Transformations

Paradigm Shift

Night breeze
cooled, bare arms
and mind.
Glass wind chimes
clank, a tuneless
companion
under the inquisition
of a patio light
mid-July
mid-life.

A garden mobile,
Egyptian princess
made of weak wood
with charcoal eyes,
spins like she always has,
round and round in the breeze.
Her Mardi Gras beads
dangle heavily
from her thin neck.
She gets nowhere
in love tonight,
suspended
from a triangle of strings,
spinning
clockwise, counter
clockwise,
she retraces her flight,
the same pattern
over and over again.
Her arms reach
toward Orion,
a longing for a new
constellation of being,
yet, all she can do is spin
in the same circle,
round and round
over and over again
unless, maybe,
what would happen
if I cut her strings?

begin again on this journey of faith

It is time to start over again.

When morning begins
with a crow caw
and the garbage truck
brakes like a distant urban rooster,
it is time to start over again.
With meek courage,
I plant bare feet
on cold hardwood and groan,
“Must I, really, must I?”

When Kona coffee brews
a mild chicory, and the daily
news thuds onto the front porch,
it is time to start over this one life
I’ve been given, this one journey
I’ve failed, foibled and tripped through
like a crippled gray squirrel
Which way do I go? Which way do I go?
What next? What next?

Today, I will
eat oatmeal instead of donuts
to lower my cholesterol.
I will
pour the half bottle of cheap wine
down the drain.
I will
ride my bike to work.
I will,
with dubious courage, try
to start over again.

Today, I will begin
with poetry, a collection of Whitman
Earth, My Likeness.
The cover, a watercolor
of egrets in a shimmering
reflective pool.
Last night I dreamt
of egrets in a marshland,
a place of decomposition
where old dies
to make space for new.

Today, when an emerald-breasted
hummingbird thrums through
blooming honeysuckle and the rotting
apple tree, I remember:
sometimes we must fly backwards
in order to start over.
So backwards I fly
to a righter time of living,
a time of poetry
and meaning-making
among the towering ponderosa pine.

I start over again
in the forest with Whitman
on my narrow path, soft under foot,
“I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow…”
Today, when pine branches
linger over me
I am called to rest
in my own likeness
I am called to be still,
to watch and listen.
I am called to start over again.

Trees

Finding Center among Tree Trunks

Once there was a woman who spent a morning with a tree. They were well known to each other, having spent many mornings together, afternoons and evenings too. She called this tree the Leaning Tree, its sturdy cedar base growing from the lenient earth on a diagonal slant as if people had been leaning against it since it was an innocent sapling. The Leaning Tree supported her pondering, her sobbing, her anger, barrenness and even her lover’s back as she once dared some forest passion. This morning she leans back, heedless of sap, then slides down the trunk to sit on the meandering roots. Her weary spine presses in until she feels the sap flow slow, so slowly. The Leaning Tree teaches her that slow is good, so good. “Why can’t you remember that?” the Leaning Tree chides. Why can’t I remember? Because remembering hurts.
Her shoulder blades fit into the cedar bark like missing puzzle pieces, like tessellations, a mystery of no beginnings or endings and no need to know the answers to her questions. Tears flow, blood flows, sap flows so slowly. Her heart, the knothole of a broken branch that once reached out, greening into love, now snaps back to her core, her sturdy trunk. She presses her sacrum into forgiving soil ~ quieted by fallen needles and death. She slows, so slow in release of grief, comforted by the natural cycle of things ~ a cycle she knows, but sometimes forgets. Remembering hurts.

Why is it that I always need to go beyond, beyond the swallowtails mating in the air, beyond site of base camp, beyond the Wooly-Mullen and the last participant in this workshop? I keep walking to a periphery, a road, a divide, a threshold. It is there I spy you, a ponderosa snag ~ dead from the inside out. Your needle less limbs draped like a swooning maiden, drip-line dry, stripped of all but a patched, red-bark skirt. And yet, your gnarled branches still offer a resting place for the chick a dee-dee-dee-dee-dee.

