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Posts Tagged ‘devotion’

Visiting Black Rock Press

         for Bob Blesse
 
 
Not one single view outside the room,
but in every cabinet filled with wood
and metal type, a window into possibility.
Some places are magic because
of the splendor you see there.
Some are magic because
of all the latent stories waiting to be told.
Some are magic because
a person has infused every surface,
every project, every serif, every choice
with the courage to do something
vulnerable, valuable and beautiful,
then share it with the world.
 

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Family Woman

Such awkward dance partners,

this longing to follow my own pursuits,

this longing to be ever available to you.

Both want to lead.

They step on each other’s feet.

One waltzes, though the other

has put on rock and roll.

One loves eye contact, the other

loves closed eyes to better feel the music.

And yet they whirl and two step every day,

taking turns swinging and dipping and bowing.

I used to think they were rivals.

Now I know neither wants to dance alone.

Even now, they’re pushing back the furniture,

rolling up the rug. There’s gonna be a real

fine hoedown tonight.

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I didn’t know then that devotion

was jumping off the high dive into a pool

though there was no life guard,

though there was no telling

what or who else was in that water.

 

I didn’t know devotion would mean

tattooing another’s face to my forehead

the way Frida once did with Diego—

how the whole world would be able to see

what I thought was invisible.

 

I didn’t know devotion meant walking barefoot

into the wind, a wind so strong it shredded my coat.

Didn’t know my destination

would become so unknowable,

would remain so far away.

 

Perhaps I thought it would be more mechanical—

as if the nuts and bolts of you

would meet the nuts and bolts of me,

and through sun and rain we would fuse together,

belly to belly, nose to nose.

 

Instead, I meet devotion now

the way I once met Georgia O’Keefe’s clouds

in the stairwell of the Chicago Art Museum.

I stared at the giant painting, thinking to myself,

That’s not at all what it’s like.  

 

Years later when I visited Abiquiu,

I saw the sky so true to what she’d painted,

gasped to see that herd of perfect ovals

flocked white above the red land.

Perhaps this is what devotion is like—

 

being willing to trust I know nothing at all

of what it looks like. That the only way it reveals itself

is when I meet it with wonder, the way I might meet

the work of a master, willing to be curious,

willing to be awed.

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please kiss them
my palms, I’ve emptied them
in case

*

twilight
everything glazed with shine—
your hum

*

the wind
never asks when it touches me
there

*

these hands, two white birds,
your skin
the sky

*

soft breeze
my longing
grows longer

*

slipping out
of my excuses into something
more comfortable

*

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