long after it leaves
my arm, I still feel its footprints
the butterfly
Archive for April, 2012
Though We Don’t Hold On Haiku
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged butterfly, connection, haiku, loss, poem, poetry on April 21, 2012| 4 Comments »
Not From Grace, But With It
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, dream, falling, grace, poems, poetry on April 20, 2012| 3 Comments »
There is the moment
just before you fall
when you know
there is nothing left
to do except
to fall, to fall,
to fall and say yes
to the falling, to fall
and feel yourself
as you fall, how the stomach
rises where the throat
has been, it’s silent,
then—and it’s fast,
you think, so fast,
you are falling and not
a damn thing to be done
except to fall, to notice
the air rush over the skin,
yes nothing to do but
to fall, to keep falling,
to fall.
While Listening to Herbie Hancock
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged absence, Herbie Hancock, music, poems, poetry, presence, union on April 19, 2012| 3 Comments »
the barrier of noumenon-phenomenon
transcended
the circle momentarily complete
—Lenore Kandel
Perhaps
we,
too,
are
more
empty
space
than
note,
our
bodies
like
this
minor
tune—
vast
expanses
of
what
isn’t
here
held
together
by
something
almost
beautiful
that
is.
Chance
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, being present, love, poems, poetry, relationships, time on April 17, 2012| 2 Comments »
I cannot make
the flowers bloom
any faster
than they are,
but I can
right now
bend
my knees
beside the barren
lilac bush
and notice
how it, too,
is beautiful,
all spindle and gnarl,
its branches not
too small, too big,
can choose
to praise
those tight,
gray fists of buds
for being so tight,
so gray.
In a Day’s Work: Eight Haiku
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged haiku, love, poems, poetry on April 16, 2012| 5 Comments »
fresh cut grass—
I imagine some will stick
in our hair
*
open hand—
how much of your weight
I don’t hold there
*
sweet basil—
your buttonhole
could use some green
*
a bigger ass—
all the more likely
to land in your lap
*
sitting naked
on a rock I wonder
why you’re not
*
rising sourdough—
the shape of your hands still blooms
in wild yeast
*
dried cherries—
so much sweeter
the summer in fall
*
light
an open door
lead shoes
Writing Toward Awakening: Another day of reading and writing about spiritual paths
Posted in Uncategorized on April 16, 2012| 2 Comments »
Weehawken Arts
Ouray, Colorado
April 28
10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Everyone writes—grocery lists, to do lists, perhaps a thank you letter. But if you’re willing to risk a little, writing can open doors where before you didn’t even realize a door existed. Spiritual doors. Recovery doors. Doors of where there used to be walls.
No previous writing experience required. This day of play is for anyone who is curious about weaving spiritual awakening and the creative poetic impulse.
Will we find God? The mystics would say that the separateness is a fantasy. That divine, sublime connection and union is already and always there.
Leading the day is Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. She’s no guru, but she sure does find that poetry helps her as she opens up to what it means to be alive. Her books include The Miracle Already Happening: Everyday life with Rumi, Intimate Landscape, If You Listen and Holding Three Things at Once.
Cost: $85/member, $93/non-member
For the class: We’ll be reading from Poems of Awakening, edited by Betsy Small. Its not required to have the book, but copies will be available for purchase that day or participants can buy it on their own prior to the class. For anyone who has already taken this class, it will be the same idea with new content.
To register:
970-318-0150
weehawkenarts.org
It Seems So Much Harder Now
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged biology, parenting, perspective, poems, poetry, science on April 16, 2012| 3 Comments »
Dad takes out the microscope
from a dusty old suitcase
and sets it up on the kitchen table.
Once again I’m six years old
and we are living near the lake
where he takes me out with a net and a vial
to collect the water together.
He shows me how to make a slide,
how to focus the lens, how to steady
my eye and how to be patient
and wait for the tiny world
to reveal itself.
My son and daughter are with us
today, and he takes them out
to the waterway with the net
and the vial and all their curiosity.
I’d forgotten how miraculous it feels
to look into a droplet and find
a universe with slender strands
and tiny spiraled globs of green
and all the unseen critters seen,
their eyeless, mouthless,
heartless forms nudging
at the algal threads or speeding
across and off the slide.
How big the world seems then,
and how very, very small—
how hard it is to know
where we fit into it all—
this world with its car bombs
and militant groups, adventure
movies and evening news,
Jupiter high in the springtime sky
and under the microscope,
single-celled things zooming
and worming and meandering.
Who could make sense of it?
How simple to be one of these
small creatures I can’t name,
how simple it was to be that girl,
six years old, beside her father
on the microscope bench
dropping beads of water
onto the slides, kneeling on her chair,
mesmerized.
Wearing Away
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged control, identification, poems, poetry, release on April 15, 2012| 3 Comments »
We’re human. We hurt each other.
–Wendy Videlock
As wind softens canyons
as water smoothes glass,
the days erode what is sharp
in me and grinds down
these layers of sludge
that have built up on
my shores, all these stories
that I have collected
—even believed—
as portraits of myself.
I remember reading
of a Chinese monk
who decided to rid himself
of worldly possessions.
Instead of giving them away—
for they would become burdens
to someone else—
he set his every thing in a boat
and let it drift to the middle
of the lake, where he sank it.
I would like to sink my stories
this way—heap them
into a heavy box and lock it
tight and drop it in
the deepest lake where
they could do no one else harm.
I’d like to believe
that it could be so easy
to release the burdens of the heart.
But no, it’s this slow,
wearing down, wearing down—
the sloughing of the known.
And who is that wants
to protect someone else?
As if she could control
how the world goes?
Let’s put her and her story
into the boat, push it off
and wish her the best.
Meanwhile
the days do the rest.
Adrift
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breaking open, god, love, poem, poetry, unity on April 14, 2012| 2 Comments »
I imagine myself
an empty vase
and you
the water,
the flowers,
the blooming,
the wilting,
the returning
of emptiness,
and you the crack
fine and growing
in the way
I thought
I could hold
you in.
spring haiku
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged haiku, lucky to be alive, paradox, poem, poetry, surrender on April 13, 2012| 2 Comments »
naked in the wind—
crazy woman feeling
lucky to shiver