Finally, I am alone, and with that thought the urge to turn on my cell phone is almost overwhelming ~ connect, connect, connect, the need to connect is stronger than the need for solitude. Where is my place in the circle of mariposa? Mariposa de sueno, te pareces a mi alma. You are like my soul, a butterfly of my dream. Where is my place beyond Neruda, my place amidst fading larkspur? On which sedimentary rock do I rest?

Ponderosa, you stand alone as I do, somewhat aloof. You do not beckon me like the cedar Leaning Tree. I keep a respectful distance, my elder. Perhaps you are tired of serving, tired of reaching out, always the giving tree. Perhaps you only need to stand rooted, pocked with woodpecker holes, sapless as I am soon to be, and just be. Let that be enough. If some little critter chooses to nest in you, fine, she is welcome. It is you, Ponderosa, to which I need to connect, not the tenuous and wireless, 1,000 miles away. It is you, in this chattery silence, which holds the questions for my answers, the calm for my chaos, the acceptance of empty.
I ask you, may I come closer? May I step in to you? May I touch you, cracked and dry ~ you offer no shade. Brittle bark scratches my back as I lean in. But you still smell like grandmother's closets. Grandmother pine, I call on you now as the blood leaves my body, perhaps for the last time. Sapless, childless, what will I leave behind? What seeds have I planted, like your tender saplings greening around you now? What poetry will come as I stand on the threshold of just be, rejoicing in my rooted ness?

Mesa Memories

Once, she would contract
into the clamor
of yesterday and tomorrow.

But today, under a relentless Sedona sunshine,
she seeks the silent abundance of now.

Like a saguaro cactus
she holds water in her ribs ~
red rock reserves

A foundation of readiness for spring's
release of prickly pear blooms.

This sundance of in and out
give and take, contraction and release,
is her brittle-brush journey

Between desert expansion
and blue-green sage retreat.

But tonight,
like a single taper, long and unflickering
in an Arizona night wind

She holds steady only
to what Is. Only this. Only now.

Chrysanthemum Refrain

This poem was inspired by a music composition by Branic Howard entitled "Chrysanthemum Hours" and the work of Fernando Pessoa.

"I am going to Exist. To ex-ist...To ex-ist. Give me something to drink, for I am not thirsty!"
~ Fernando Pessoa

Chrysanthemum Refrain

I hesitate to write

the chrysanthemum song,

one of timbrel possibilities

amidst an oblique rain.

"Should you ask me if

I'm happy, I would

answer..."

a cascading gold,

a bronze bow

toward sunlight,

a lithesome lean

into a tremulous summer.

Yet, these are disquieting hours
beneath a tacit moon.
Have I failed?

I require short days

and long nights to tempt

flowering, to bloom

like the Emperor's seal,

the Queen of the Fall.

Do I really exist
in this occidental mystery?

Will days neatly line up

like cheery chrysanthemums

in the Festival of Happiness?

Or will I ex-ist

like a funeral bouquet,

lamentations and incurves,

burnt-orange requiems
of yesterday?

Should you ask me,
I have no answer, as yet,
but I have not failed ~

only, I am thirsty.

Will you water me?

Photon Psalm

Oh my Beloved, what is this ache?
this longing, this missing
link to wholeness through you?
What is this black iron will
without a flint to spark a flame?
What is this cobalt voice
without a song, these hands
motionless, this metallic day without
a poem of possibility?

You, my Beloved, completed my inner being.
You colored me on a canvas of love,
intended me to be bold of hue,
a full spectrum of stain.
You fashioned me whole
from all the elements,
salts of the earth,
electrons designed by you,
to make that quantum leap
toward your pure light.

And yet, today I am merely crimson
bent low in primal red,
a lithium lost and alone.
Without even an apricot orange
to stir my cold coals, I say
Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,
incomplete.

But you tell me
the edges are most difficult to see.
And you promise the night
will burnish in a patina like the day,
shadow will wed sunlight and you will know me.
So I face the darkness within,
breathe deep into my sacrum
and grasp the root of my being,
the lowest note of my song.
With only a will to be and trust in you,
I aim for the verdant green of my heart.
I come to you in love,
with gratitude unfolding,
I sing a quiet horizon song
between dark earth and azure.
Slowly, slowly, I unfurl toward your violet light.
Maybe today I will see indigo,
and my yellow will greet your blue
at the emerald center of the rainbow.

