Posted in Uncategorized, tagged allowing things to be, change, haiku, letter, lupine, morning after the storm, mountain, poem, presence, river, storm on January 18, 2012| 1 Comment »
nothing holds back
the river forever—
these hands still trying
same cold, same dawn,
same landscape—even that hill
seems tired of standing
*
again I write
in my head the letter, again
I rip it up
*
and then the day came
when I sat in the lupine
instead of climbing
*
morning after
the storm each glittering limb
the most lovely
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, gratitude, letter, poem on November 18, 2011| 2 Comments »
I know you’ve been coming around a lot lately.
Must be so much to do. I’m sorry I didn’t say hi
when I passed you on Columbia Avenue last week.
I felt busy, too. Actually, when I saw you,
I crossed the street, afraid you’d want to talk—
I had so much to do that day—and I didn’t
want to be late to pick up the kids. You understand?
Nothing personal. Oh, yeah. I know I didn’t invite you
to the birthday party. Sorry. There were so many folks
coming already. Um, yeah, I saw you behind me
in the car today, so close on my bumper. What
was the deal? But it did make me realize,
looking out the windows at the willows beside the highway,
how very beautiful the frost—all glitter
and shine—and how seeing you there in the rearview
mirror my whole world seemed so very,
well, not mine.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged letter, opening, Rumi on November 4, 2011| 3 Comments »
Sometimes I think if the night
were clear enough and the wind
was still, I could see
through all these walls I’ve built
to protect myself—from what?—
and know how to bring them down.
And then I could be open. But tonight
the sky could not be more clear
and there’s no hint of wind
and I still feel in my heart
all the places still clenched and tight.
“Not open, dear, but opening,”
I imagine you might say, reminding me
that open is a verb, not some destination
where I might arrive—
some magical place with a beach and umbrella,
some anywhere I’ve dreamt up
that isn’t wherever I am.
I can laugh kindly at myself when I’m not crying,
or when I’m not trying too hard.
I try too hard. My friend Barbara wrote me
and told me so. My other friend,
Joan, advised me that I would be challenging
wherever I go. They both said it
with so much love that I let their words
wholly in.
The prediction tomorrow
is snow, Rumi, and I will perhaps
be so enthralled or busy with it
that I will be drawn utterly out of my thoughts
of open and opening and how.
But there I go again, planting myself
into the future as if it will be easier
to be present then than it is right now.
Right now, there’s a knocking
in the kitchen. I don’t know what it is.
A heater? The fridge?
And my own heart is knocking
against my chest like a neighbor
who is coming to borrow a cup of sugar
in the middle of the night.
I don’t know, Rumi, why I am writing to you,
except that it feels as if something
has started in my soul, something
I don’t understand. Something more
about forgetting than remembering.
And as you once said to your own teacher Shams,
“You make my raggedness silky.”
I turn to the yes I feel
when I read your words and know
that I know nothing. When I read you
it feels as if the angels that I don’t quite believe in
have come, is that them doing all that knocking?
and those walls I mentioned, well,
I can laugh at them, too, when the doors
I didn’t even know were there
begin by themselves to open.