We actually transform the world from within our hearts.
—Rainer Maria Rilke, letter to Anita Forrer (January 10, 1920)
“But I need to do something to fix this now,”
says the fixer. And the doubter says,
“What can be done from across the world?”
And meanwhile the woman who reads the news
feels a tear fall down her cheek.
And the fixer says, “I don’t know what to do,
but it can’t go on like this.”
And the doubter says, “It’s been like this
as long as humans have lived.”
And meanwhile the woman who reads the news
feels a tear fall down her cheek.
And the fixer says, “Humans also heal.
And make peace. And forgive.”
And the doubter says, “What difference
could one person possibly make
when presidents and diplomats have failed?”
And meanwhile, the woman who reads the news
feels a tear fall down her cheek.
And the questioner wonders,
is she an olive branch? An open hand?
One more promise? One more fist?
Is she a wall? A rallying cry?
A never-ending debate? A rising tide?
And the fixer says, “I will not just stand by.”
And the doubter says, “It’s hopeless.”
And meanwhile the woman who reads the news
feels a tear fall down her cheek.
And who is the one who, with infinite compassion,
listens to each of the voices?
The fixer can’t let it go. “It’s urgent!” she says.
The doubter throws up her hands and huffs,
“We’ll never learn how to be together.”
And who is the one who, even now,
is making more space at the table of the heart,
a table big as the world?
And the woman who reads the news
feels her heart break even wider.
A tear falls down her cheek.
Posts Tagged ‘presence’
At the Inner Table
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged inner argument, inner voices, parts of the self, presence on March 17, 2024| 10 Comments »
On a Night When My Daughter Is Struggling
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged brokenness, daughter, love, mother, presence, struggle on November 8, 2023| 18 Comments »
I won’t tell her it is up to her
to repair the broken world.
Perhaps that comes later
with pen or needle, pointe shoe or song.
But for now, the thing to do
is to sit together in the broken world
and feel how it is to be broken.
To let shame sit with us.
Let grief sit with us.
To feel the sharp nails of fear.
It is not wrong to feel small,
to feel frightened, to be lost.
Nor must we feel these things alone.
So for now, I sit with her
in the brokenness
with no tools, no salve,
no metaphor of redemption.
It is not enough, perhaps
to meet brokenness
with nothing but love
and breath and a willingness
to be nowhere but here,
but in this broken moment,
it is everything.
Is
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged emptiness, grief, loss, presence on October 7, 2023| 11 Comments »
On the highway, an empty space
where you are not driving. At the college,
a chair where you don’t learn.
In this room, a tall and slender empty space
where you are not. Not whistling,
not closing your eyes and humming,
not eating noodles, not reading the news.
Everywhere I am, this space you will never be.
Not in Ohio. Not in the woods with walnuts falling.
Not laughing with these new friends.
Not in these hands and not in these arms
and not in these words where you are
because you are not.
I would not fill these emptinesses
with anything else is. They are anything
but empty, these spaces of you.
Wilding
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cold, Corinne Platt, mountains, presence, swimming on August 5, 2023| 2 Comments »
for Corinne
It is always near-freezing,
this high alpine lake where
we slide into oddly blue water,
and bare strangled sounds
tear from our throats
as if our own wildness
is shredding through
manicured versions of self.
I crave it, this scraping away
of everything that isn’t
limb-thrash and lung-gasp
and skin-scream and heart-bang
and wild uncontrollable breathing,
crave the tingling after,
the feral laughter, the way
the world slips more deeply into us
when we dare to slip
more deeply into the world.
Almost Two Years After Your Death
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged death, grief, love, presence on July 15, 2023| 12 Comments »
I no longer pick up the phone to call you.
No longer expect you to walk in the room.
Eventually, the brain learns to expect
the absence, the ears learn to expect
the silence, the body grows accustomed
to the loss of your body and recalibrates
itself in space. But the heart, broken open,
is as full as it ever was.
Did I think it would be parched?
Now I know love as a wellspring,
a continual supply.
Never once has the heart felt empty.
There, every time I look, I find you.
For a Moment
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged meditation, presence, refuge, silence on May 11, 2023| 9 Comments »
So keep this refuge in mind: the back roads of your self.
—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, trans. Gregory Hays
And so tonight I travel
the back roads of self
to a place with no shovel,
no spoon, no pen,
no wheel, no stick,
and find there
the peace that arrives
when the idea of traveler
dissolves. And then the
road. And then the self.
A Blessing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dream, grief, loss, love, presence, time on March 20, 2023| 8 Comments »
In the dream, you are ten
and your slender body
curls into my side. We
lie on a purple bed.
Our awareness wings
at the edge of sleep,
our bodies more stone
than bird, your head
on my arm as heavy as time,
and I think, I love this
sweet sapling boy.
In the dream, you are alive,
and I sink all the way
into the sweetness
of the moment
the way I sometimes don’t
in life. I sink full weight
into the tender present
and no part of me wishes
to be anywhere but
in the low golden dream light,
your body warm and gentled,
my body quiet and easy.
Two days later,
I feel it still, the heft of love
unending and generous
close against my side.
It invites me to be more here
with the ones I am with.
With that same arm that held you,
I hold them. Time lifts.
On Drinking the Last Cup of Mariage Frères Marco Polo Tea
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged collaboration, friendship, mindfulness, presence, tea on January 24, 2023| 12 Comments »
I didn’t stop what I was doing
to enjoy the exotic red fruity notes,
didn’t pause my busy mind
to cherish the bold dark leaves.
That’s not to say I didn’t love drinking the tea.
I did. Every velvety sip.
And as I pulled the final muslin sachet
from the classic black box lined with gold foil,
I thought of the woman
who had bought me such extravagant tea
and I fell even more deeply in love with her.
I tell myself it’s not wrong
I divided my attention
between the delicate tea
and the generous sun
and the work that I love.
I tell myself they spoke to each other
in the most beautiful morning voices—
all of them conspiring
the way a violin and cello and piano conspire,
the way a poet and a pianist and an artist conspire,
the way strawberry and cocoa
and dark leaves conspire
to create something more from the moment—
an alchemy that only comes when we say yes
in the moment to everything.
Now, when I read those words I wrote,
I taste in them Tibetan flowers.
They wear the fragrance of sunshine,
the bouquet of exotic lands.
Now when I see the empty drawer
where the tea is not,
I dream of how I drank the last cup
as if it would last forever.
Unlikely Camaraderie
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged presence, resistance, separate self, wind on November 10, 2022| 8 Comments »
All day, the wind, the ruthless wind,
unruly, unsettling, relentless wind,
the wind that crashed the leafless trees
and strewed the branches across the streets,
the wind that scraped at my fragile peace
until I was as dismantled as the day—
I notice the part of me that wants
to wish the wind away. I ask it
to sit with me. With little option
except to be present with each other,
we sit together, listen to the wind.