Marching On

A poem in gun-metal gray,
may there be peace
in the sky today.

Seagulls cry, high
then land
on moss covered rooftops

anticipating patches of blue.

sh'asani eisha, sh'hechianu

Hebrew for: Thank you, God, for having made me a woman.

I've never wanted to be a boy and certainly not a man. I have female friends who wanted to be boys so they could play the sports that they were prohibited to play before Title 9 (that tells you a bit about my age). I was athletic as a child, but enjoyed field hockey, gymnastics, kickball, hiking, tennis, and was always the first picked in PE for square dancing. Later, when I became enamored with modern dance, that "sport," and the cross-training around it, consumed me. If I had been a boy, I would have had an even greater challenge convincing my parents that I wanted to major in dance in college and make a career out of dance. Sh'asani eisha, sh'hechianu.

I've had other female friends who have been fascinated by male genitalia. Not me! Such a sensitive piece of paraphernalia to be carrying on the outside of our bodies, I can imagine the pain of getting hit or the humiliation when sexual urges are so blatantly revealed for all to see. Even the ability to urinate standing up never interested me. I’m not sure why, because in many situations it is more convenient and hygienic to pee standing. Maybe my lack of interest is because I used to be so disgusted by my brothers’ distance contests, or the perpetual poor aim of many men, or maybe it was just because I was made a woman and I am biologically content with God’s design. Now, the Urinelle, a urination funnel for women, gives us the option to avoid unsanitary sitting conditions as well as save our shoes and bad knees from the squatting option. Therefore, I have options if I should change my mind.

I used to think the allure of the male lure was due to the power that society attributed to those who tucked away such an organ. Women didn’t really want the appendage, but wanted the benefits that came with. I believed that until I heard about “packing.” Last night, I went to a karaoke bar and watched two female-to-male transvestites, accessorized right down to the crotch. One was dressed in a Sean Penn kind-of-way, the other in a Broke Back Mountain look, both with facial hair and well defined forearms. One is quite renowned in the bar scene, but was no more convincing to me than the images of Steves and Maryannes in Tipping the Velvet (great book by the way). The other had me convinced until she was “outted” by the DJ. So there are women who really do want to cup their crotch with purpose and Michael Jackson bravado, women who may really want a (and here I resist my usual jargon for male genitalia)… between their legs. Thank you God, for having made me a woman!

Today, I attended my first Argentinean Tango lesson. This class is taught at a dance studio that advertises “Out Dancing,” ballroom dance lessons and parties for the GLBT community. Although most of the men in the class were gay, the traditional male/female coupling was arranged; the men were leaders, the women followers. I rotated into the arms of an attractive, silver-haired, self-professed gay man who told me he usually follows. We were taught a tricky weight change step that the “man” initiates. The idea is to guide your partner into a rhythm of parallel steps and then, when you are ready, subtly shift your leading weight to the opposite foot while your partner stays with “her” weight on the foot you led her to. Then, surreptitiously, the leader steps diagonally on the opposing foot and the couple is now dancing with opposites. When first learning something like this, the mind is quite busy, rocking back and forth in a methodical rhythm until the leader feels ready to try this little dancin’ game. Ginger Rogers use to say that female ballroom dancers have to be better than males because they dance backwards and in heals, but today, I had the easy job, I just had to listen to cues from my partner and we all know that listening to subtle cues is a female skill that comes quite natural. Thank God, I was made a woman. Sh'asani eisha, sh'hechianu.

I'm Not There

Witness the Day

Grapefruit fresh, the day
begins. Thirty killed somewhere
in Nairobi, but

that was yesterday
and I only hear the rain,
like a distant flame

diluting daily
news. I catch whiffs of charcoal,
last night’s burnt chicken

But how can I witness
when I’m not there?

I Am From

A friend was seeking writing prompts for the month of January. I gave her the following: Into what community were you born and how were you received, and by whom? I am looking into some family history, particularly my great grandmother Mamie Pearce King who was a Baptist missionary on an Arapaho Indian reservation. This poem came as a result of reading a poem in her scrapbook titled "Women of God" by E. Rinehart *. The poem was written at the turn of the century. The photo is Mamie Pearce King about 1912 after typhoid fever.

