Because the world.
And then, with one step,
I slide into snow-mind
in which I am glide,
sun-bright and crystalline,
field-vast and drift-found,
a boundaryless being
of sparkling immensity
moving inside a glittering realm,
and whoever else I might be
in the small world of rooms
and stoplights and
screens and keys is not lost
exactly, but is too little here
to not see beyond as I become
soft meadow, receiver
of birdsong, inhaler
of evergreen, an ecstatic
point in infinite space
sliding from grace
to ever expanding grace.
Posts Tagged ‘losing the self’
Why I Go Nordic Skiing in the Woods
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged embodiment, losing the self, skiing, winter on February 2, 2025| 4 Comments »
One Under the Stars
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, losing the self, stars on January 4, 2025| 5 Comments »
stripped of the coat of my story,
for a moment naked enough
to fit into the universe
Still Breaking Open
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, losing the self, loss, love on February 15, 2024| 4 Comments »
Surely you know. Surely,
whatever happens to the soul
after we die is capable of feeling
the love of those still living,
can attune to it like a bell.
Tonight, alone, I relish
the chance to miss you—
to miss you so much
I crawl into the missing
the way you once crawled
into my lap and held to me
until the world was nothing
and the holding was everything.
I want to crawl into the love
that still burns in me
and disappear in it,
let it take me completely
until there is nothing left
to burn. I want it
and I don’t want it.
I love this world too much
to want to leave and yet
I want to be so in service to love
that there is nothing left of me
but rampant, self-shattering love.
I want everything but love
to burn to ash. Want everything
but love to be blown away
like dross, like chaff.
Want all that is left of me
to be this feral heart
still opening, though
it seems it couldn’t possibly
break open any more,
yet I marvel as it opens again, again
into, how is it possible?
more love.
One More Layer
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged clothes, identity, losing the self on June 5, 2020| 4 Comments »
the more I wear this story
of myself, the more
it grows thin, ravels,
a sweater filled with holes—
I fall through them
Surprise Grace
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dark, light, losing the self, loss of the separate self, night, solstice on December 21, 2019| 4 Comments »
And this is the chapter
when it just feels
too much too much
to turn on the light
and so you sit
in the dark.
This is not a myth
in which you are punished,
turned into a tree or a kingfisher—
nor is this the story
in which you discover
your own light.
No, this is the night
in which you are simply
a lifetime of tired
and unable to turn on the light.
And so it’s you
and the night.
It’s you and the night.
And then it’s just the night.
Autumnal
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn, blessing, losing the self, loss, poem, poetry on September 9, 2015| 1 Comment »
after William Stafford
When the leaves are about to yellow and fall
ask me then how I tried to hold on to what was green,
how I thought perhaps I was different,
how everything I thought I knew about gold
turned brittle and brown. Ask me what it was like
to fall then. Sometimes the world becomes invisible
and we know ourselves as the world. Sometimes
the only words that can find our lips are thank you,
though the gifts look nothing like anything
we ever thought we wanted.
Classified
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged classified, found, losing the self, lost, poem, poetry, possibility on February 8, 2014| 3 Comments »
Lost: One woman, fortyish,
brown hair, tall, hazel eyes,
wearing black boots, jeans,
maroon sweater. Last seen
walking toward the edge of
what she thought was
possible. Can be identified
by a freckle on her left
pinkie finger. If seen,
ask her if she found the edge.
If she says yes, tell her to go
get lost again. That any edge
she can find is an illusion.
Tell here there is no
reward for her return.
As the Broken Do
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breaking, losing the self, love, not knowing, poem, poetry, righteousness on November 18, 2013| 4 Comments »
The liars lie and the stealers
steal and the lovers love and
the takers take. The fighters
fight and the restless do not
rest. And also true, the liars
love and the fighters steal
and the restless take
and the lovers fight and all of us,
all of us want to be right.
May I be wrong. May I come
to you without my books,
without my rules, without
my shoulds. Let me always
arrive at your door with empty hands.
Let me meet you with my pockets
full of blank, not convinced
of anything except
the possibility of everything.
Let me be wrong. Let me not label anyone
a liar. Let me bottom out.
What is it in us that wants to be right?
I have seen it turn a whole month, a whole life
to ice. I have felt the chains of certainty,
I have worn the shackles of listen-to-me.
Let me be wrong. Let there be chinks
in my belief. Let there be splinters
in my conviction. Look how alone it is
in this hour when I am so perfectly right.
May my rules go begging. May my imperatives
learn to crawl. May my righteousness hold
an empty bowl. May my musts all redden to rust.
And may I be wrong as the wrongers are wrong.
And may I unknow. And unlearn.
And unselve. And love as the lovers love.
*with a first line taken from David J. Rothman, “And Remember to Be Kind to Yourself”
Revelation in the Sheriff’s Office while Filling Out Forms for Work
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged fingerprint, losing the self, poem, poetry on November 12, 2013| 3 Comments »
Just when I think
I am perfectly lost
I have to get
my fingerprints taken,
proof that not only am I
still here, but I am
indentified, classified, filed away,
and able to located.
No matter how many layers
of stories I have shed,
how many lifetimes
I think I have left behind,
no matter how many
shells of myself I have broken through,
no matter how much
I might like to think
I have changed
I am marked by the same
ten whorls. Oh be humble,
woman, and make way
for the light
to move in.
Six Currents
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged losing the self, poem, poetry on September 11, 2013| 1 Comment »
what invisible blade
eviscerates this body
more space, more space
*
a new grammar
blurring first and third persons—
who thinks she is I
*
this needing you—
like expecting apple juice
from a peach
*
I’ll not believe you,
still the thrill when you say
I am beautiful
*
the emptier I get
the more room for god
to wrestle
*
perfume of ripe pears—
every part of me wearing
relentless gratitude
Like Today
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged allowing, fence, losing the self, love, poem on August 29, 2013| 1 Comment »
Sometimes the fences
of our thoughts fall down
and in that open meadow,
we know ourselves as each other.
