly pepper all love poems with the profane.
12. 12)   Trust the moving pen as you write through the old temple of green.

Words collected by Wendy Thompson, May 30, 2010

Manna from below

This poem reminds me of our interdependence with All.  Our hunger, our thirst, our fear of scarcity and empty bellies, empty souls require faith to be filled.

A Woman Feeding Gulls

by David Wagoner

They cry out at the sight of her and come flying
Over the tidal flats from miles away,
Sideslipping and wheeling
In sloping gray-and-white interwoven spirals
Whose center is her
And the daily bread she casts downwind on the water
While rising to spread her arms
Like wings for the calling of still more gulls around her,
Their cries intermingling at the end of daylight
With the sudden abundance
Of this bread returning after the hungry night
And the famine of morning
And the endlessly hungry opening and closing
Of wings and arms and shore and the turning sky.

Loss

"Nothing can make up for the absence of someone whom we love, and it would be wrong to try to find a substitute; we must simply hold out and see it through. That sounds very hard at first, but at the same time, it is a great consolation, for the gap, as long as it remains unfilled, preserves the bonds between us. It is nonsense to say that God fills the gap, but on the contrary he keeps it empty, and so helps us to keep alive our former communion with each other, even at the cost of pain."
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Letters and Papers from Prison

Kindness

How is it one cannot trust another's kindness?  As my sister shared with me, "every human being is a combination of kind, mean, accepting and judgmental. It's called being human. Mother Teresa said something to the effect that she did what she did to make up for the Hitler in her heart! That you choose to behave kindly and keep other behaviors in check is a good thing."  Seems to me that you could trust a kind person more for protecting you from the cruelty of others and the mean-spirited thoughts in her own bleeding heart.  Wouldn't one be a greater friend by protecting you from your own cruel defensiveness?  Why wouldn't one trust that as a good thing?  I have a smart sister.  It is NEVER my intention to hurt others.

God...Need I say more?

Lenten Journey

I spent the first week of Lent looking for "answers" from Jan Richardson's Prayer Paintbook. She has since taken a break from blogging to live life: buy a house, get married, be in love. And I have not stepped up to seek my own answers. Why? Because really, it's about the question, not the answer. An answer stops the seeking then we stagnate and die. Enjoy this amazing poem from Mary Oliver about the mystery. Also, if you want another more active source for Lenten exploration, I have found www.abbeyofthearts.com to be inspiring.

Mysteries, Yes

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous
to be understood.

How grass can be nourishing in the
mouths of the lambs.
How rivers and stones are forever
in allegiance with gravity
while we ourselves dream of rising.
How two hands touch and the bonds
will never be broken.
How people come, from delight or the
scars of damage,
to the comfort of a poem.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those
who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say
“Look!” and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their heads.

–Mary Oliver, Evidence

my company

today was 8 kids in grades 4-6...that's it. We ventured out to PSU quad during our writing class, eavesdropping and "stalking" passersby to contribute to our character sketches. The sun shone on our number 2 pencils and none of us wanted to stop this voyeuristic game: the man with the faded jeans, drinking from a quart of chocolate milk while listening to This American Life on his iPod; the tennis player bouncing by in her short, short tennis whites thinking, "oh my gall, those kids are like so cute the way they admire me. I'm like so cute." The rocker dude in his too tight black jeans, a ring of keys clanking against his hips. Run man, run...they're gonna ticket your bike. Oh, and who can forget the Tongan wrestler flip flopping his way to his English class, Bermuda shorts hanging just low enough to "appear" cool.

We, my young writer friends, had a great day today. I didn't talk to anyone else and I don't care. There is ease in eavesdropping and ease in a life lived rightly.

Love and Let Go

Lent, when I was growing up, was a time of giving up, an abstinence from what we desire most. Now, I read that Lent is a time to open up, to let in what has been absent in our lives. Are these two different ways of being in this season? I believe not; in letting go we open the space for letting in. This is a dialectical journey. I have found it most difficult to let go of ones I love, but am always aware that my letting go, not clutching or claiming, possessing one as MY one and only, is truth in love, unconditional, free, and the love God offers us every day.

“The wise do without claiming” Tao Te Ching

Moment upon moment
love and let go

Each thought
good or bad
love and let go

Each wish
possible or not
love and let go

Each word
spoken/unspoken
love and let go

No judgment with judgment
No demands with demands
No control with control
No attachment to detachment
No “yes” without “no”

All relations
every vision
each moment
empty and full
love and let go

this is the organic flow
the ecstatic Love
of the Divine.

Lent: A time for silence and stillness

I love the little lone silence of each day,
but I am in love
with the vast silence of pure presence ~
an ocean of silence
from which rises all thoughts,
all mind, all heart,
all stories intertwined:
all life born New

In the Space Between

death comes.
Old age body
disintegrates,
teeth crumble and I spit
pieces out into a moist gray pile
in the palm of my hand.
Mouth empty,
I gum my way to the end.
A long song silent,
I rest

death comes

when I dis-
integrate
my place
my purpose
my body,
when I die
(or try to die)
in the dark corners
of living
when I give myself away,
or resist change,
clutching to old
and familiar ways.

