Alone

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When I feel most alone, no matter

if life and love remain all around,

when body and mind are too much,

I need to leave the bread at the table,

go out and walk the orchard or the lake,
find the star, the moon, or the last loaf of sun.

Nothing there, nothing
between me and the Scotch pine,

nothing between me and loss,
no bridge across the distance,

only the dissolving heart, alive, the way

the sun sinks slowly, without a body, everywhere,

and try not to be afraid.

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Poem: The Soul's Correspondence

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The Soul’s Correspondence

Freely, the black locusts bend and wave
from limbs and fingers, waterfall
spray across their stone slab of sky.
The older the tree, and taller,
the greater the grace. The young
birch and plum imitate with curtsies
in their small way, new to the wind.
The spruce’s scraggles heave and flutter.
Bamboo hisses; leafless poplar echoes.
They write poems with ease,
roots deepening below them in the earth.
Not buried exactly. But weighted,
spindling toward magnetic center.
Listen birds, stop squawking at me.
I want to hear the Soul’s correspondence
through the spirits of trees, while I rest
hands in my lap. No writing. No work.
Up from the essence of survival. No,
listen. It is far more than that.


March 2012

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Poem: What they'll say when she's gone

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Here's a bit of experimentation as I contemplate what lasts.

What they’ll say when she’s gone

I can’t believe I will never hear her
____________ again, reminds me of
the way I felt after I lost ___________.
I wish she would have left me
her blue ___________, so delicate, irreplaceably
graceful. I was smitten with something in her eyes
when she talked, the ____________ of her
lips, the blossom on her _______________,
the way ____________ fell on her hair every autumn.
I was surprised and taken with
her handwriting, as elegant as a __________
flying from her hand, gone forever.
She was an excellent listmaker, but
she could never finish her _____________.
The _____________ she made was divine,
but her ______________ was an utter flop.
The attention she gave to every
_______________ overcame the way
she _____________. Her love of _____________
made her do things
I would never, could never do.

But I have to say, it was the way she ___________,
always there, that I will try to never forget. She did it like
no one I knew, or read of, or could
possibly imagine. She’s stayed in my dreams
more than she’ll ever know, and less
than I now believe, or remember.


March 2012

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Poem: Out or In

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Out or In

Here is a young tree
stretching its bark
in a new spring. Its
ghostly blossoms erupt
like longing, so small in the air
that you must hover close
to ascertain fragrance.

I have broken beyond
fences, with spirits
benevolent and not. Who can say
for certain which breed
kicks down the gate, and whether
I am going out, or in?


March 2012

the wedding plum

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Poem for my parents' wedding anniversary: Words and Silence

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My parents with me after Dad had preached his sermon

one Sunday, probably in 1959; I'm guessing

it was Mother's Day; I am the youngest of 8 kids;

my parents were 40 when I was born in 1956;

I remember this day, and being grumpy

for this shot. I needed a nap. (still do)

Yesterday was my parents' wedding anniversary; they were married in 1941. They both passed away in the 1990s. I suppose something we never stop doing is to look for them when they're gone, mostly in ourselves. I thought about them a lot yesterday, remembering how they would give each other anniversary cards at the breakfast table, with an acronym on the envelope. They could not open their cards until they figured out what the acronym stood for. (Could be something such as: T. T. M. H. M. I. T. W.) By the way, speaking of handsome (catch that?), Robert of The Solitary Walker has a wonderful new blog about the inner journey called words and silence. I guess that phrase has been on my mind lately too as a result.

Words and Silence

My mother was a talker. An enthusiast.
She’d meet us at the front door with a book
open in hand, ready to expostulate. “Oh, hello,
Mom.” “Hello. Wait till you hear this,” she’d say.

Our father was quiet (when not in the pulpit
or visiting parishioners at home or in the hospital).
Still waters and all that. Mom talking
at her end of the ten-seated dinner table,
he waiting at his end, not saying
a word, hands on his lap, not eating,
and finally someone notices that
he’s waiting. “Potatoes, Dad? Pickles?”
When he smiles his faint smile,
you’ve found it, and you pass it to him.

They are long gone, but I taste them
here in my mouth. My mother’s excitement
about life, her garrulous smorgasbord
spilling across the table. My father’s
silence—waiting, so often waiting—
for the salt or beans or something else spread
out upon the table in front of us, content
to let the empty space of his buttercup plate
just rest awhile.


