Poetry

When I was a child

I once sat sobbing on the floor

Beside my mother’s piano

As she played and sang

For there was in her singing

A shy yet solemn glory

My smallness could not hold

And when I was asked

Why I was crying

I had no words for it

I only shook my head

And went on crying

Why is it that music

At its most beautiful

Opens a wound in us

An ache a desolation

Deep as a homesickness

For some far-off

And half-forgotten country

I’ve never understood

Why this is so

But there’s an ancient legend

From the other side of the world

That gives away the secret

Of this mysterious sorrow

For centuries on centuries

We have been wandering

But we were made for Paradise

As deer for the forest

And when music comes to us

With its heavenly beauty

It brings us desolation

For when we hear it

We half remember

That lost native country

We dimly remember the fields

Their fragrant windswept clover

The birdsongs in the orchards

The wild white violets in the moss

By the transparent streams

And shining at the heart of it

Is the longed-for beauty

Of the One who waits for us

Who will always wait for us

In those radiant meadows

Yet also came to live with us

And wanders where we wander.

Your great mistake is to act the drama

as if you were alone. As if life

were a progressive and cunning crime

with no witness to the tiny hidden

transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny

the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,

even you, at times, have felt the grand array;

the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding

out your solo voice. You must note

the way the soap dish enables you,

or the window latch grants you freedom.

Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.

The stairs are your mentor of things

to come, the doors have always been there

to frighten you and invite you,

and the tiny speaker in the phone

is your dream-ladder to divinity.

Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into the

conversation. The kettle is singing

even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots

have left their arrogant aloofness and

seen the good in you at last. All the birds

and creatures of the world are unutterably

themselves. Everything is waiting for you.

Be silent.

Be still.

Alone.

Empty

Before your God.

Say nothing.

Ask nothing.

Be silent.

Be still.

Let your God look upon you.

That is all.

God knows.

God understands.

God loves you

With an enormous love,

And only wants

To look upon you

With that love.

Quiet.

Still.

Be.

Let your God—

Love you.

i thank You God for most this amazing

day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees

and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything

which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,

and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth

day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay

great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing

breathing any–lifted from the no

of all nothing–human merely being

doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and

now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

Thou shalt not worry, for worry is the most unproductive of all human activities.

Thou shalt not be fearful, for most of the things we fear never come to pass.

Thou shalt not cross bridges before you get to them, for no one yet has succeeded in accomplishing this.

Thou shalt face each problem as it comes, you can handle only one at a time anyway.

Thou shalt not take problems to bed with you, for they make very poor bedfellows.

Thou shalt not borrow other people’s problems, they can take better care of them than you can.

Thou shalt not try to relive yesterday for good or ill, it is gone. Concentrate on what is happening in your life today.

Thou shalt count thy blessings, never overlooking the small ones, for a lot of small blessings add up to a big one.

Thou shalt be a good listener, for only when you listen do you hear ideas different from your own, it’s very hard to learn something new when you’re talking.

Thou shalt not become bogged down by frustration, for ninety percent of it is rooted in self-pity and it will only interfere with positive action.

I am rich today with autumn’s gold,

All that my covetous hands can hold;

Frost-painted leaves and goldenrod,

A goldfinch on a milkweed pod,

Huge golden pumpkins in the field

With heaps of corn from a bounteous yield,

Golden apples heavy on the trees

Rivaling those of Hesperides,

Golden rays of balmy sunshine spread

Over all like butter on warm bread;

And the harvest moon will this night unfold

The streams running full of molten gold.

Oh, who could find a dearth of bliss

With autumn glory such as this!

How can I have a child who is 43

When I am only 32?!

How did I reach this age

Of almost seven decades?!

I am scared…terrified at times,

Wondering “is this all there is”?

What will be my legacy

To my children, to the world?

I am not afraid of death,

Or even of dying.

I often look forward to

The peace of this ending.

To stop having to try,

To relax into just being.

What more am I to do

With 10 or 20 more years?

And yet, I miss what I never had.

The PhD not achieved, nor he paintings displayed,

The elusive book not written, nor the programs never run,

the coaching never given, the love withheld.

Will I miss the countries never experienced

Or the adventures left for others?

The friends never made,

The grandchildren never met?

When can I feel truly that

I have done enough, that

I am complete, that my

Life has been good?

I wish I could let go of what

I thought was expected of me,

Of more good works to do,

More compassionate service to give.