When did you die
mother, sister
brotherhood standing by
when
did you die
crumbling
tumbling
into moist gray piles
of ash
in the palm
of their
hands?

Enter the space between,
liminal unknowing,
to discover the end
which is your beginning.
Journey the thin places,
the horizon
of fire and water
where ash meets ash
and you are alive again,
a new self.

Desert Discernment

In This Desert Night

I walk the line
between flesh and spirit,
human and divine.

I yearn to fall
either way:
into unguarded blush --
union
into unknown indigo --
union

but

Free fall
is solo.
Let it be so.

My guide, she is near
with long arms
and wide hands --
not to catch,
but to sift and slow
through fingers
like glistening sand.

My guide, she enters
ushered in,
scorching through,
a penetrating blue --
she clears the way
for light

then leaves.

My ache to enter her
-- suspended --
in the old
as if she knows
when I enter her
I am lost.

See the new self, only.
Be the new self, only.
The warm breeze
of her leaving
chills me
in this desert night
and she hands me a quilt.

I wait for my own warmth,
still --
until the heat of the morning sun
wraps me lightly
and brings me form, again

Endings are entrances into new beginnings

“What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.”
(T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets 4: Little Gidding)

Jump
Jump
Contemplation not required,
not recommended,
not desired.
Hatch out,
tumble out with unbridled ferocity

Fall
Fall
I dream of dreaming a dream of falling
Fluid, suspended falling
swallowed by cushions of air,
I float on the wake of the sky
vapors thick like honey slow my descent

I dream of dreaming a dream of falling
Lingering in the time between
the between spaces where thoughts turn inside out
where behind my eyes is emptiness - clean and pure
where all my endings become an entrance
into another beginning - a deeper recess
leagues beyond knowing

The faster I fall
the faster I fly
Am I ready?
Are we ready
for space to narrow
into a thin line of nothingness and time
to turn yellow with age and uselessness
Are we ready for free fall and grace?

I dream of dreaming a dream of falling
Falling into the soil
into the space between the web,
between the lace
I enter the white space
a new place
a new face
Jump
Jump

Lenten Letting Go

I've been reading Meister Eckhart and thinking about his most famous sermon: "The eye with which I see God is the same with which God sees me. My eye and God's eye is one eye and one sight and one knowledge and one love." Quite Buddhist, yes? Beneath those lines (or between) is also the Buddhist concept of detachment. While I may believe I am one with God, that God is in me as I am in God, I cannot cling to that idea.

This is the first Lenten season in a long time that I walk the pathless path without a church, seek the emptiness of God without seeking:

I dreamt
that in my mother’s kitchen,
you handed me
the last piece of clay
and said,
“We’re quitting God.”
“We’re leaving this island.”
“We’re leaving you
to discover
atheism,
to discover doubt.”

and and
“We can no longer believe “We can no longer
no longer swim with you speak to you
in clear water.” with musty, gilded
words.”

Enter the loneliness of God

and
Do I
continue?
Do I
question?
Do I
resist?
Do I
wonder?
Do I
explore?
Do I
seek?
Do I
surrender?

and
where is my communion
if I sit at a table
alone?

and
do I continue
to shape this clay
in the palm of my hand?

Ash Wednesday

I experienced my first Ash Wednesday about 8 years ago and this was my response:


I am not afraid to drive in the rain
to church
with the radio and me blasting
Melissa Etheridge
I am your passion, your promise, your end.
I am not afraid to drive to church in the rain
out of ashes and darkness
into New life
and wilderness
I am not afraid to step in
to a moment of clay
shell empty
not afraid to create thick red lilies
out of playdoh
with round pure white centers
that rest against a receptive bowl

Can I not do with you
just as this potter has done?

I hold in my praying hands
the clay
and fear not.

I am not afraid to dip my fingers
in the swirling warm waters of salvation
while hips sway
and sweet vanilla oil of forgiveness
drips from my heart
I am not afraid to remember
communion
union

I burn fear and spread the ashes
a cross
my forehead
oh blue flame of eternal love
enter my heart in the place of forever
refined

I am not afraid to step out
exit prayer
enter poetry
on secular sidewalks
I wear a bold testament to faith
a scarlet “A”
unAshamed
I step out
into darkness
fearless in my knowing
that I alone
am marked
I long for a hand of friendship
as stranger’s eyes avert
as if I am disabled
handicapped by my declaration of faith

I sit through the stories of women I don’t know
women I have yet to love
and I quiver with the first gasp of fear
I am no longer home
here
I ask how am I to move with Grace
between poetry and prayer?
Only if my poetry is my prayer

Take me back to sanctuary
certain of You
and not afraid
I press my wrists to my inscribed forehead
not out of shame
but as a way to quiet my faith
and humble my love
humble as dust and ashes
I am not afraid to leave the familiar
and enter the unknown

I am not afraid to drive home in the rain
alone
and, and, and