Walking Together
I don’t spend time with the broken
because I like pain, but because
I need to feel life
from inside its shell.
Everywhere I turn, I witness
such resilience breaking out of
ordinary people: the fourteen year
old who was burned saving her grand-
mother; the black sergeant carrying his
white lieutenant out of live fire and how
they fell in the sand and cried in each
other’s arms; and the one with no arms
who keeps asking what she can carry.
I’m watching a hummingbird now
work so hard, its wings seem not
to be moving at all. Is this what
happens when we love?
I’ll tell you a secret. I ran a comb
through Grandma’s hair minutes after
she died. She was still warm, her Spirit
on its way. I still have the comb. And
when in doubt or awe, I get by myself
and finger the spaces in
that comb.
How can I say this properly:
We can cheat death for a while
by feeding it things that are false.
And we can draw life out
by giving when we think
there’s nothing left.
REPEATEDLY We are Asked
to embody or consume;
to be in kinship with everything larger
or to order and manage everything smaller.
We are asked, every day, to align or separate;
to coordinate our will with everything living
or to impose our will on everything we meet.
And not choosing is a choice. Acquiescence
is different from patience or surrender.
All this leaves us needing to know:
whether to better the song through practice
or to better ourselves through singing.
DISCERNMENT
The trouble with the mind
is that it sees like a bird
but walks like a man.
And things at the surface
move fast, needing to be
gathered. While things
at center move slow,
needing to be
perceived.
What I mean is
if you want to see the
many birds, you can
gather them in a cage
and wonder why
they won’t fly.
Or you can go to
the wetlands, birding
in silence before
the sun comes up.
It’s the same
with the things
we love or think.
We can frame them
in pretty cages or follow
them into the wild meadow
till they stun us with the
spread of their magnificent
wings.
THE ELEVENTH COMMANDMENT
There have been many misunderstandings
along the way. But all can be forgiven
except the want to have us suppress
who we are: to make nice, to go
along, to defer our song.
And though elephants trudge miles
by the scent of their mammoth
hearts to honor one of their kind,
no tree fells itself so another can rise.
All to say that we are hunters
and gatherers inside as well:
striking down the other for food
or planting each other so we can
eat from how we grow.
FOR THE MOMENT
It was in Vancouver
at breakfast, before my
second cup of coffee.
I had a moment, a long
moment, before the next
task showed its teeth,
before the meetings began,
and the clink of silverware
glistened slightly, and the
coffee warmed my throat,
and I fell into the well of
a silence that was there
before I was born.
For the moment, the
thing that waits behind
my tongue dropped way
down behind my heart,
like an iridescent fish
hovering under all that
water near the center
of the Earth.
Now the phone is
ringing. The emails are
flitting, and the voices
in the hive of which I
am a part are mounting.
But the coffee is
steaming and my mind
for now is clear and the
path between it and my
heart is open and I
finally have nothing
to say. |
