Posted in Uncategorized, tagged answer, ars poetica, blank, question, truth on August 11, 2020| 6 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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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?