Lily

Lily 

In the French restaurant you asked me if you

would have to eat snails,

And I told you “no” but there might be steak with sauce.

The French and their sauces which - if separated - represent failure, lack of intuition;

If intact - the glorious balance of being unbroken.

But alas, you do not like steak with sauce,

Or separation - or divorce - or the feeling of not being so young and so able. 

Your freckle, fine face is just here and 

Still so frail but lights at the prospect of cracking the brûlée. 

Lily, it will not be that separation can be remedied with an extra egg yolk,

Or the cloying of effort and awkward whisking conversations, 

But it will be necessary at some point 

To accept defeat and crack the shell and admit

That life is sweetest when it is barely burnt.

the bowl in me

 

March.

Poem: A Lens

-Malcolm Guite

That All, which always is all everywhere
—Donne

Not that we think he is confined to us,
Locked in the box of our religious rites,
Or curtained by these frail cathedral walls,
No church is broad or creed compendious
Enough. All thought’s a narrowing of sites.
Before him every definition fails,
Words fall and flutter into emptiness,
Like motes of dust within his spaciousness.

Not that we summon him, but that he lends
The very means whereby he might be known,
Till this opacity of stone on stone,
This trace of light and music on the air,
This sacred space itself becomes a lens
To sense his presence who is everywhere.

Mary Oliver died yesterday.

THE SWAN
by Mary Oliver
Issue no. 124 (Fall 1992)

Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air—
an armful of white blossoms,
a perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
biting the air with its black beak?

Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
a shrill dark music—like rain pelting the trees—like a waterfall
knifing down the black ledges?

And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds—
a white cross
streaming across the sky, its feet
like black leaves, its wings
like the stretched light of the river?

And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything? 
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for? 
And have you changed your life?

Fame.

Famous

BY NAOMI SHIHAB NYE

The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence,   

which knew it would inherit the earth   

before anybody said so.   

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds   

watching him from the birdhouse.   

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.   

The idea you carry close to your bosom   

is famous to your bosom.   

The boot is famous to the earth,   

more famous than the dress shoe,   

which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it   

and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.   

I want to be famous to shuffling men   

who smile while crossing streets,   

sticky children in grocery lines,   

famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,   

or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,   

but because it never forgot what it could do.

Petty's Island

Where the wind whispers
on the pirate island,
we hide our ill-content,
a few bad decisions, and dreams.

And the green tells me
life wants to be living -
to push through the topsoil,
and come to this, our path.

There we may walk carefully,
in wonder, worry, and want.
We walk and wake the secrets below,
Every old thing bound to new.

 Fauna plodding forward,
plundering the sky and seas,
fiercely forging a breath -
the space to cry 'sanctuary'.

Where we had thought

The Hero Path 

We have not even to risk the adventure alone

for the heroes of all time have gone before us. 

The labyrinth is thoroughly known... 

we have only to follow the thread of the hero path. 

And where we had thought to find an abomination

we shall find a God. 

And where we had thought to slay another 

we shall slay ourselves. 

Where we had thought to travel outwards 

we shall come to the center of our own existence. 

And where we had thought to be alone 

we shall be with all the world.

 ― Joseph Campbell

Mahalia.

The world can be lean, 

Thinly-lived, breathing in

like scraping a bowl's edge. 

The world can be rich, 

brimming with cornflower, compromise, 

and all that is running toward the Good. 

I wish for you, 

the whole story - 

that you might know the beauty 

of finding your own way.

From here.

The ache in my bones

I forget

because we are too busy

playing

And going every way

feeling

the sunlight and sounds

of every step.

Time, trickling by

into the river

and if you sit a while

the quiet is loud.

Forget the din

of the city,

Cross ridges without

looking both ways.

Here, I will dress

lightly,

Letting go of a few things

there and there.

I walk in Love,

this way and that,

to greet the breeze on my cheek,

every color a gift.

If we were made for Longing,

then tell me,

which way is it to

a clear path to run?

Living the questions.

“I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away. What other answer would suffice?”

-C.S. Lewis

Bridges.

A thousand masks.

“Unable to accept our brokenness, we wear a thousand masks to disguise the face of fear.”

-Manning, Brennan. “Ruthless Trust.” 

Take me to the place with no mirrors

That sacred hall in the heart of hearts.

Take me to the room that has no echo

That home I have been looking for.

Place me in the space with no cover,

But for the light that bathes the soul.

Place me down from this, my pedestal 

And let every scale fall, fall, fall.

A thousand masks I carry here with me,

To guard against the weather, the wind, it all.

A thousand masks I bare before you,

To mend my life unraveled hems recalled.

Here below is all I am, I have, I haven't,

That is, the broken, bitter, biting, damaged.

Here below is humanity, sin-soaked, mine,

That choice and chance for once-again.

These masks that blunt the day, I know, 

These burdens I cannot lay down.

These masks I make a wreck of, burned,

My weakness, my strength somehow.