Autumn has passed and

Winter is arriving.

I pray to continue to do

God’s work in gratitude and love.

We came together,

As women, of a certain age,

As almost strangers.

Seeking a deeper connection,

Desiring to explore your life

And my own.

We were hesitant, gentle,

Unsure, yearning.

Would I be heard?

Would I be judged?

Slowly, carefully,

We spoke about ourselves,

Our thoughts, our feelings,

Our hopes, our fears.

Using a book as a safe springboard,

To react to, to reflect on.

What touched us, stirred us?

What made sense, what didn’t?

We learned that tears

Express a deeply felt Truth.

We saw ourselves in

Each other’s lives.

So many years of growing,

Learning, searching, sowing.

So fertile the soil that

Nurture our roots.

We gradually learned

To listen with a compassionate, open heart.

No need to ‘fix’ the pain.

Feeling totally accepted,

Knowing we were not alone

In this business of living.

How tender we became,

How vulnerable.

How wise we were!

We learned from each other.

What a rare gift these circles became,

What comfort they brought.

What love was given and received!

God was there all along,

Never hiding.

We just had to feel God’s grace,

To realize God is in the process,

All the time, all along.

Listen –

Listen more carefully to what is around you

Right now.

In my world

There are the bells from the clanks

Of the morning milk drums,

And a wagon wheel outside my window

Just hit a bump

Which turned into an ecstatic chorus

Of the Beloved’s Name.

There is the Prayer Call

Rising up like the sun

Out of the mouths of a thousand birds.

There is an astonishing vastness

Of movement and Life

Emanating sound and light

From my folded hands

And my even quieter simple being and heart.

My dear,

Is it true that your mind

Is sometimes like a battering

Ram

Running all through the city,

Shouting so madly inside and out

About the ten thousand things

That do not matter?

Hafiz, too,

For many years beat his head in youth

And thought himself at a great distance,

Far from an armistice

With God.

But that is why this scarred old pilgrim

Has now become such a sweet rare vintage

Who weeps and sings for you.

O listen –

Listen more carefully

To what is inside of you right now.

In my world

All that remains is the wondrous call to

Dance and prayer

Rising up like a thousand suns

Out of the mouth of a

Single bird.

Here’s to the crazy ones.

The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers.

The round pegs in the square holes.

The ones who see things differently.

They’re not fond of rules.

And they have no respect for the status quo.

You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them,

disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them.

About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them.

Because they change things.

They invent. They imagine.

They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire.

They push the human race forward.

Maybe they have to be crazy.

How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art?

Or sit in silence and hear a song that’s never been written?

Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?

While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.

Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

Here in the forest

I know a presence

bigger than myself,

stronger than the ponderosa pines

Here in the whispering forest

I hear a voice

softer than the sighing of swaying branches

Here in the dark forest

I see a truth

shining through the boughs,

telling me I am not alone.

Content we are,

the two of us,

to sit inside each other’s heart.

Glad for the time

to visit our lives

and tell our stories.

We laugh.

We dream.

We sometimes cry.

As always

we listen

with amazement

to the singing

in each other’s souls.

How swiftly the strained honey

of afternoon light

flows into darkness

and the closed bud shrugs off

its special mystery

in order to break into blossom:

as if what exists, exists

so that it can be lost

and become precious.

Come, for the dusk is our own; let us fare forth together,

With a quiet delight in our hearts for the ripe, still, autumn weather,

Through the rustling valley and wood and over the crisping meadow,

Under a high-sprung sky, winnowed of mist and shadow.

Sharp is the frosty air, and through the far hill-gaps showing

Lucent sunset lakes of crocus and green are glowing;

‘Tis the hour to walk at will in a wayward, unfettered roaming,

Caring for naught save the charm, elusive and swift, of the gloaming.

Watchful and stirless the fields as if not unkindly holding

Harvested joys in their clasp, and to their broad bosoms folding

Baby hopes of a Spring, trusted to motherly keeping,

Thus to be cherished and happed through the long months of their sleeping.

Silent the woods are and gray; but the firs than ever are greener,

Nipped by the frost till the tang of their loosened balsam is keener;

And one little wind in their boughs, eerily swaying and swinging,

Very soft and low, like a wandering minstrel is singing.

Beautiful is the year, but not as the springlike maiden

Garlanded with her hopes ­rather the woman laden

With wealth of joy and grief, worthily won through living,

Wearing her sorrow now like a garment of praise and thanksgiving.

