At last the river is covered in ice,
a vast white sheet from bank
to bank. A woman, or a rabbit,
could use to cross what usually
feels uncrossable. I think
of William Stafford standing beside
the frozen Methow river, asking a question.
The silent river was his answer.
Later today I will put on my old navy coat
and my big old rubber boots and walk
to the shore with my satchel of questions,
the ones that writhe and twist in me,
the ones that make me tremble.
Perhaps, you, too, will bring your questions
to a shore where winter has hidden the song.
If you have no river, any quiet space will do.
We can stand there together
at the edge of no separation
to see which questions spill out.
No matter where we stand,
we can listen to the silence
that crosses all boundaries, listen,
together, and wade into the current
beneath all listening.
Posts Tagged ‘question’
What Joins Us
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, question, river, stafford, uncertainty on February 3, 2026| 2 Comments »
Ars Poetica
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged answer, ars poetica, blank, question, truth on August 11, 2020| 8 Comments »
All these years of wandering,
toward what? On a blank page,
where are the secrets hidden?
How many mysterious paths?
If there is a truth, perhaps it, too, is blank.
If there is way, perhaps it, too, is wandering.
Sometimes I just want the answer.
Always it comes back to this:
An orbit. A spiral. A mobius trip.
A boundary curve where the question
is its own topology, where the question
is its own astonishing arrival.
The Question
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged jude Janett, love, poem, poetry, question on December 23, 2019| 10 Comments »
for Jude Jordan Kalush, who asked the question
All day, I replay these words:
Is this the path of love?
I think of them as I rise, as
I wake my children, as I wash dishes,
as I drive too close behind the slow
blue Subaru, Is this the path of love?
Think of these words as I stand in line
at the grocery store,
think of them as I sit on the couch
with my daughter. Amazing how
quickly six words become compass,
the new lens through which to see myself
in the world. I notice what the question is not.
Not, “Is this right?” Not,
“Is this wrong?” It just longs to know
how the action of existence
links us to the path of love.
And is it this? Is it this? All day,
I let myself be led by the question.
All day I let myself not be too certain
of the answer. Is it this?
Is this the path of love? I ask
as I wait for the next word to come.
*
this poem is published in The Path to Kindness: Poems of Connection & Joy, edited by James Crews (Storey Publishing, 2022)
Who Am I?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged meditation, poem, poetry, question, silence on December 9, 2019| Leave a Comment »
I thought I wanted
a harmonium of answers,
a key of certainty,
a hymn of how to,
but silence gave me
the most beautiful gift—
one true question.
This Is No Slap Dash Quiz
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged answer, friendship, peace, poem, poetry, question, solution on November 18, 2019| 4 Comments »
Part of me wants to give you
the book of answers, the solution key,
to help you know which decision, A, B, C or D,
will bring the most healing, the most happiness.
I no longer believe in such a book, such a key.
Instead I wish for you the peace
that comes only with surrender—
a word that sounds beyond reason
until it becomes beacon, becomes
north star, becomes map.
May you know for certain
that in every case, you are beloved.
May you know beyond doubt
that no matter what happens,
you always become more essential, more you.
Letter from The Universe
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged einstein, interdependence, poem, poetry, question, Rumi, universe, why on April 2, 2019| 6 Comments »
The spam email was simple. Subject: Why?
Body: Answer me. And I thought of Einstein,
who wrote a brief letter to Miss Marion Block,
a woman who had written first to him,
overcome as she was by two world wars.
He wrote: The question “Why” in the human sphere
is easy to answer: to create satisfaction
for ourselves and for other people.
Almost 800 years earlier,
Rumi answered the same question, saying,
Oh soul, you worry too much.
I, too, like Miss Block, like the spammer,
like the soul, I, too, have stood beneath the stars
and asked Why, Why?
And this week, I received in the mail
a typed letter signed from The Universe,
saying, You know this, but may have forgotten:
you have been given a special task
to complete on Earth … the world needs you.