March 2012

Poetry should be heard.

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Song for James, who got his first vaccines at 2 months yesterday

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Spring children
(a riddle, sort of)

The ground is old in the farmyard

and on it my feet stomp;

but never can I break it,

no one tells me not to romp!

But there are children who play here

who come back every spring

and break through the ground like sunlight

so it doesn’t feel the sting!
 

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Post-St. Paddy's Day Poem: What is the language of the heart's red blood?

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bullet holes at the General Post Office, Dublin, 2007

Last post was praise, and I loved you joining me.

Then Sunday, the day after St. Patrick's Day, I spent hours rereading Irish history (from the Great Famine, aka the Potato Famine 1845-1852, through the Easter Rising 1916), and the poems of Padráig Pearse (Patrick Henry Pearse). He was gifted with words, and was chosen to be spokesman for the Easter Rising in 1916. He wrote of a mother’s heart awash in the blood of sons who fought for country in his poem "The Mother," something I can relate to, at least in part. (I have not had a son at war, but I have experienced childbirth, and a mother's heart.)

The Mother

I do not grudge them: Lord, I do not grudge
My two strong sons that I have seen go out
To break their strength and die, they and a few,
In bloody protest for a glorious thing,
They shall be spoken of among their people,
The generations shall remember them,
And call them blessed;
But I will speak their names to my own heart
In the long nights;
The little names that were familiar once
Round my dead hearth.
Lord, thou art hard on mothers:
We suffer in their coming and their going;
And tho' I grudge them not, I weary, weary
Of the long sorrow--And yet I have my joy:
My sons were faithful, and they fought.

~ Padráig H. Pearse

Sadly and synchronously, Padráig, his brother Willie and thirteen others were executed after the rebellion, after being held in the Kilmainham jail. Into our psyche all this bloody history and the bad news of today gets tucked, apart from our will or intention. (For some very good news, take 16 minutes to watch Peter Diamandis talk about Abundance in our Future in this TED video.) Anyway, I'm sorry for the downer post.

About the photos: I took the photo at top in front of Dublin's General Post Office in 2007 to document the bullet holes from the 1916 Easter Rising. When I took the picture, I did not even see the man in the background. Later, someone pointed out the remarkable and eerie resemblance to Padráig Pearse (second photo), who proclaimed an Irish Republic practically on the same spot where the man in my photo stands.

What is the language of the heart's red blood?

The slosh and drone of the washing
machine could be the sound track
of my wrestling dream last night,
my secret self soaked in her lonely
unconscious waters, agitated between
pain and beauty. What is the place
for me, inside and outside dark caves
of nature, and the long rooms
of strategy, men, and war? And these petty
winds that blow into sleep out of this or that
maternal forest or sacred mountain of love.
They dissolve like sugar in public life. I sit
with a ceramic mug in the pinked dawn,
my tongue tucked in its habitual chip. 
Vanilla, coffee, daylight. What is the language
of the heart’s red blood, grown sweeter, or
more bitter, through the tossing, washing,
roast and ferment in fields of sleep?

March 2012

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Poem: Hymn

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I haven't attended church since sometime in the 1990s. Sometimes I miss the singing. I grew up singing alto in the choir, as my mom was the choir director and pianist. I've been reading Walt Whitman poems, and poems by many of you, and Billy Collins, Denise Levertov, Mary Oliver and Emily Dickinson. It's time for praise. Poetry is praise, I think, or can be, even when it rages. There is something about the slowing of its condensation that makes my heart rise up and sweeten (like sap into syrup, maybe), both reading it and writing it. So I call this one "Hymn," remembering praise songs. The poem ends with a word that symbolizes many different meanings, probably at least billions. My three-word glossary is just a start. The picture above is from a bathroom stall at the Cass Café on Cass Avenue in Detroit, taken in 2006 when our Lesley was attending the College for Creative Studies. I wonder if you have ever taken a picture inside a bathroom stall?

