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Posts Tagged ‘not knowing’

This rope of love
I tied in knots
without knowing
how to untie them.

Knot after knot,
I tied a net
for catching
myself, all the while

longing for freedom.
Why do we play
such games—
one hand open

in prayer, begging
for one thing,
the other hand working
as fast as it can

for the opposite.
You know the old
magician’s trick
when he produces

from his pocket
a knotted rope,
mumbles some magic,
and with his words

all the knots fall out.
Ta da! Well, it was not fast like that,
but slowly and quietly
and one by one

with both hands
open and by some
miracle all the knots came
undone and I

am falling, falling
through the threads
I thought would save me,
falling into the stark

between the stars,
falling through
the fragrance of laughter
and the silence

after that.

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You can’t solve being human. We will have this affliction till the day we die.
—Jeannie Zandi

I tried to know it,
catch it, show it,
to splay its wings
and pin them—
to chart it, graph it,
plot it, map it,
quantify and reckon,
I tried to stuff it,
box it, pack it,
leash it to a pole,
I wanted answers,
wanted keys,
I wanted oracles,
and in came tamarisk,
rodents, dust,
whole rooms
of I don’t know,
a screaming child,
my milk dried up,
my fear devoured me whole.
Splintered, rumpled,
rankled, crumpled,
my all collapsed,
unplastered.
Undone, released,
exposed, relieved,
I flowered
utterly mastered.

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Now What?

Not just broken
but grandly wrecked,
splintered like tinder,
crushed to dust,
shattered, cracked,
busted, whacked
smashed and scattered,
battered, trashed,
scoffed at, mocked,
chicken pocked
and all the pieces rearranged—
which is to say
things
change.

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At the Same Time

One hand weaves new threads
into the nest, the other
slowly pulls them out

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Tired and cold
she came to a clearing
beside the river
and set herself down.
There, the moon.
The moon.

*

Not once had she dreamed
to bring the moon any closer.
Not once had she wished
it would move any faster.

*

How to stay in this place
of not wanting
not needing
not wishing
not hoping
not reaching, not knowing.

*

At the edge of whatever
she thought she knew
she leaned
until the only thing
touching her
was nothing.

*

Sometimes a story
ends. Sometimes it
plays again. Sometimes
we see through a story
to see ourselves.

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The buds swell
till the shuck
breaks
but we
are not there
yet.

Inside, petals,
crushed and clenched
tiny fists pushing
against what
for so long
has protected them.

It is better
not yet
to bloom.
Better to remain
closed until
the days do
what days do,
lengthen and push back
the edges of cold.

It is cold.
It is cold.
White comes.
I grow old.

The opening comes
when it comes,
and when it whitely comes
there are no guarantees
that it will not freeze again.

But for now,
what is soft
leaps against
what is hard
and there is
infinite potential
for
sweetness.

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first the stars
then all the space between the stars
slipped into my tea

*

dried and dead
I leave them in the vase
the naked tulips

*

winter
every cloud
a love letter

*

hey poet
get out of the way
said the poem

*

bird on the wire
for a few moments
we both stop singing

*

the weeds gone to seed—
and who is this one
who thinks they are weeds

*

another door,
another door, another wall
becomes a door

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