And the words from The Universe
leap from the page to form new constellations
inside me and I see so clearly
that I am one of many, many stars,
no longer capable of thinking I’m in this for myself,
certain that we shine for each other.
Inquiry
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, question on March 24, 2019| Leave a Comment »
How has pride helped your family?
That is a question I’ve never asked.
Nor How do you treat yourself
when you think “I must give others choices?”
And suddenly it occurs to me
that I always ask the same questions.
How was your day? and Peanut butter
sandwich or bagel with cream cheese?
I have been thinking of new questions today.
What do you have to teach me?
Earth, what do you want? and
Where do I begin? But these are still
questions I can think of. I want to learn
new questions, questions I don’t yet know to ask.
Questions that scare me. Questions that make me
weep just hearing them. Questions
I know I will spend a lifetime
learning how to answer
Walking Before The Midnight
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged communion, darkness, poem, poetry, question on July 21, 2018| Leave a Comment »
in the dark
you lose track
of any lines
that say
you are here—
and the night
holds you
like a lover
with hands
somehow
everywhere,
and the stars
keep thousands
of secrets
and sometimes
they spill,
and if you have
a question,
it comes to meet you
whether or not
you’ve dared
to ask it.
Busy Girl’s Satori
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged awakening, bird, blue heron, poem, poetry, question, revelation on June 28, 2018| Leave a Comment »
Across the yard, below
the cliffs, and just beneath the evening’s
drift toward darkening, above
the river, through the trees,
there is, if you are lucky,
a slender moment charmed
by chance when, if you look up,
the great blue heron
will angle past on slanting wing
and make you question
everything.
One Desolation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged answer, heart, poem, poetry, question on May 15, 2018| Leave a Comment »
I make in my heart a nest for the questions,
ask them to stay, and at the same time
post a sign that says
answers only—
no wonder they fly away.
Sentenced
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breast exam, day, poem, poetry, question on December 16, 2017| 2 Comments »
By the time you wake,
the day is already a question.
Whatever declaration there was
in your dreams has already
curled itself into a question mark.
No matter how you wrestle
with the punctuation—try,
perhaps, to straighten it
into an exclamation or crumple it
into a period—regardless, the day
insists on being interrogative.
And why shouldn’t it
insist on being a curve
like a river bed,
like a nautilus,
like a naked breast
beneath the ultrasound—
nature despises a straight line.
Now what matters
is what always matters—
how will you meet the day?
This Life
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, question on January 12, 2017| 2 Comments »
Long strands
of silky
questions
knotted
into
nets—
we
learn
when to
be caught,
& when
to fall through.
One Unsequencing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged answer, poem, poetry, question on October 19, 2016| Leave a Comment »
And Then You Ask the Next Question
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged inquiry, poem, poetry, question, universe on September 18, 2014| 4 Comments »
Sometimes, if you ask
the right question,
and there are infinite
right questions to ask,
then the world cracks,
not in a way that makes
it more broken, but
cracks in a way
that makes it more whole,
as if you’ve been living
in a glass tank without
knowing the glass
were there. But oh!
after the shattering,
when someone asks you,
“Does the universe
act on us or do we act on
the universe,” you feel
in your breath and your
pulse that you and the universe
are the very same thing,
you feel it with absolute
certainty even as your
mind races
to find the place
where the glass
used to be.
Truth and Dare
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged answer, blank verse, dare, poem, poetry, question on August 15, 2014| 4 Comments »
a D-poem for Lian Canty’s Alphabet Menagerie
I dare you on an early springtime morn
to ask the daffodil what it remembers
of December. Ask the dragonfly
what it was like to live before the age
of dinosaurs. Go ask the dandelion
how it feels to be despised, and what
it’s like to lose your seeds like wishes—every
single one. Then ask the deer about
the reasons it wore spots when it was young.
The dogwood, ask its blossoms about frost.
The donut, ask it what it knows of holes.