Striving: I have been thinking a lot about climbing…

"I am seeking. I am striving. I am in it with all of my heart." - Van Gogh

Here is the story of my life: 

I am ten months old. I have just learned to walk. I am climbing out of my crib. My mother is sleeping outside of my bedroom door. The door is closed. There is a Christmas tree with twinkle lights on it next to my bed. 

I am two years old. I am climbing trees. I am fond of eating rocks. There are no pictures. I have two brothers I boss around the living room. 

I am five years old. I am holding a rake. I am raking leaves on a forest path. My parents find me and ask what I'm doing to which I respond: "I'm raking all the leaves in the forest."

I am seven years old. I am constructing the perfect tree-house. I am planning to make a bridge between the two olive trees and the fig tree, or at least a zip-line. 

I am nine years old. I live in a villa with a view of a volcano. Every morning I am out on this deck to feed my pet rabbit and smell the ashes that have fallen overnight. 

I am twelve years old. I have won the Naval Base Talent Show. I played and sang the Battle Hymn of the Republic. I am also first chair trumpet in my band. I have read every Nancy Drew book there ever was. 

I am thirteen years old. I am in Costa Rica with three-hundred teenage girls I have never met. A group of girls who are older than me have covered my room in toilet paper. 

I am sixteen years old. I am kissed for the first time. I go to Prom. I cry in corners so much. I get up early to do my hair every morning. 

I am twenty years old. I am in Oxford. I am sprinting through Christ Church Gardens before sunrise to the Rowing Houses on the Isis. I don't buy anything I don't need for a year. 

I am twenty-two years old. I decide that hospitals are cold and dark places. I start a gym with a friend. I make a lot of mistakes. I make a home for a lot of people. Eventually, it's just me. 

I was born to hope. I was born to claw at meaning. I was born to ambition. I was born to seek a summit state of being.

Shortly before leaving for this journey (I am now nearing the "end" of) I had a conversation with a friend. In our general community (world?!) it is unheard of that a person would not have an objective on any given day, no plan, no great imminent hope for the near future, no mountain to aim at on the horizon. 

"You always want us to be learning and improving - there is always some point we should be working toward," she said.

And I actually felt her declaration thud into the air between us. Was she right? Had I been saying this? Wanting this? Did I give this to others? 

Another time I was right in the middle of teaching a class to do pull-ups when a question was blurted out: "How is a pull-up functional for life?" I realized after thinking about this that this too was something I had never thought of as being foundational to everyday life.

As an infant my mother had to sleep outside my crib for a while because I loved to climb. I walked at ten months old, and set my sights on something higher than this thereafter. 

I was obsessed with tree-houses in grade school: making them, being in them, learning about them, and imagining how I might coddle together the scraps of that time to make something beyond my dreams. 

Things went much the same as I got older. There has always been something to win, something to better, something to feel, something to do to my utmost… before walking to something higher to achieve. I have filled my days with the sound of steps. 

To climb is human. 

To pull ourselves up is human. 

To seek higher ground is human. 

But we can also live so entrenched in our own lives and the story of our bound selves that we may ask one day, offhandedly, "How is a pull-up functional?" 

Have we forgot that we were made for higher places? 

Here is the rub though: where - exactly - is the end? What - exactly - is to be found at the heights? What - really - is it like to be in the place where we are aiming? Who - exactly - are we leaving behind? Taking with us? 

Is my ladder leaning against the right wall? 

The other day I had the pleasure of tackling one of the most mentally-challenging hikes of my life. Risk-wise, elevation-wise, time-wise, this hike was an exercise in ambition and striving. Dents-du-Midi ("teeth of noon") is a many-summited mountain located in the Chablais Alps of Switzerland. The highest peak is Le Haute Cime ("the high summit") which beckons from 10,696ft. or 3,257m.  It was first ascended in 1784 by one Jean-Maurice Clement, a man who may well have completed the climb just as I did, i.e. with little to no idea of what he was getting into at all. 

Upon reaching the view that I *thought* was the top, the rest of the crew wanted to climb to the final peak a couple 100ft. up. I wanted to take a nap - so I did. So why do I still feel that I missed out on something great even after telling myself that that first summit was more than "sufficient"? 

There is a confusing paradox at work here. In mindfulness practice there is generally this idea that anytime you are reaching or striving towards a mode of being in meditation this takes you out of the allotted time to being in the present. However the future is what pushes us to appreciate the present. We look ahead to death - to the death of anything and anytime - and we are driven to grasp at the present. We even look behind us at the past and remorsefully burden ourselves by those memories to appreciate what is "now". So - this is the interplay: we sit between two poles, trying to balance on an axis of being. 

But - as I have heard in my travels, "Balance is bull-shit. There is only integration." We are never done with the climb. The moment can never really stand alone. Our lives are less like lines and more like circles. This is the way of the world. This is a way of being. Around and around we go. The summit is only ever a stop along the way. How much of what we believe is kept high on the summit, has been with us all along? 

I live my life in widening circles

that reach out across the world

I am may not complete this one

but I give myself to it. 

I circle around God, around the ancient* tower. 