Hymn

Praise the sky to the tree
And praise the tree to the ground
Praise the word on a leaf
And paraphrase some praise in song

Ride the curve of a question
streaming down the wing of a swan
Uncurl your tongue with a holler
Or fly on praise without sound

Exhale the body to praise the air
Burn brittle sticks of hate
Clean the room with incense
Sniff the glue of “Celebrate”

Blossom a path to the plum
And flower-fountain the moon
Waterfall your hair on rocks
Then tease it out like the sun

Shout in yellow and laugh out red
Amen the sinners, admonish the dead
Swing on the tire to praise the clock
Then hug the hammock and sleep full stop

Heat up your heart
And mercy your mind
Climb on the couch, bounce
your jiggles divine

Puff milkweed pouts and explode the pod
Shake your bones till they’re humble
Fill that space with God!


March 2012

Glossary:
God = Love.Light.Life

Poetry should be heard.

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Sap at night

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Sap at night

Before budding begins,
the last pure stream of the maple

drops into the bucket-moon

sweet and uncluttered

Postscript note: Because of early warm temperatures, Don has been harvesting sap from eight buckets on four six maple trees since early February. Normally he would not begin tapping until late February. Sap is sweet until buds begin to form, then it becomes bitter and can't be used. We have noticed buds starting to sprout on all the trees and shrubs, and with the expectation of very warm weather this week (70°F, 20°C), he only has a few days of sap left to carry in. It takes 40 gallons of sap to boil into one gallon of sweet, buttery maple syrup. So far, he has boiled about that much, with another fourth of that to go. Depending on conditions, some days a five-gallon bucket is full in just one day's sap run.

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Poem: Spring again, and Bill Evans' "Peace Piece"

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Can it be a year since the Japanese tsunami, and the flowering of the Arab Spring? These, as well as horrors in other places, and Bill Evans' "Peace Piece" were on my mind all morning while this small poem came together. Yesterday it was warm for Michigan, in the 60s (15-20°C); beds got raked out, revealing crocuses in bloom. After a while, listening to the songs and calls of the birds, I could hear them say things I wanted to say. Which led to the Bill Evans song, because it also gives me calm beauty when I need it. And then the poem, which only seems to offer a bit of a framework for far more that wants to be said, and you know, sometimes only improvised songs can do it. You can read this back story about Bill Evans' intoxicating song "Peace Piece," recorded in 1958, including how he did not much like performing it upon request, as it was an inspiration of the moment, not something that could be recreated. Thankfully it was recorded, so it can be listened to, with peace rising like spring again and again.

Spring again

Woodpeckers nail octaves
to limbs
in another delicate scaffold of spring

while the mourning dove
coos a bass ostinato
out of

the bottom line,
ever below
the laughing glissando

of the Northern Flicker
and the
tinkling dee-dee-dee

of the chickadee;
note by ceremonial note
their steady spirit

tinkers with my hammering heart
to build even just one season
of peace, peace.

March 2012

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When you feel imprisoned

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graveyard in Kinsale, Ireland

The Prisoner

I
My hand has one gesture left:
to push things away.
From the rock dampness drips
on old stones.

This dripping is all I can hear.
My heart keeps pace
with the drops falling
and sinks away with them.

If the drops fall faster
an animal might come to drink.
Somewhere it is brighter than this—
but what do we know.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke
Part II of "The Prisoner" is here
translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy

For some time now the word I focus on in meditation is free. I don't meditate daily; maybe a couple times a week. I close my eyes for a few minutes, focus on my breath, and while I exhale, I hear, see and feel the word free. Sometimes I'm up in the sky, with birds, coasting on air currents. Sometimes free appears as a prayer for someone. But it had not occurred to me until now that it was an unconscious "choice," this meditation word, in a time when I am bumping up against the stone walls of physical limitations for the first time in my life.

I've been slowed by hand-wrist-arm-shoulder-neck pain since December. These are repetitive strain injuries, the result of twenty years at a computer at work. I am getting manipulations by an osteopath, and learning the Alexander technique, in hopes of relieving it. Dictation software has been a mixed blessing; often I get more tension using it than not when I have to repeat a sentence many times. Last month I was also diagnosed with hypothyroidism, which accounts for some of my fatigue, and soon I'll go on the lowest dosage of medication for it, taking a prescription drug long term for the first time. I'm 55. (The natural remedies for hypothyroidism include avoiding cruciferous vegetables—broccoli, cauliflower, kale, spinach—because they block the thyroid hormone. I would rather not give these up, so I'm hoping the low dose of levothyroxine is enough to restore my metabolism and does not result in the dizzy or "drunk" feeling some people encounter. My bad cholesterol has shot up from 193 to 243, which is another reason it seems important to go on this med.)