The drum, invite it in for tea to tell
you of the skin it wears and other lives
it’s breathed. Then ask the duck if it recalls
the time the young swan came to live amongst
the ducklings. There is always something more
to every story than we see, yes, something
more than this and that, a hidden door
through which truths pass as silently as lies—
though sometimes truths bounce back like echoes. Ask
the dolphins how that works, how if you sing
the world sings back to you. I dare you, sing
your questions to the world. Perhaps you’ll hear
whatever answers you had wanted, but
more likely you’ll hear answers that will make
your heart break open wider than before—
those are the answers I am hoping for.
On My Way to the Castle
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged giving, poem, poetry, question on July 26, 2014| Leave a Comment »
a q-poem for Lian Canty’s alphabet menagerie
It was a funny little man
I met on the street, with the sparklingest
look in his eye.
He said, I have some things
right here in my bag that I think you might
just like to buy.
Now I had a quarter,
shiny as a quasar, and a new dollar
crisp and clean,
and I said to the man,
show me what you have
that I might give to a queen.
First he pulled out a quill.
For just one dollar bill,
he said, and I declined.
Then he pulled out a quail
with a curving crest—
I said, Not what I had in mind.
Not fancy enough for the queen?
he said, and he pulled out
a red and green quetzal.
That’s lovely! I cried,
but please, no more birds.
He twisted his arms like a pretzel.
Okay, he said, you are not
easy to please. How about
some Queen Anne’s Lace?
Though the blossom was fair,
it smelled terrible
and I made a sour face.
How about a queen bee
to make her honey
whenever she wants something sweet?
How does that work?
I asked the man,
he said, Watch her carefully.
Or would she perhaps like
quartz crystals—
how many would she need?
Or maybe a book
of clever quotes—
do you know what she likes to read?
My dear man, I said,
that’s it! You have shown me
the best way to make an impression—
not with something I’ve bought
but with curiousness.
I shall bring the queen a question.
The End
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged answer, dead, knowing, living, poem, question, unknowing on December 27, 2012| 2 Comments »
Dusting the heads
of dead animals,
I think of how much
my father cherishes
this antelope, this duck,
this winged thing I cannot name,
and I understand that it is not
the thing itself that still
thrills him and makes
him want to keep it on the wall,
but the memory of the thing,
how alive it was, how alive
he was in the killing of it.
*
Over tempura, Pam tells me
of the time that she went
to a man’s home, and there
on the couch was his rich wife,
stuffed, her hand stretched out
in eternal greeting. It had been
in her will, the taxidermic clause
stating that he would lose everything
if he buried her. I sip my sake
and laugh, perhaps because
it is funny, perhaps because
I do not know what to say.
*
Though it is snowing
the room is filled with slant sunshine
and the light does what light does,
it seeks out the darkness.
I feel how what I think I know
has become something dead,
though once it greeted me
with open hands. Though once
I was ripe with it.
*
If we’re made of dust
what is doing the breathing?
*
Not that I want
an answer to that.
Only to be a vehicle
for asking.
*
In the parking lot,
the sound of geese.
No one could say
it is beautiful,
the strangled song
slicing the cold, clear air.
But they’re singing,
my god, they are singing.
Or Is It Learning to be More Than That?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged answer, certainty, falling, path, poem, question, silence, uncertainty, unlearning on February 1, 2012| 9 Comments »
I curl the question mark of my body
into the silence around us. There is silence
inside of us, too, a pure silence that pools
and spills and overflows making it easier now to not know,
to not even guess what comes next,
and after years of wanting answers and trying
to make the world fit into an equation or an outline
or a calendar square or a rhyme scheme, I am
more easy now with falling into silence, with falling and
not even believing in wings, falling past
the hands reaching out to rescue me as if
falling is a terrible thing. But even falling
is a form of knowing, just a new metaphor,
a new word for path. And even a question mark
knows where it curves, where it is line, where it
breaks, where it becomes a point, one small point
amongst many small points. I am learning,
unlearning, to be less than that.