In these moments,
we are overcome by tenderness,
and it is impossible to imagine
anything but love.
Any positions we had,
any delusions of me versus you
any stances of defensiveness or blame
evaporate. In those moments,
we give our everything to each other,
and there is no difference between
pain and joy and fear and courage—
it is all one immense feeling
that moves through us just as wind
moves through blades of grass
all waving as one immense field.
In these moments, which are perhaps
equally forever and now,
there is nothing to figure out,
nothing to plan, nothing to build
and nothing to learn. Though when
the fences are up, it’s almost impossible
to imagine it could ever be like this.
so impossible to imagine not staking in
just one more post, just one more rail.
Three Escapes
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged losing the self, poem, poetry, tanka on August 26, 2013| 3 Comments »
for years
I have tried to lock
you out
not seeing that instead
I locked myself in
*
mom, he says,
do you ever think how great
it would be
to become water
going everywhere
*
standing
in the sunflowers
my whole body
practices
being sunflower
I Say Lover Because I Don’t Know How Else to Say It
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged expectation, losing the self, love, poem, poetry on March 24, 2013| 4 Comments »
It is cold, oh,
it’s so, so cold,
and still the lover
says find the door,
walk out and come
to me. My breath
hangs in the air
between us, then
disappears. I shiver,
and the lover says
take off your clothes
and walk to me.
There are no promises
of warmth. Come here,
says the lover,
and take your time.
This is not how
I pictured it.
Why is it I’m sliding off
first one sock,
then the other,
my skirt, my slip,
my definition of bliss,
and letting them fall
in a heap to the floor.
Where’s the door?
Oh woman, be brave.
And if you cannot
be brave, be foolish.
And if you cannot
be foolish, then
hush and let the legs
just start walking.
Five Lessons in Disappearing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged disappearing, haiku, losing the self, poem, poetry, tanka on February 12, 2013| 4 Comments »
mostly fallen down
the barbed wire fence—
what’s it to the birds?
*
listening
for the moon—
sound of a heart
*
that hyacinth leaf—
staring at it until it is
no longer leaf
*
in the window
the boy waves at himself
saying he won’t stop
until the other boy
stops waving
*
poet, can you rhyme
with the cherry tree
in spring
At the Edge of the Field
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged growth, losing the self, pinecone, poem, self on January 24, 2013| 4 Comments »
Like a pinecone
after it’s been trod on
and snowed on and
summered and rained on,
that is how I find myself.
Softer now, and with less
sense of separateness.
The earth has a fine way
of saying here, here.
And gravity, it makes things
so easy. I would not have thought
it sounded so good,
all that wearing down,
lessening to dust.
I could not have imagined
sharing my browns, much less
losing my sharpness, my articulate
serration, spilling my seeds.
Though spilling, that is what seeds
are for. And the opening beyond.
And losing the self, that is perhaps
what a self is for.
Five Reframes
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged allowing, beginning, haiku, losing the self, name on December 25, 2012| 2 Comments »
on the wall
those shadows so much larger
than our problems
*
in the frost
on the window she writes
her name
*
recalling all those
prayers
I never learned
*
like a worm in kale,
something nibbling
all night on her dreams
*
air, snow, shadow, wind
she loses any names
she has been given
Do you believe in always, the wind said to the rain
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged alone, couplet, infinite, losing the self, rhyme, tetrameter, unlearning on October 12, 2012| 8 Comments »
—poem on a line from e.e. cummings
Rubble, smoke, sparrow, stone,
she wakes in darkness all alone.
Angel, master, docent, thief,
she wears the scars of love and grief.
Furrow, honey, Chopin, moss,
those are veils that are her loss.
There’s more, there’s more to be undone—
milk, lattice, lily, plum.
While Making Dinner with Rostropovich: Three Haiku and a Tanka
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cello, losing the self, loss, music, poem, Rostropovich on June 30, 2012| 2 Comments »
It is Bach
I tell the broccoli
knife keeps quarter beats
*
all my empty spaces
alive with cello and silence—
every loss
has made it possible
this breathtaking resonance
*
the music touches
me everywhere, everywhere
purple gladiolas
*
in the kitchen
I am being spun, whirling
the cello bows
Six Orbits
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged attention, circling, freedom, losing the self, poem, poetry, sound on June 29, 2012| 5 Comments »
So busy watching my feet
move over the small stones,
dried leaves, paths of ants,
it is a long time before
I see the birds.
*
What is it I am circling?
What is this longing
to name it?
*
The slats of shadow
and light only look
like prisons.
We slide through the bars
like song.
*
The bell does not ring
when we call it bell. It rings
with the playing of it.
*
And what is playing me,
this too-solid bell of a
flesh called woman,
Hollow me, I am
diligently practicing
my one note
in the symphony.
*
All these obstacles,
and still
the unspiraling line.
What Happens When We Sing Together
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged chanting, losing the self, music, poems, poetry, singing on February 15, 2012| 5 Comments »
In a ring of song
I hear your silence
I breathe in your silence
in a ring of song
I lose my singular voice
and become
what is unwritten,
unwritable, endlessly sung—
in the ring of song
there is no note
not worth singing,
there is no tone that’s wrong
in the ring of song
in the ring of song
the song rises and falls
all around us, it rises
and falls inside of us
I breathe in and pull
into my lungs the song
where it mixes with the unborn song
still forming
on my tongue,
in the ring of song
I am no one and if
I am anyone at all
I am one being sung.