I've been circling for thousands of years

and I still don't know: 

am I a falcon, a storm, or a great song? 

-Rainier Marie Rilke

*translation here my own from Arrus, who has been reading Rilke with me in German. 

Courage.

"Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us." - Pema Chondron

I met a Girl named Courage

She is not large

But spritely

Hair every which way

Held up by her spirit.

She is not loud

But appears

"I am Courage,

I am 5 years old."

She is not alone

But trails a sibling

Gripping her leg,

Peering from behind her.

She is not proud

But pink.

Heart fluttering. 

Smile bustling.

She is not aware

But sure - 

That we are here.

That this is a good day to be alive.

She is not a picture

But the realest real

Like the itch of a sweater 

Like all the possibilities the world can hold.

"You can't plan on the heart."

My Heart by Frank O’Hara

I’m not going to cry all the time
nor shall I laugh all the time,
I don’t prefer one “strain” to another.
I’d have the immediacy of a bad movie,
not just a sleeper, but also the big,
overproduced first-run kind. I want to be
at least as alive as the vulgar. And if
some aficionado of my mess says “That’s
not like Frank!”, all to the good! I
don’t wear brown and grey suits all the time,
do I? No. I wear workshirts to the opera,
often. I want my feet to be bare,
I want my face to be shaven, and my heart–
you can’t plan on the heart, but
the better part of it, my poetry, is open.

-Dallas Clayton

"You are most yourself when you are alone."

How to be a Poet (to remind myself)

Make a place to sit down. 
Sit down. Be quiet. 
You must depend upon 
affection, reading, knowledge, 
skill—more of each 
than you have—inspiration 
work, growing older, patience, 
for patience joins time 
to eternity… 

Breathe with unconditional breath 
the unconditioned air. 
Shun electric wire. 
Communicate slowly. Live 
a three-dimensional life; 
stay away from screens. 
Stay away from anything 
that obscures the place it is in. 
There are no unsacred places; 
there are only sacred places 
and desecrated places. 

Accept what comes from silence. 
Make the best you can of it. 
Of the little words that come 
out of the silence, like prayers 
prayed back to the one who prays, 
make a poem that does not disturb 
the silence from which it came.

― Wendell Berry, Given

Mt. Zion, Israel, 2006

Soothing.

She said, "What do you do to comfort yourself?"

1. Move

2. Eat

3. Sleep

4. Create

5. Listen

...not necessarily in that order. 

"Live through this, and you won't look back."

"I have created myself a soul, big as the world, that leaks all over, and I have to keep calling for the plumber. I have to be rent and pulled apart and live according to the demons and the imagination in me. I'm restless. Things are calling me away. My hair is being pulled by the stars again.” 
― Anaïs Nin, Fire: From A Journal of Love - The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin

I've really got to stop buying books of poetry...

Utah, 2015.

The Journey

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice – - -

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

‘Mend my life!’

each voice cried.

But you didn’t stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations – - -

though their melancholy

was terrible. It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice,

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do – - – determined to save

the only life you could save.

- Mary Oliver

Some days are harder than others.

I hope some day I know why.

Kindness

Naomi Shihab Nye, 1952

Before you know what kindness really is

you must lose things,

feel the future dissolve in a moment

like salt in a weakened broth.

What you held in your hand,

what you counted and carefully saved,

all this must go so you know

how desolate the landscape can be

between the regions of kindness.

How you ride and ride

thinking the bus will never stop,

the passengers eating maize and chicken

will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness

you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho

lies dead by the side of the road.

You must see how this could be you,

how he too was someone

who journeyed through the night with plans

and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,

you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. 

You must wake up with sorrow.

You must speak to it till your voice

catches the thread of all sorrows

and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,

only kindness that ties your shoes

and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,

only kindness that raises its head

from the crowd of the world to say

It is I you have been looking for,

and then goes with you everywhere

like a shadow or a friend.

i believe in living.

i believe in living.
By Assata Shakur

i believe in living.
i believe in the spectrum
of Beta days and Gamma people.
i believe in sunshine.
In windmills and waterfalls,
tricycles and rocking chairs;
And i believe that seeds grow into sprouts.
And sprouts grow into trees.
i believe in the magic of the hands.
And in the wisdom of the eyes.
i believe in rain and tears.
And in the blood of infinity.

i believe in life.
And i have seen the death parade
march through the torso of the earth,
sculpting mud bodies in its path
i have seen the destruction of the daylight
and seen bloodthirsty maggots
prayed to and saluted

i have seen the kind become the blind
and the blind become the bind
in one easy lesson.
i have walked on cut grass.
i have eaten crow and blunder bread
and breathed the stench of indifference

i have been locked by the lawless.
Handcuffed by the haters.
Gagged by the greedy.
And, if i know anything at all,
it's that a wall is just a wall
and nothing more at all.
It can be broken down.

i believe in living
i believe in birth.
i believe in the sweat of love
and in the fire of truth.

And i believe that a lost ship,
steered by tired, seasick sailors,
can still be guided home to port.