A Hundred Falling Veils

On a hot summer day
mowing the lawn
I am thinking of

I do not know what,
probably replaying
an old conversation

and thinking of wittier
or more loving things
I could have said.

Instead, I was probably
defensive and small,
so that now, pushing

the mower and trying
to find the cut line,
it is easy to believe

that I could do better
next time I converse,
and just as I think

of the perfect whatever
to say several days ago,
the sting. And sting. Sting.

And I am animal clawing
at air. I run. I swipe my arms
crazed and wild to clear a path

to the door. But the bees
follow me through the yard
and sting me twice more

on the elbow and wrist.
They bit me! I shout,
then correct myself to

the air. They stung me!
The air does not care
what the bees have done

or if I have said it
the way I should.
And I do not practice

new ways of speaking
nor worry one bit
about conversations I

did not have as I pull
out the stingers and
feel as how the body

responds to the venom
as the body does—without
thinking, and my

wrist, elbow, thigh
and inner arch begin
to swell.

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All night my hands
deep in tomatoes
preserving
what is missing
sweet basil.

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Take the picture
from the desk
and put it
in the drawer.
It was true
to a moment
that was before,
but now as
lightning unzips
the sky and now
as the moon
is wholly new
you are no longer
the one the camera knew
with smile aslant
and lashes half-mast
in dreamy fringe.
It’s okay to cry,
to want to grasp—
it’s so human to want
to frame the past
and then attach it
to the fridge or set
it shrine-like on the shelf.
It is not so sad,
tell yourself,
to put the image away.
Notice how
much more you
look out the window.
Notice how much
more you look
at the vase.
And who is
doing the looking?
If sadness comes,
invite it for tea
and drink the dark
cup together. Take
turns sipping, take
your time. You’ll
reach the bottom
soon enough.

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They are too fat,
too woody, and too far gone
these carrots I
have so patiently
been waiting to dig.

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Running on the long
dirt road, it is four miles
before my mind
slows down enough
to join my body.

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We are all left with the necessary risk to starve the ego—that in us which believes it can control the world—so that the unseeable music of being may rise and carry us.
—Mark Nepo, Book of Awakening

In the sand
my daughter digs
a hole. I help her,

absently pawing
at the ground.
Our hole deepens.

There are no thoughts
that stick, except
perhaps that the softness

of sand under
my fingertips
is pleasant.

I realize she’s changed
the game to
fill the hole.

It is a moment
before I join her.
I am still in the routine

of scraping out.
How soon
a habit forms.

So we fill. And pile.
And soon it is time
for digging again.

It goes on this way, and on,
only I no longer resist
the transitions from digging

to filling, from doming
to digging. I scrape sand roads
from one mound

or ditch to another.
A whole day could blisslfully pass
this way. But it doesn’t.

After an hour, I tell
her it’s time to go,
some hole I’ve dug

for myself, this filling
in slots of time with
things to do. But

the sand follows
us home and empties
onto the closet floor,

streaming from
the small pink hourglass
of her shoe.

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All night, all day, angels watching over me my lord.
—Traditional lullaby

If they were there today
at the waterfall, the angels
perhaps thought to themselves,
Ah, we can rest. Look. She’s
finally learning to sit.
They maybe were hiding
in the clear, frigid fringe,
or in the heart-shaped cress
that clung to the cliff. I did not
see them. I never do. Nor
did I hear them, but if they
were there I imagine
that while I sat
and obeyed the stillness
that was opening in me,
the angels were cheering
and patting each other
on their winged backs before
finding a nice mossy ledge
to take a long awaited nap.

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Farewell to simply
flirting with the pond—
Kersplash!

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Naked
in the midnight kitchen
the peach
before it’s minced for jam
begins to glisten

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Worried, I loosed
a thousand
black butterflies
inside the dark
of my worry,
which, it turns
out, is in my belly.
I know because
of the fluttering there,
the fritillary battering
of my gut with dark
aimless wings.
I brought the mass of them
mushroom hunting and
a while saw nothing
—
no fungi, no flowers,
not even the children
who hung on me.
And then I asked myself
what is here? And
aprons of chanterelles
began to appear. And
orange butterflies. Pink
queen’s crown blooming
on succulent leaves.
Spruce trees. The scent
of autumn in the yellowing
corn lilies. There were
no black butterflies anywhere.
What is real? I asked
the woman who is me,
and she said nothing
but bent over, intent
on tasting a tiny, wild strawberry.

