Sometimes
in the silence
between
the small talk
a whole life
is lived—
a life
in which
you are
exactly
yourself
only more so,
a self without
name, a self
of no
where, a
self unselved,
which
is to say
that sometimes
in the silence
of a minute
you find
some vision
so vast
so true
that you weep
before saying,
And how are you?
Posts Tagged ‘self’
Mid-Conversation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged conversation, friendship, self, silence on June 17, 2021| 4 Comments »
Happy Birth Day
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged attentiveness, birthday, self on November 1, 2020| 11 Comments »
Happy Birth Day
Each morning, this chance
to birth again the self—
to push it through
the canal of dream,
this chance to open
through the center
and let the new self emerge,
to marvel as it appears,
glistening with potential.
Of course the new self cries.
It needs to be warmed,
nourished, held.
Imagine what it’s like
to be that new—
to not believe any thought,
to not assume any thing.
Imagine what it’s like
to be that attentive,
that vulnerable.
Self, can you meet
each day
like that? Like that.
There
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged other, planting, seed, self, soil on July 21, 2020| 2 Comments »
Walking in the Garden
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged garden, self, self worth on June 12, 2020| 14 Comments »
Every morning I walk into the garden,
even when there is little to see—only rows
of tiny sprouts and the earth just beginning to crack.
It is not so much that I speak to the seedlings,
though I do—to the slender green lashes
of carrots and the heart-shaped leaves of beans.
It is more that they speak to me in syllables
I feel through my fingers—speak of resilience
and tenderness, speak of the dark and beautiful
earth. There are so many days when I worry
that I am not doing enough—worry
that I could be more kind, more generous,
more loving, more vocal, more good.
But in the garden, pulling bindweed
and clover and salsify from the mostly empty rows,
all of my brokenness feels less broken.
It is somehow easier to forgive myself
for being who I am. And to mean it.
Easier to know myself as one of many.
Easier to believe that like the potato greens
I have so much more to offer that
can’t yet be seen, but it’s growing,
surely, deep in the darkness, it’s growing.
It’s All Practice
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Corona Virus, new, self, self talk on April 9, 2020| 10 Comments »
Tonight I can laugh at the part of me
who thinks she should know
the right thing to do, the right thing to say.
Meanwhile, the rest of me
wakes up each morning in wonder,
marveling at the quickly changing world.
Every morning this second self practices
how to bathe, how to dress. Even now she is practicing
how to write a poem, how to make breakfast,
what to say to her friends, family, herself.
She knows there are so many ways to do it right.
Every moment contains invitations
she’s never noticed before. Sometimes
she practices saying nothing at all.
If you see her lingering beside the road,
it is because she is practicing how to walk
how to see. She used to know, of course,
but now she can’t seem to take anything
for granted, how to drink tea,
how to walk into a room, it’s all new,
how to weep, how to smile.
A Letter to the Woman in My Calendar
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged calendar, Corona Virus, fiction, reality, self, writing on April 1, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Dear Other Version of Myself,
In my calendar, it’s April second
and you are going to an event tonight
at a bookstore in another town
where the people will gather
and hug each other and taste
each other’s wine. You live in a world
that no longer exists, and every day
I try to reconcile it—how you
had plans to go camping next weekend,
how you were going to go to the theater
with no mask, no gloves,
no sense of your body as a weapon.
Every day, your life, which once was my life,
seems increasingly impossible.
Every day, these two worlds are farther apart—
the one in which you were getting on a plane
to visit your mother
and the one in which I put on rubber gloves
to go to the post office box.
I remember how seldom you washed
your hands for fear that someone you love
would die. I remember what it was like
to hug my friends with no worry
of harming them, to go to a restaurant,
to plan for a day past tomorrow.
The Great Beyond
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged loss of separate self, perspective, self on March 10, 2020| 2 Comments »
And once again the invitation
to see beyond the self—
the way water knows itself
not only as river and lake
but also as fern, as cloud, as cat.
Forgive me for believing
I end with this skin, these ideas,
these imaginings. Sometimes
I forget to choose vastness,
forget to know the self
as cliff, as maitake, as crumb.
How is it I so often miss the invitation?
How is it I overlook that I
am lemon, asteroid, wren?
Less
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged communion, nakedness, self on February 25, 2020| 6 Comments »
Today I can see how I wear it
like a velvet dress, the dream
of wanting to be somebody.
It’s so easy to forget I am wearing it.
Because it is lovely. Because
it feels good. But life
hands me a hanger and asks me
to take off the dress
and move naked today
through my inner rooms.
It’s not as if anyone else can see,
but I notice, as I must,
how much easier it is now to know
the self as sunrise, as apple seed,
as cinnamon, as you.
Big
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged big, growth, poem, poetry, self on January 4, 2020| 10 Comments »
This is, perhaps, the year to learn to be big.
Spruce tree big. Cliffside big. Big as mesa,
as mountain lake. Big as in cosmos, as in love.
Being small has never served me—constricting,
contorting, trying to fit into a room, into shoes,
into a name. Let this be the year to escape all those little
rules with those little shoulds, all those little
cages with their little locks. Time to make of myself
a key, time to lean into immensity. Time to supersize
communion, time to grow beyond self. Time to
open, to unwall, to do as the universe does,
accelerating as it expands, not rushing toward
something else, but changing the scale of space itself.
This is the year to be big .
In These Halcyon Days
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged knowing, knowing the self, poem, poetry, self on December 19, 2019| 2 Comments »
for it is not so much to know the self
as to know it as it is known
by galaxy and cedar cone
—A.R. Ammons, “Gravelly Run”
I want to know the self
the way a nest might know
the eggs it holds, the way
a feather might know a wing.
I want to know the self
as a bank knows a river,
as wave knows water,
as night knows the night.
There is a kind of knowing
that has less to do with certainty
and more to do with meeting
the world again and again as it is.
I want to know the self
with no name, with no story,
as a stone might know it,
or a song.