Gently the dark comes down over the wild, fair places,

The whispering glens in the hills, the open, starry spaces;

Rich with the gifts of the night, sated with questing and dreaming,

We turn to the dearest of paths where the star of the homelight is gleaming.

It doesn’t have to be

the blue iris, it could be

weeds in a vacant lot,

or a few small stones;

just pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don’t try

to make them elaborate, this isn’t

a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which

another voice may speak.

In the deep fall

don’t you imagine the leaves think how

comfortable it will be to touch

the earth instead of the

nothingness of air and the endless

freshets of wind? And don’t you think

the trees themselves, especially those with mossy,

warm caves, begin to think

of the birds that will come — six, a dozen — to sleep

inside their bodies? And don’t you hear

the goldenrod whispering goodbye,

the everlasting being crowned with the first

tuffets of snow? The pond

vanishes, and the white field over which

the fox runs so quickly brings out

its blue shadows. And the wind pumps its

bellows. And at evening especially,

the piled firewood shifts a little,

longing to be on its way.

Someone I loved once gave me

a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand

that this, too, was a gift.

We have been ripening

to a greater ease,

learning to accept

that all hungers cannot be fed,

that saving the world

may be a matter

of sowing a seed

not overthrowing a tyrant,

that we do what we can.

The moment of vision,

the seizure still makes

its relentless demands:

Work, Love, Be silent,

Speak.

Before you know what kindness really is

you must lose things,

feel the future dissolve in a moment

like salt in a weakened broth.

What you held in your hand,

what you counted and carefully saved,

all this must go so you know

how desolate the landscape can be

between the regions of kindness.

How you ride and ride

thinking the bus will never stop,

the passengers eating maize and chicken

will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,

you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho

lies dead by the side of the road.

You must see how this could be you,

how he too was someone

who journeyed through the night with plans

and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,

you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.

You must wake up with sorrow.

You must speak to it till your voice

catches the thread of all sorrows

and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,

only kindness that ties your shoes

and sends you out into the day to mail letters and

purchase bread,

only kindness that raises its head

from the crowd of the world to say

it is I you have been looking for,

and then goes with you every where

like a shadow or a friend.

I have sent you my invitation, the note inscribed on the palm of my hand by the fire of living. Don’t jump up and shout, “Yes, this is what I want! Let’s do it!” Just stand up quietly and dance with me.

Show me how you follow your deepest desires, spiraling down into the ache within the ache, and I will show you how I reach inward and open outward to feel the kiss of the Mystery, sweet lips on my own, every day.

Don’t tell me you want to hold the whole world in your heart. Show me how you turn away from making another wrong without abandoning yourself when you are hurt and afraid of being unloved.

Tell me a story of who you are, and see who I am in the stories I live. And together we will remember that each of us always has a choice.

Don’t tell me how wonderful things will be . . . some day. Show me you can risk being completely at peace, truly okay with the way things are right now in this moment, and again in the next and the next and the next. . .

I have heard enough warrior stories of heroic daring. Tell me how you crumble when you hit the wall, the place you cannot go beyond by the strength of your own will. What carries you to the other side of that wall, to the fragile beauty of your own humanness?

And after we have shown each other how we have set and kept the clear, healthy boundaries that help us live side by side with each other, let us risk remembering that we never stop silently loving those we once loved out loud.

Take me to the places on the earth that teach you how to dance, the places where you can risk letting the world break your heart. And I will take you to the places where the earth beneath my feet and the stars overhead make my heart whole again and again.

Show me how you take care of business without letting business determine who you are. When the children are fed but still the voices within and around us shout that soul’s desires have too high a price, let us remind each other that it is never about the money.

Show me how you offer to your people and the world the stories and the songs you want our children’s children to remember. And I will show you how I struggle not to change the world, but to love it.

Sit beside me in long moments of shared solitude, knowing both our absolute aloneness and our undeniable belonging. Dance with me in the silence and in the sound of small daily words, holding neither against me at the end of the day.

And when the sound of all the declarations of our sincerest intentions has died away on the wind, dance with me in the infinite pause before the next great inhale of the breath that is breathing us all into being, not filling the emptiness from the outside or from within.

Don’t say, “Yes!” Just take my hand and dance with me.

I’ve spent many years learning

how to fix life, only to discover

at the end of the day

that life is not broken

There is a hidden seed of greater wholeness

in everyone and everything.

We serve life best

when we water it

and befriend it.

When we listen before we act.