I was born into a circle of writers:
Virginia, Sappho, Emily…
through a dream, they welcomed me,
called me to pick up the pen.

I was born of Nancy, variant of Ann,
Hebrew for Grace, a wife, a daughter, a duty
Nancy, marked by devotion to man.
I was born of a woman, intent.

I was born to a circle of grandmothers,
Grace, Mary, Mamie, and Carol Joy.
Born of a virtue, a virgin, a missionary, and a song,
how sweet the sound traversing years, calling me, calling me.

I was born from Women of God, in mission fields,
circuit riders, sisters, lighthouse
keepers of the Word, stars of the sea,
Mary May, ever enduring, Mamie, she.

Mother may I, too, be called,
be merry, brisk and blithe, defined
as mirthful in the sun of righteousness, 

shining away from secrecy and shame.


Women of God, of uncertain origin,
mothers of mine, calling me.
Be swift to go, the doors are open wide.
The times are full of promise, so

follow the flow of the tide
sail out on the deep, broad seas
let your heart be brave, mothers sing to me
A mighty work is waiting.*

I was born of divine women, adored
virtuous, star women, original women
women derived, I am a woman wishing
light, song, joie de vivre, a woman wishing

fearless response to her call, I am
a woman intent on wishing you,
a woman, a new definition,
wishing you, a woman, a new name.

How shall I call you?

Seasonal Surprises

Advent

An on your tiptoes anticipation,
does it come from within
like a giggle brewing
until suddenly you realize
your endorphins hit a high
and you smile, spontaneously,
at nothing?

Or is the thrill, the unexpected happiness
something you put on with intent
like a polar fleece wrap?
You heave yourself off the couch,
away from the television
and your second glass of wine
(It's a Wonderful Life)
to say, "I'm cold. I want to be warm.
It's nearly Christmas and I want
wonder and awe and newborn
light amid the gray and early night."
So it didn't snow like Storm Watch 2007
predicted, so I'm still single, and we're still
at war. But, peace is still
a possibility. So is this when
you put on your cheery red vest
with purpose and resolve, saying,
"I am ready. What's next?"

Advent

There is a voice in the wilderness
calling
her name
she-who-lives-in-darkness
calling
as the full moon wanes
over crashing waves
falling into wilderness
at the cape of disappointment
calling
at the horizon
where the lost stay lost
until they find themselves
within each other
calling in the silence
amidst a cacophony
of uncharted waters
receive the silence
first language of God
listen
to your wilderness
and begin

Veteran’s Day Immunity

Another Portland rain taps
my morning window pane.
I wake before the alarm
to a stormy wind that overthrows
patio furniture and launches
it across the street like a battlefield
in opposition to my denial.
I’m not ready for winter.
But rain happens, leaves fall, ready or not.T
his story is getting old
with its old beginnings ~
entrances into endings.
I drag myself out of bed,
and shuffle to the cold kitchen
for a habit of coffee, Portland pleasure.
In the Oregonian,
bad news from distant places
is demoted to back pages,
following the cheery red, white and blue
mattress sale ads.
I light a candle, put on Vivaldi,
read a poem and a prayer
then get ready for work,
grateful for free parking.

How is it I have survived
this deathly rain so long?

sermonette

I mini sermon I was asked to write for a service on Sabbath:

I was asked to say a few words about what Sabbath means for me. Sabbath, the seventh day, a day for rest and renewal. I used to think a Sabbath was like a vacation, a break from work, until I took a sabbatical, a type of Sabbath, and realized that entering into the space of Sabbath, sabbatical is anything but a vacation. The writer and intuitive, Caroline Myss said, “[During Sabbath,] more than relaxation and de-stressing, we are seeking a genuine encounter with the power of Grace.” (Mystics Without Monasteries, Unity Magazine, Nov/Dec 2007, page 16).

True, Sabbath is a time of slowing down, being quiet, but it is an active rest. In order for an encounter with God to occur, we must clear our space and time of distractions, busyness, absolve our perceptual field of any imposition of rigid structure and knowing, because Sabbath is not about how much we know, it’s about whether or not we can endure listening in the silence. We have to let go of our need for control, our fear of nothingness, fear of pain. We have to let go of the security of the known, comfortable habits of our day, long enough to hear the still silent voice of God. For many of us, this is an effort; surrender control, that’s really hard work, risky business. It demands a level of faith that our finely constructed and controlled worlds will not fall apart in the process of seeking a genuine relationship with God, the Source.