Learning the Alexander technique from my teacher Elinore is about unlearning bad habits of hunching my shoulders, holding tension, rushing into space, pulling my head back onto my spine, affecting every movement of my body in painful ways. (This 10 minute video explains quite well how the Alexander technique helps pupils regain balance and lightness.) For years I've thrust forward into the next thing, as if life was an emergency.

More than the pain, what bothers me most is having to slow down. "Somewhere it is brighter than this," says the prisoner in Rilke's poem. Truly, somewhere it is much darker than this where I am. But this has taken some adjustment. I am no longer quick, and youthful. Suddenly I act like an old woman, not the plan I had when I became a grandma in January.

We just finished watching "Little Dorrit" the BBC series on Netflix DVDs. It's the Dickens story of a young woman who lives in a debtors' prison in London with her father. She was born there and knows nothing different. She even loves her life caring for her father and prefers it to the new life of wealth that comes to them suddenly. Her father Mr. Dorrit suffers daily from his imprisonment and degradation, however, believing he is worthy of something far better. But once he arrives at the something far better, he finds no peace there either.

I take inspiration from Little Amy Dorrit. Inside the stone walls of Marshallsea Prison for Debt she angelically loves and cares for her father in spite of his irksome resistance and condescension. Like Dickens' characters often are, she is probably a caricature of what a human can really be, in this case softer and more philanthropically positive than seems possible in her situation. But even she could not adjust to the seismic changes that came with enormous wealth. We humans are creatures of habit, even when our habits keep us confined.

"We need to stop trying so hard and allow our lives to unfold naturally," says Richard Brennan in my Alexander book. For some years now I've been doing spiritual work to learn to love what is and what comes, which is helping me with this physical learning.  To not "push it away" as the prisoner in Rilke's poem, now that's the real work.

For another take on changing habits, see a new post at sparks & mirrors, "To deliver oneself up to silence."

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Poem: Hitting the Mark

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Hitting the Mark

"My barn having

burned to the ground, I can see the moon."

      ~ old Chinese proverb

In the whole big

field of blue

the sun hits

the bull’s-eye moon.

Down here

my face’s albedo

mimics something

like it in return.

Night by night

turn after turn

the arrow light

finds its mark

and like a climbing,

stumbling goat

I aim my horn

this way and that

to snag that light

in flight. Maybe

one long and

maundering day

from here, when

they open the gate

for home, the sun

will put up his

arrows, the moon

her shield, I my bow-

shaped horn, and we'll

dissolve in sleep.

Until then I'll jump

the fence and like that old

cow make a scene

over the moon.

March 2012

Painting: "Not far from the sun, moon and the stars" by Jean Arp

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Poem: The housefly and me

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The housefly and me

We bask together in the sun. Against this southeast window
  he is finding spring strength in tireless morning exercise.
    Starting from the lower frame he walks up the pane

a few inches. Reaching an invisible barrier, he flutters
  and slides back down to the casing, and immediately
    starts again, straight up the window escarpment.

His zenith rises higher each trip. It has been some
  five minutes, and he can now get to six inches
    before falling back to the maple ledge. I sit and wait

for water to boil in the kitchen behind me.
  Whisker-legs rappel back down the glass. The glass-top
     burner sputters with moisture on the bottom of the pot.

In the time it takes to whistle, he has reached nine inches.
  The smell of spiced chai steeps in creamy sweetness.
    Sunday morning warms in a March sun.

Alongside a red pen, bright spines of books face me
  with titles of the inner journey—what is real, mystery, being.
    My fly climbs and falls, climbs and falls, climbs and falls,

separated from the sun by glass. When the window opens
  in another month, he’ll fly. I will have studied another few
    chapters, including this one about the author’s trek to a far-off

Indian temple with a Maharajji, the author's sudden tears
  fluttering down his cheeks, and down the cliffs of the mountain
    he'd conquered, when he realizes his home was right here inside all along.


March 2012

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Comparison

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Comparison is a rational exercise of analysts and politicians.
It is necessary for science, important for business,

and desirable for historians. However, comparison

is not necessary or desirable in matters

of soul and spirit, art and music, nature and beauty.

Does this feel true to you?

Art notes
Top: "Sharecropper" by Elizabeth Catlett, 1952
Bottom: Crop of "Birth of Venus" by Sandro Boticelli, 1486

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