When the brain is separated from the heart, it is capable of doing terrible things to each other and the planet.
—Jane Goodall
And so I try to tend the path each day
between brain and heart.
Whatever smallnesses I trip on,
I try to remember to bow as I remove them.
Whatever weeds try to overrun it—
weeds of should and shame—
I try to yank them out, knowing full well
I never get the whole root.
The more I travel the path,
the easier it is—
though steep sometimes,
and the effort to go on
makes me weep.
And sometimes, it feels unfamiliar,
though I’m sure I’ve travelled this way before.
Frightened, lost, tired, exposed—
yet I try to find and preserve the path.
Because the stakes are too high
when the path is gone.
Because the healing is so great
when I honor the path
step by stubborn step.
Today’s poem brought this yesterday’s poem to mind.
Methinks—And what if?–it is also speaking of this brain-heart path?
Climbing Impson Road at Twilight
The day is not finished, not quite—
still walking the old mining road toward tonight—
when a boy in the forest inhales juniper,
grabs his mother’s hand and dances her
close to the boughs—how she beams and
breaks with his joy. How lightly she holds
his gloved hand. She inhales, blue pungency,
constellations of berries, swaths of feathery evergreen.
And inside her, the rupture, the rapture, the place
where she held him so long, so short.
Some part of her want to fold him so small
she could slip him back into her core—that close!
And another part leans toward his brightening voice.
Her flesh, but not hers. His wonder,
her wonder, they twine in the dim. She is missing
what? Nothing. Still the smooth stone of loss.
There is more. She is rift. She stows berries and boughs
in the deepening hole where he was.
Thanks, dear man … yes–that is most certainly the path I was walking that long ago day …
so many hugs to you
r
Satisfying and aware,—thank you, Rosemerry and thank you, Ed Brummel
thanks, Carol. and yes, so nice to have Eduardo’s bringing in this blast from the past poem!