As a performer, I know that place of surrender to the luminous ineffable, that place of transcendence into the Cloud of Unknowing. It’s the point in a song or dance when I’m not thinking about technique, the notes or steps; I’m not thinking about my next line, or the mistake I made in rehearsal; I am not thinking. I am purely in the moment, trusting that I am one with the movement, the gesture, the sound -- and the song sings me. This is the place of Grace; this is my Sabbath; this is my prayer. I’ve only reached this state of surrender a few times in the dance. How did I get there? Through daily devotion, discipline and practice. I trained my tool, the body, up to six hours a day, 6 days a week in order to get closer to the absolute, that collaborative conversation between grace, gravity and God.

As a poet, when the Spirit travels through me I know I have to lean back and let it; I have to trust that the writer’s craft will be there, as a part of me, without me manipulating the process. I must discipline myself to write every day in order to reach that occasional encounter with Spirit, with mystic mystery. I must empty myself of preconceived notions and perceptions, suspend all judgments, dissolve the boundaries of ego and fear, and be willing to tolerate uncertainty and a sense of insecurity. Hard work! I must have the patience to wait for the truth to reveal itself in an image, a word, an unexpected combination of thoughts.

I try to do this every day, but I don’t make a living writing poetry and if the poem hasn’t birthed itself in the hour before work that I’ve allotted for Sabbath, well what can I do? Sometimes I take the poem to work with me and I feel really guilty even if God does trump my place of employment. Sometimes I try to stay in that open state of listening, breathe the breath of Sabbath throughout the day and marry what I hear and see and feel in the office or on the bus with the light wisp of words from the morning. Sometimes I don’t return to the poem for days, weeks, even years, but every day I continue to devote myself to an opening of my heart and mind. I open wide, putting aside both the objective facts and subjective filters to listen to the Word of God. This is my purpose. This is my Sabbath. This is my prayer.

My place of Sabbath can look like inactive rest, even laziness, but actually, the devotion, discipline and practice of surrender into the silent mystery is a type of effortless work that, if I can reach an encounter with the vast power of Grace, is more renewing and life giving than any vacation I’ve ever had. I wish to leave you with a thought about Sabbath time from Rev. Eleanor Fleming. “Time in the silence is sacred. We must learn to place it ahead of everything else in our lives until it becomes such a part of our functioning that it has more authority over our thinking, our words, and our actions than the outer voices of the world.” (Rev. Eleanor Fleming, Unity Book Preview: Sacred Secrets, Unity Magazine, Nov/Dec 2007, pg 19.)

Fall

Lamentation

If you insist, God, that I stay alive
then what consolation? Don’t I too deserve more
than a couple hours of joy?

Entitlement is a nasty word.
I know too much about grief
and the ache in an old dancer’s hips.

Shivers of midnight light on downy quilts
no longer convince me that Beauty
makes these years of strain worthwhile.

I know the pain of surrender to gravity;
release to a hard, cold earth as the only way
to bliss. Beauty hurts,

so like an autumn leaf trembling
on the tip of an oak branch, I suspend
in quiet gold until it is my time to fall

and become nothing again.

From Vermont I feel Burma

Across Oceans of Compassion

Vermont maple syrup
flows bitter sweet through my pen
as silent monks fall.

Autumn orange stands
tall, still, with Myanmar roots.
Breathe my violence in

Breathe in maple’s gifts
of O2 and fluid veins.
The leaf touches me.

CO2 released ~
Winter comes early this year.
We know what to do.

Depression isn't about feeling sorry for myself

Depression

1.
My other mind
the one that I'm out of
sometimes
plays tricks on me
scribbling catastrophe
and conspiracy
in every fold of gray matter
until I can't fight It anymore
and I begin to believe
the unreasonable.

2.In this home,
not my home
resides the bear,
who is I, but not me
filled with stone-cold
polar resentment.
Fiercely caged in
an infrastructural landscape.
Is it the bars
or the space between
that lodges me,
a paws length away
from freedom?

