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Posts Tagged ‘jude Janett’

Why It Matters What We Say

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on February 21, 2021| 2 Comments »


 
 My tears mingle with yours and the dry world is watered again.
            —Jude Janett
 
 
Parched and dusty,
the inner desert
forgets it was once a wetland.
Barren of confidence,
arid with self-disdain,
it forgets how to grow things
not covered in thorns
and spines.
 
Then you with your love
reach across the afternoon,
a brief shower of words,
and the whole inner world
remembers how it is to be lush,
to be nurturing, to be green.

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The Path of Love

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 6, 2021| 10 Comments »

(If you are looking for the poem that Tara Brach read in her meditation, it is called “The Question” and you can find it here)

            with gratitude to Jude Jordan Kalush and Joi Sharp
 
 
And here I thought the path of love
would look like love. Like kindness.
Like generosity. Like gentleness.
 
Instead it looks like me being bothered
by the sound of loud chewing. Me
wanting praise. Me needing to feel
 
loved. Hello me. How elegantly love
has arranged for me to meet
all the parts of me that would stand
 
in love’s way. How easily
it shows me I’ve thought of love
as a destination. But here is love
 
with no expectation. Here is love
with no name, no locus. Here
is love with no face, no shape, no
 
promise, no vow, no hope.
Here is love as itself, surging
and flowing, love as itself insisting
 
on love, love as itself eroding
all those layers of me that still
think they know something about love
 
(and love holds me while I rail
and love throws me back in the stream
and love is what is still here when I am not).




   

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The Question

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 23, 2019| 10 Comments »

 

            for Jude Jordan Kalush, who asked the question

 

All day, I replay these words:

Is this the path of love?

I think of them as I rise, as

I wake my children, as I wash dishes,

as I drive too close behind the slow

blue Subaru, Is this the path of love?

Think of these words as I stand in line

at the grocery store,

think of them as I sit on the couch

with my daughter. Amazing how

quickly six words become compass,

the new lens through which to see myself

in the world. I notice what the question is not.

Not, “Is this right?” Not,

“Is this wrong?” It just longs to know

how the action of existence

links us to the path of love.

And is it this? Is it this? All day,

I let myself be led by the question.

All day I let myself not be too certain

of the answer. Is it this?

Is this the path of love? I ask 

as I wait for the next word to come.

*

this poem is published in The Path to Kindness: Poems of Connection & Joy, edited by James Crews (Storey Publishing, 2022)

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The Art of Poetry

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on January 16, 2017| 5 Comments »

 

            —for Jude Janett

 

 

It was cold,

and so

when she said

 

I am not

a poet,

I mean

I write them,

but only

to survive—

I don’t think

I even

like poems

 

I watched

as her words

turned to mist

in the air,

swirling

transparent lines

that danced

before they

disappeared,

 

and

I knew

there was

never

a poet

more true.

 

 

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She Does the Real Work

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on January 31, 2013| 3 Comments »

—for Jude Janett

You sing, and even
nine hundred miles away
all of my body
turns to ears—
and the ears of my
eyes and the ears
of my gut and
the ears of my ears
all sprout legs and
start dancing in awkward,
ecstatic and awe-drenched hallelujahs,
and I may be broken
and I am a mess but I
am dancing under
your pulpit, keep singing,
I am listening
to your shining
pounding rests.

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