with a line from Charles Simic, “The Prodigal”
Glade of light on the empty stage.
She steps into it, eyes blinded.
Someone in the audience
clears a throat. Someone
scuffs a sole. Many invisible
someones make no sound at all.
She has faith they are there.
She is holding a stack of papers.
Her chest contracts, rises.
So much that happens goes unseen,
a secret cinema.
She opens her mouth
and the words fall out like leaves
releasing themselves from a tree.
With each sentence she is more bare
until only her trunk remains.
She is an aspen arriving in January,
skeleton exposed.
What no one can see
are the roots. What no one can see
is she is standing on trust.
It has taken her fifty-two years
of bursting into color and
wildly waving her branches
to finally learn how
to stand still.
The other trees stand with her,
and though it is winter,
their roots grow wider, deeper.
Posts Tagged ‘self discovery’
The Poet Reads for the First Time Since Her Son Died
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, cinema, performance, self discovery, tree on January 25, 2022| 16 Comments »
Biomechanical Creature
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged find holiness in the everyday, hand, kayleen, self discovery, touch on February 4, 2021| 4 Comments »
Anything can be a holy path, says Kayleen,
and I begin to trace the outline of my left hand
with my right index finger, following
the familiar shape, surprised
at how intimate it is, this tiny tactile journey
of wrinkles and knuckles, fingers and thumb—
I close my eyes and my finger continues
to slowly travel the tips and webs, rises
and vees, a labyrinth of skin and nail
I navigate through touch.
How many years have I avoided knowing
myself as holy? How many days
have I desecrated this temple of flesh
and breath with belittling thoughts?
How many hours have I resisted the pleasure
I feel now as I explore this fleeting path,
this haptic trail steeped in awe?
Perhaps science could explain away
this divine excursion as nothing more
than a series of electrical impulses
moving at eighty feet per second
through my neural infrastructure,
but somehow knowing how the body works
makes this gentle path I choose today
even more oh! more holy.
*quote from Kayleen Asbo in “Blessing Thread: Wales and Ireland,” an online class
Good Morning, Stranger
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged self discovery on August 7, 2020| 4 Comments »
Some mornings when I wake,
it’s as if I have entered someone else’s life
wearing someone else’s dress
and someone else’s socks
and try as I might,
I can’t seem to find myself inside them,
can’t seem to get them off of me.
I read a book in which a woman’s lover
tears off her clothes with his teeth.
I’d be grateful for the help, of course,
but what if I discovered more layers—
what if my skin had to go, too?
And what after that?
How long can I move through the world
as if I’m a stranger to myself?
How long can I pretend not to know
this is the only life I’m given?
This skin, mine. This body,
with its trillions of cells,
the only body I get.
This day with its unfamiliar dress,
the only day.
Looking in the mirror,
I see what I always see—
someone I almost recognize,
someone I sometimes
feel ready to meet.
Gift
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged hurt, self discovery, stone on May 6, 2020| 2 Comments »
When she lobbed a stone at me,
I’d long since taken down the walls
that might have offered protection.
Nothing to do then
but hitch a ride on the stone—
a direct trip to the core.
Had I known how quickly
it could carry me into self-inquiry,
I might have put the stone in her hand.
Nah. Still, I thank her.
Where the stone fell marks the spot
where I was. Already, the soft green moss.
A Lesson in Resilience
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged chives, garden, resilience, self discovery on March 24, 2020| 2 Comments »
Today it is the chives that spur me,
seeing their slender green scapes and leaves
that have pushed up
through the dried clumps
of last year’s version of themselves.
When nothing else in the garden is green,
the chives grow, smooth, bendable, soft,
and yet they have managed to pierce
through the hard spring dirt.
Unwatered. Ignored.
In the aftermath of cold and dark,
they come. And something green in me responds,
pungent and powerful, eager. Ready
to flourish. Ready to meet the world,
though the cold is far from over.
What is it in us that longs to grow
through the previous, dried up versions of ourselves?
It rises, yes, like tiny spears, unstoppable,
bent on thriving, daring us to be
that resilient, that willing, that green.
En Garde
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged fencing, learning, poem, poetry, self discovery, unlearning on October 9, 2019| 3 Comments »
Keep distance, the fencing teacher says,
and by this he means, stay close enough
to your opponent that you could, at any time,
extend, lunge and attack with your point.
All my life, I’ve tried not to keep distance.
All my life, I’ve done my best to avoid
the attack—from either side. And now,
with my silver lamé and my one white glove
and my face safe behind metal mesh, I dig
to find the part of me who craves engagement,
who seeks a bout, who wants to threaten
my target and exploit their vulnerability.
Keep distance, he says, and I understand
that this is how I show up for the game.
This is how I meet not only the opponent,
but, perhaps for the first time, myself.
Wonder About Yourself
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged erik satie, nakedness, poem, poetry, self discovery, thinking on September 4, 2019| Leave a Comment »
inspired by Erik Satie, Gnossienne 1
may everything I think I know
about myself slip to the floor—
straight jacket, hair shirt, corset—
may whatever remains stay naked,
unable to don even cashmere, even silk
One Eventual
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, poem, poetry, self discovery on September 2, 2016| Leave a Comment »
Yet Another Layer
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged layers, poem, poetry, self discovery on August 15, 2015| 3 Comments »
Steeping so long
in this coat of shoulds
I forgot it was on
’til slipping out by accident
I see it hanging separate
while I stand bare
and strangely new,
wondering what this naked
soul can do.