In befriending life,

we do not make things happen

according to our own design.

We uncover something that is already happening

in us and around us and

create conditions that enable it.

Everything is moving toward its place of wholeness

always struggling against the odds.

Everything has a deep dream of itself and its fulfillment.

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart

and try to love the questions themselves. . . .

Live the questions now.

Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it,

live long some distant day into the answer.

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing,

and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.

A sudden onset of grief seeps into all the crevices

of life. Like humidity, it hampers

lungs, constricts the heart, acts

as a barrier to rapid movement.

Humidity, sultry humidity, envelops

all of life, wilting the crisp edges

into human messiness. Humidity

like grief, eventually congeals,

coagulates, precipitates and weeps.

In clearing sorrow, life meanders

to the aching edges and waits

for promised dryer air, while treasuring

the all enveloping steamy incapacity

of grief.

Dropped from the counter of globalization

In the midst of globalization in the midst

of economic transactions.

These human coins, illegal tender get swept up

into the dust pan of national identity and border security.

These small coins of labor fall through the cracks of caring,

ending up in dank dark pens-smaller than pennies-

into the global wealth, taken as too small to matter,

mere annoyances of possible threat to a sovereign nation.

These small coins are tossed into cages of fifty, sixty,

jumbled together on the floor, in corners along barred walls.

They do not fit into the ATMs. They will not be received for

deposit in the world economy. They are spare change tossed

on the counter of globalization – and forgotten.

Hold onto what is good

Even if it is a handful of earth.

Hold on to what you believe

Even if it is a tree that stands by itself.

Hold onto what you must do

Even if it is a long way from here.

Hold onto life

Even if it seems easier to let go.

Hold onto my hand

Even if I have gone away from you.

I have walked through many lives,

some of them my own,

and I am not who I was,

though some principle of being

abides, from which I struggle

not to stray.

When I look behind,

as I am compelled to look

before I can gather strength

to proceed on my journey,

I see the milestones dwindling

toward the horizon

and the slow fires trailing

from the abandoned camp-sites,

over which scavenger angels

wheel on heavy wings.

Oh, I have made myself a tribe

out of my true affections,

and my tribe is scattered!

How shall the heart be reconciled

to its feast of losses?

In a rising wind

the manic dust of my friends,

those who fell along the way,

bitterly stings my face.

Yet I turn, I turn,

exulting somewhat,

with my will intact to go

wherever I need to go,

and every stone on the road

precious to me.

In my darkest night,

when the moon was covered

and I roamed through wreckage,

a nimbus-clouded voice

directed me:

“Live in the layers,

not on the litter.”

Though I lack the art

to decipher it,

no doubt the next chapter

in my book of transformations

is already written.

I am not done with my changes.

Listen…

To the contented melodies of a free bird,

to spring raindrops communing with the earth,

to the trees dancing in a summer breeze,

to the flowing stream, hastening to reunite with its source,

to the rhythmic cadence of a baby’s breath,

to the synchronized footsteps of strolling lovers,

to the burning desires of your heart,

It is the sound of silence,

It is the voice of God.

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among

things that change. But it doesn’t change.

People wonder about what you are pursuing.

You have to explain about the thread.

But it is hard for others to see.

While you hold it you can’t get lost.

Tragedies happen; people get hurt

or die; and you suffer and get old.

Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.

You don’t ever let go of the thread.

We have a soul at times.

No one’s got it non-stop,

for keeps.

Day after day,

year after year

may pass without it.

Sometimes

it will settle for awhile

only in childhood’s fears and raptures.

Sometimes only in astonishment

that we are old.

It rarely lends a hand

in uphill tasks,

like moving furniture,

or lifting luggage,

or going miles in shoes that pinch.

It usually steps out

whenever meat needs chopping

or forms have to be filled.

For every thousand conversations

it participates in one,

if even that,

since it prefers silence.

Just when our body goes from ache to pain,

it slips off-duty.

It’s picky:

it doesn’t like seeing us in crowds,

our hustling for a dubious advantage

and creaky machinations make it sick.

Joy and sorrow

aren’t two different feelings for it.

It attends us

only when the two are joined.

We can count on it

when we’re sure of nothing

and curious about everything.

Among the material objects

it favors clocks with pendulums

and mirrors, which keep on working

even when no one is looking.

It won’t say where it comes from

or when it’s taking off again,

though it’s clearly expecting such questions.

We need it

but apparently

it needs us

for some reason too.