There's No Place Like Home

I'm currently teaching poetry once a week to fifth graders who were affected by the immigration ICE Raids in our town. Tomorrow's topic is home. What is it? Where do we find it? How can we define it wherever we are? Many of these children and/or their families face deportation in the next few months. They are, for sure afraid and the message I want to leave with them is by Rumi: “Fear is the cheapest room in the house – I’d like to see you in better living conditions.”

I started thinking about metaphors for home, my own writing about home. Here are two examples:

Single Person Dwelling

I am many roomed
and every year there are fewer corners,
less closets, softer lighting, and ceilings that vault and vault.
Songs whisper through my walls:
cotton lullabies that rock me to sleep,
velvet green ballads, safe in their loneliness, and sometimes
the floors quake with a Barbra Streisand sing-along.

Laughter surrounds my walls
like tree frogs in the garden. Someday, soon, I will open
the back door and those leggy frogs will spring into the kitchen,
fill the sink and we will all croak and chuckle contagiously.
But for now I am content in knowing they are just outside the window.

A formal entrance, the front door, opens to an orderly white.
Exacting angle of an ottoman and precise tilt
of the picture frames may cause you to pause and ask,
“Unapproachable? Cool? Elegant, but stiff?”
Do not hesitate.
Do not pause. Please, come in.
Turn my rooms upside down.
Leave your garden footprints on the China Silk carpet.

Yes, the toothpaste is neatly rolled from the bottom up.
Yes, spices and books are alphabetized, magazines fanned
on the coffee table, and socks color-coded in their drawer.
But, poems fly across rooms in random chaotic scribbles.
Furniture is shoved aside when the need to dance arrives.
Passions stack up for the weekend
when a mere word like “mellifluous” can extend the day
into a ‘never get out of my bathrobe’ flurry,
a tigerlily tangle, an elegant mess.

Orchids bloom in steamy bathrooms, but die on precious shelves.
Can you smell the wet carnations, vanilla, violets, and bread?
Do you notice the ladybug on the light switch -- in my many rooms?

In my many rooms there is moonlight that slides in
through partially opened blinds; moonlight like memory
that lays in blue-white streams over elbows, wrists, and fingertips—
moonlight like memory that cannot be held.

On Writing

"The goal of writing is to keep a beleaguered line of understanding which has movement from breaking down and becoming a hole into which we sink decoratively to rest."

~ William Carlos Williams

Where Does the Poetry Come From?

On a Sunday morning

after coffee in bed

and a book

and a word like mellifluous

tickles my ears and tongue.

I do not know this word,

this mystery,

so I explore the dictionary

then think of honey

and remember

those Bit-O-Honey candy bars

that we kids bought with dimes

from the general store at Balsam Lake.

I remember

those northern lakes

many years later

when I went skinny-dipping with a lover

I think of bitter honey

and I write it down.

Honey

Mellifluous memories
harden like taffy candy
Cracked on the sidewalk
Bit ‘o Honey
Shattered bit ‘o love

Tongue the edge
hot lick saliva
Seal you back
soften in my belly hold
Barely

Lurid butter-yellow pieces
trapped in paper folds
Wrapper cracks
and barely holds

I long for the wholeness
that never was
But you were bought, already
already
broken

Reflection onf Thich Nhat Hanh and Negative Seeds

Between My Neighbors and Me

I begin with me,
my garden, my internal landscape.
It's all I can do
with these autumn leaves
that bluster over neighboring fences and walls,
leaves of anger, resentment, jealousy, and fear.
Walls that raise more walls,
fences that separate us
from our humanity.

It's all I can do
to try, keep trying every day,
every way I know how
to blow those rotting
leaves away
in this season before death.
And yet,
damned if those leaves
don't just drift right back,
silently in the night,
to my side of the fence,
while I sleep,
not trying so hard,
not trying at all to resist the wall
or rake away the leaves.

It's the walls, really
that must come down,
the fences between us,
that divide us.
It's not the leaves of emotion
that spread seeds of negativity.
It is the walls
that must come down
so we can gather all those leaves,
the leaves that make us
who we are,
into one bountiful pile.
Then and only then
can we leap, weep
and laugh together
beneath our shared oak tree.


-Wendy Thompson, 9/15/2007