after Rainer Maria Rilke, “I Live My Life in Growing Orbits”
I am circling what is true,
with my arms open I am circling,
with eyes wide I am circling,
I am circling that which has never changed
and that which is always changing.
I circle with eyes full of tears, I circle
as I sing along with voice breaking,
lips praising, I circle with chest
expanding, feet eager, my body
exhausted, my whole being charged,
and the only words on my lips are thank you.
I am circling with the certainty
I can only do this right. I circle
the spaces I’ve circled before
only nothing is the same. I circle
the nothing at the center and the everything
which has come from it. With every step,
I see something new, something
I could not have seen before. With every step
I understand and lose my understanding.
I am circling all that can never be known
and all I long to know. I am circling
in quickening spirals and in lazy
orbits and I circle for the joy
of circling. I am circling you, God,
as Rilke invited me to do, and
still I am learning who you are,
so I circle and I circle and I circle.
Posts Tagged ‘god’
Growing Orbits
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged circling, god, learning, orbit on March 13, 2023| 14 Comments »
Everything Is Changed
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged god, grief, impossible, possibility on January 11, 2023| 12 Comments »
I remember when everything was impossible.
Impossible to move. Impossible to not move.
Impossible to eat. Impossible to not eat.
Impossible to sleep. Impossible to wake.
Impossible to imagine a time
when everything wouldn’t be impossible.
Today I walk out into a world where,
at the same time, the sun shines brilliant
and snowflakes sift through the air.
When they touch my face, cold and soft,
it’s as if the god I am not sure I believe in
has used this moment as a chance
to brush impossibly delicate fingers
across my cheeks and whisper to me
in a voice I don’t hear, yet I hear perfectly,
everything is possible, sweetheart, everything.
We Are All God’s Poems
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, communion, god on March 7, 2021| 2 Comments »
I want to read the poem of you—
want to hold in my breath
your intimate rhythms
want to translate in my lungs
the silences between your stanzas,
want to feel in my heart
the sharp tug of your turns,
the communion of your inner rhymes.
I want to follow
the ever-emerging form of you,
want to know which words
are appearing even now
in the divine cursive
that writes us all,
want to wander in your ambiguities,
wonder about your secrets,
marvel at your beauty,
be wrestled by your oppositions.
I want to recite your lines
again and again and again
so your stories
are the allusions that inspire
the emerging poem of me.
This is the poem in which I admit
every poem has the potential
to break open the heart—
imagine the size of the book.
This is the poem in which I remember
the heart was made to break open.
Let’s Get Drunk
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bliss, day, god, sufi, thirst, wine on January 16, 2020| 2 Comments »
The Sufis had it right—
the day is a glass of wine.
It matters not what kind
of vessel it’s poured into—
chipped clay or crystal
or wooden cup. There
is divinity in it regardless—
the chance to dance alongside
the rational, logical self
and fall in love. It brings
the potential for bliss,
for persuasiveness, for imagination,
for spontaneous and riotous
laughter. And you, perhaps,
like I, are beginning to realize
just how dry the mouth,
just how thirsty the heart.
After Jack Sends Me the Definition of Black Hole
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged astrology, black hole, god, poem, poetry, science on January 7, 2020| 2 Comments »
A black hole is a region of spacetime exhibiting gravitational acceleration so strong that nothing—no particles or even electromagnetic radiation such as light—can escape from it.
—Wikipedia
Perhaps black hole is just another word
for God—a force that pulls in everything,
regardless of how that everything looks or prays or votes.
A cup that runneth—not over, but ever in. A shepherd
so adept at shepherding that nothing—
no sheep, no man, no star, no dust—
could ever be lost in its spacetime pasture.
It creates communion, obliterates separateness.
In pictures, it’s a vision of still water.
In truth, it’s unable to be known.
A force that overwhelms all other forces.
It devours some, and in others spurs growth.
And what isn’t, I suppose, another word
for God: Ledger. Valley. Garden. Death.
Rhubarb. Rod. Human. Staff.
There is this gift to see the divine in everything.
There is this force that pulls the everything in.
Every particle. Every everything. Even (my god) the light.
One Hopeful
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged god, gold, poem, poetry, real, spirituality on June 9, 2018| 2 Comments »
Expansion
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged god, home, poem, poetry, potential, walls on May 4, 2018| 3 Comments »
When I started to fume,
God grabbed me in his arms
impossibly strong and tender
and said, dear one,
don’t build our house too small
and I dropped my hammer
and nails and noticed
how fine the breeze
without walls.
After Scouring the Mountaintop
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dust bunnies, god, perception, poem, poetry, seeking on February 21, 2018| Leave a Comment »
Looking for god under the bed—
finding dust bunnies.
Sacred dust bunnies.
Of course, I think,
but to be honest, friend,
I don’t really see
the divine
in these drifts of abandoned hair
and fuzz and grit,
no matter how much I’d like to.
Now I know how I get in my own way.
For here on, I’ll need to question
my eyes more often.
Lower my standards? Perhaps
feel myself being held
up to the light
to see what shines.
More Opening to Do
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged god, opening, poem, poetry on January 12, 2018| 6 Comments »
But I took the door
off the hinges,
I said, knowing
I had more opening
to do. Yes,
said God, before
tearing down
the whole house.
How the Mystery Arrives Today
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged god, humility, mystery, paradox, poem, poetry, spirituality on November 10, 2013| 1 Comment »
Power to the paradox.
–Jack Mueller
Today you are the cut on the finger
and you also the knife.
You the bandage that wraps the wound.
You the Advil, the ice.
You the sun, and the burn that comes.
You the aloe salve.
You the moon and the absence of moon.
You the children’s laugh.
And you the scent of old dead leaves,
and you the stubborn green.
You the red wine and the empty cup.
The song, the one who sings.
And you the silence between the notes.
You the coat and the chill.
You the uncomfortable anger, the blame,
you the one who sees through.
And you the lines I will never write.
And you the eraser, the lead.
You the peace and you the unrest
the beginning without end.