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I had to keep at it. Had to get things done. And everything, it seemed, needed doing at once.
—Karen Chamberlain, “Desert of the Heart”

In the dappled light, in the heavy air
before the noontime summer storm,
peaches hang beneath leafy boughs

and a woman walks alone among them,
moving from one bright globe to another.
They are ripe, the Glohavens, swollen

and soft, and in the woman a fierce joy rises
and surges and takes her by surprise. She
has come here with a goal in mind—

to pick quickly two boxes for freezing and jam.
Her list of to do today is long—she is
moving from one home to another.

Says Basho, The journey itself is home,
but she is not traveling light. Six hundred
pounds of peaches to sell. A large garden

harvest to be processed and stored.
Books, of course, her bread baskets, clay ovens,
canning pots, jars, tea. Two children.

Files. Boxes of toys. She’s been
rushing all morning in an effort
to beat the storm. And so it is that

she finds herself here in the rows
where the Glohavens flash and glance
through the green, and for a few moments

the work disappears and she sheds every
part of herself that is not hand nor tongue nor nose.
Peaches, she eats them as if she’s an animal,

tears with her teeth to get through the skin.
She crams her mouth with sweet sticky flesh,
and fills it and fills it again. She feeds a rare

hunger that can truly be fed, and in a few minutes
she’s satisfied. She stands in the shade, hums, smiles,
licks her juice-glazed hands. Fuzz irritates

her chin. What is she doing here? She forgets.
Oh yes. Fill the boxes for freezing and jam
in the dappled light in the heavy air

before the noontime summer storm.

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I have wanted to love you
in the way of the sun—
constant. Radiant. Warm.
Here whenever you turn
toward me. Here when you
turn away. Give you my energy.
Light whichever path you choose.
Now I will do what the sun
can’t do. Let you go.

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Inside me, two birds
with silver wings beat frantic time
against the cage—

I expand and collapse,
expand, collapse,
but the bars don’t break

perhaps I can make
just enough space to fly out—
their wings are so, so tired.

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I think it says something
about our personalities
he said as I refused
the nicest peach
and reached for one with pecks.

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This flower of self really has to lose all its petals, it really has to drop away before the next movement starts to happen.
—Adyashanti, Spontaneous Awakening

At first I tried to keep them attached,
then tried to tear them off,
these petals of self.

Sweet flower, said Rumi,
Be still. The petals fall
as it’s time for them to fall.

But, I said, shouldn’t I DO
something? He smiled,
and pointed to the darkening

sky where hail was forming
in the afternoon clouds.

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That line I drew
and dared not cross
became, I thought, a noose, a snare.
I have to laugh.
It was a path.

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The shape of my shadow
surprises me—
after all this shedding
I somehow thought
the sun would shine right through

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It’s like chicken pox,
or the flu, or a cold,
only better, the way
that it catches when
someone suggests
that no matter how
stiff, how tired, how
down we might be,
the days are alive
and open to loving
and inside some small
voice, perhaps very,
very small, says, yes,
and the loving does
what loving does,
contagious and sure,
makes it all seem so
very easy, inevitable,
passed on and passed on.

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This is no time
for listening to dharma,
even though the talk
is of waking up.
All quiet tones
regardless of content
will be heard as
lulling silks.
Open the window.
Of course.
And if that doesn’t work,
scratch. One hand
steers, the other
hand grazes your
arms, your neck, your lower back.
And whatever you do,
don’t get caught up
in watching the rising moon
in the rear view mirror.
Eyes on the road. Eyes
on the road. Pray.
Make small goals
when the destination
is still two hours away.
And when you have
quite scared yourself, stop.
Turn off the car and get out.
Breathe in the night,
the distant stars, the wind
as it unsettles the roadside
trash. Walk and raise
your arms in the universal
sign of surrender.
Now go back to
your seat, insert the key,
and hold the wheel
as if your life
depended on it,
with two steadying,
too human hands.

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