Walking in the sweet honey
and musky scented woods,
I keep searching for what smells
so good, until finally I let
myself be content to walk
in the woods with a honey scent,
and I give up for a time
on naming the world,
and let a step be a step,
let a scent be a scent
and know only I am lucky,
lucky to walk in the musky woods,
the air so refreshing, so sweet.
Posts Tagged ‘knowing’
Letting Go of Knowing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged forest, knowing, nature, scent, unknowing, walkiing on June 13, 2023| 14 Comments »
Unlost
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged boat, knowing, lost, path, sea, trust on February 1, 2023| 7 Comments »
The day is a rudderless path
and still I cling to star charts,
to maps. As if knowing
a destination is synonymous
with purpose. If the wind
should steal the maps,
would I rush to make them anew?
I say there is beauty
in the drift, yet I keep
carving new oars.
I am learning to love
what a day is.
Sometimes, I trust
what is here.
Contemplative
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged being wrong, contemplative, knowing, map, thought on March 31, 2022| 15 Comments »
for Mabeth
I assumed at its root, it was speaking of time,
related to tempo and temporary,
assumed it was speaking also of place,
as in plateau and plat and platform.
In fact, I had quite convinced myself
the word contemplative was an invitation
to be one with place and time.
I was wrong. It’s related to temple,
which comes from a root for “to cut,”
as in a place cut off or reserved
to be occupied by the divine.
Of course, the divine’s at the center
instead of time.
Oh, this desire to make meaning—
this longing to find the story
that will help me make sense of the world.
The mind will use any trick it can
to think it has a handhold in the mystery.
Meanwhile it leads me astray.
It’s like discovering the map I’ve been using
is the wrong map for the city I’m in.
And now that I have the right map,
one with a temple at the heart of it,
I can begin again.
In These Halcyon Days
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged knowing, knowing the self, poem, poetry, self on December 19, 2019| 2 Comments »
for it is not so much to know the self
as to know it as it is known
by galaxy and cedar cone
—A.R. Ammons, “Gravelly Run”
I want to know the self
the way a nest might know
the eggs it holds, the way
a feather might know a wing.
I want to know the self
as a bank knows a river,
as wave knows water,
as night knows the night.
There is a kind of knowing
that has less to do with certainty
and more to do with meeting
the world again and again as it is.
I want to know the self
with no name, with no story,
as a stone might know it,
or a song.
From What I’ve Tasted of Desire
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged apocalypse, knowing, love, not knowing, poem, poetry on August 9, 2014| 1 Comment »
If without warning the world were to end
at 6:05 tonight, I would like to be holding your hand
at 6:02 and sitting on the back porch
in the low angled gold August light.
Maybe we would be talking about the birds—
what kind of swallows do you think those are?
And you would say, violet green swallows,
and even if we were not sure it was correct,
it would give us pleasure to know the answer.
We would lean back and watch as they keel
through the air just above our heads.
And at 6:04, we would not know to be concerned
about what would happen next. It is sometimes
better that way, not knowing, I mean,
especially when the cosmos in the garden
are just now in an uprising of bright pink bloom
and the grass in the field is taller
than our heads and if we breathe in
deeply, it smells as if the rain is about to come.
What We Don’t Know
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged flight 370, knowing, nothing, poem, poetry on March 13, 2014| 2 Comments »
The distress signal. There wasn’t one.
Suddenly it was gone. Just gone.
The plane, of course, but also our sense
of what’s possible. How could we lose a plane?
The sky today somehow too big, the ocean
too vast for comfort. It would take only a scrap
of metal wing or a wail of a recorded scream
to set us more at ease—some hint of blame to rest on,
some floating debris to trace. Nothing worse than this nothing.
Nothing. Did a door fail? A meteor hit? Did
the pilot get distracted just enough? Failure
of power? A hijacker plot? It doesn’t help
that the path is unclear. Though it almost always is.
So we do what we know how to do. Make grids.
Analyze. Hypothesize. Offer rewards. Criticize.
Wonder, conjecture and doubt. And resist making peace
with nothing. There must be an answer.
There’s always an answer. 239 people know.
For the rest of us, the sky now too big. And the ocean
too vast. And our questions insatiable, starved
for a slick, for a bit, for a fragment of flight, for
anything, anything, that isn’t this terrible nothing.
What Was the Question?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged chosen, inquiry, knowing, poem, poetry, unknowing on March 11, 2014| 2 Comments »
in the sweets shop
standing in front of the shelves
unable to choose—
realizing that I am the one
who wants to be chosen
*
unable to see
the mountain at the end
of the clouded valley—
never once doubting
it is still there
*
choose me, choose me,
choose me, I say to the world,
but of course I mean
choose me
the way I want to be chosen
*
outside, of course,
preferably in the sun, far
away from all
other eyes, an inchworm takes
all day to measure one lily
*
all day asking
myself, what would be lighter,
and even lighter
than this, all day I land
more softly
*
who is the one
who thinks she wants to be chosen?
leaning into the
infinite whatever it is
that notices her wanting
No Guarantees
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged knowing, learning, poem, poetry, unlearning on February 22, 2014| 7 Comments »
It turns out I have loved
learning too much.
Star charts. Yeast. Omega 3s.
Tear fluid osmolarity.
Particle and wave.
I want so much to make sense
of things. Like why we have
so few words for smell.
Why only some birds sing.
Slave to purpose, slave
to the why, slave to the need
to know. I want to compare,
to contrast, to chart, to rank,
to graph, to prove. As if
that might tell me my place
in the world. So I pin down facts
like butterfly wings, splayed
and precise and dead.
Meanwhile the world expands, overflows,
moves beyond all that I think I know.
Let me live on questions. Let
me lose my absolutes. Let me be willing
to abandon my certainty. We are that
which breaks down the walls
of the learned—let me know this,
and unknow it, too.
Who Do You Say I Am?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged disappearing, knowing, love, poem, poetry, unknowing, wanting on May 30, 2013| 4 Comments »
You are the path
beside the stream
and you the snowmelt,
too. You the cumin
in the curried soup,
and you the empty spoon.
You the wreath
of dried flowers hung
on my door, and you the hinge,
the lock, the knob,
the latch, the key,
the draft
that whispers in.
I have wanted you
to be other things
because that is how
I am. But you are
the sky that holds
the moon, and you
are the moon and
the finger that points.
And you are the night
that craves the sun
and then disappears when
so lightly it comes.
Lessons in Impermanence
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged impermanence, knowing, poem, poetry on May 17, 2013| 2 Comments »
This feeling
this tattered net
this piece of cake
this morning
this poem
this broken yolk
this dandelion
this warning
this girl
and her friend
and the song
they are singing
this scent of green
this in between
this longing
this knowing.