Tag Archives: Life

“Thank you for being a valued member of…”

I, like everyone else, like to belong;
to be valued and to add value to a community
of similarly-minded individuals who gather
in groups for purposes mundane and spiritual.
The stars come together across the sky;
visible at night, always present during the day.
Look how the geese travel as one "V,"
heading to destinations for food 
and noisome conversation as they dine.
A pair breaks off from the flight of the whole
and lands in the open lawn next door.
I sip coffee as they sip things found in the dewed grass.
Would they let me join in their endeavors?
Would I allow them on my back porch?
Do we value each other across the lines of species?
The geese call out, answering with a "honk"
that I fail to understand in my place as a human.
If we share stories now which we cannot comprehend,
what hope will there be when the Big Bang
turns upon itself and becomes the big Crunch,
one "honk" to another?

Social Security Statement

Every year I receive a statement 
beginning with the ominous words
"Important Information that May Affect Your Benefits."
Have I not benefited from life already?
Friendships have sustained me.
Relationships have nurtured me.
Love, in all its forms, has carried me.
Yes, I have been wounded,
known sorrow, become frustrated and angry
at the ways of life and how some who live
and go about their day get in my way.
To see one's life-earnings reflected
in a monthly figure of benefits
reduces existence to the almighty dollar 
with very little sense of how I have lived.
Perhaps I should visit the online help center
to share about the time I passed
holding my daughter as she died.
Or share the joy of another daughter's wedding.
Or the time when I camped with all three daughters
in the midst of a grove of poplar trees
and we listened to the raucous laughter
of coyotes down by the river in the night.
Those times, along with the countless times
where I made eye contact with strangers,
should be on my Statement of Benefits.

A Widening Circle

Am I a falcon, a storm, or a great song? - Rilke

Finding freedom is an odd dance.
Look how the black squirrel hops along the lawn
or how the turkey vulture floats in the air
or how a dog pants after chasing its tail.
Is my freedom of a greater or lesser variety?
The very power to choose is a given
yet always in freedom there is the refusal
of a choice presented on life's plate.
I could circle around God and the towers of old
for thousands of years as if I inhabited a Rilke poem
but my days are numbered differently
and sometimes the circles in which I move
and have my very being narrow to a point.
I give myself to reaching out across the world
with a promise to return to where I began.
Rilke gave himself willingly to it all.
I still don't know.

(Thank you to Joanna Macy's translation of Rainer Maria Rilke's "Widening Circles.")

Maranatha! (Come, Lord!)

Not the lord that creates chaos and distraction
wherever they go as they please.
Not the lord of pleasing either.  One can
get lost in the soft allure of those promises.
And not the lord of promises who fails
to appear at the appointed meeting place
time and time again with no explanation.
Not the lord of explanation.  Look at all
that science has rationally explained
and how close we are to self-destruction.
Certainly not the lord of destruction.
How many more deaths must be added
to the roll of those who once lived joyfully?
Dare I turn down the lord of joy?
With no dance and no song and no smiles
we would wither and pass like unceasing time.
Not the lord of time.  The clock hands turn
always around never seeking a simple pause.
Not the lord of the pause.  There are too many 
buttons pushed at the oddest of moments.
And not the lord of the moment.  Although, the moment
when I first saw you, I rejoiced, checked my watch,
and smiled knowing the years that would surround us
as we loved what we pleased and promised never
to leave the other standing alone with no explanation.

Sadly

I asked, "How long before
the threads we keep sewing
become unraveled by time?"

She said, "I heard a woman 
speak last night on the nature
of the created cosmos."

I said, "And she, no doubt,
declared that there is nothing
ever lost as the clocks are wound?"

She said, "Yes.  We live in 
a home that remembers itself
from time to time."

I asked, "And is it not sad
that those who forget
miss out on time passing?"

She answered, "Sadly, the sadness
lasts forever as the stars go about
their millennium dance together."

Another Brushstroke

There is a delicious ambiguity
found in the repeated brushstrokes
Cezanne uses to build Mont Sainte-Victoire
on canvas after canvas.  Blocks of color
laid down right next to each other
like crowds of people from all cultures
waiting to be released to stand
for millennia in their traditional costumes
one right next to the other.  Having
traveled so far, I wonder, will the desire
to pray for the gathered thousands
make for a moving prayer of humility?
Will each listener be welcomed by the earth?
Or will the powers-that-be, those who
step in time together through the gardens
of delight, plow everything underground?
Wait, for the painter is pondering
another brushstroke.

Undissolved

Have mercy on those not at home;
who cannot find their way into life,
caught between the demands
of those offering only comfort in times of war
and the voices wanting only to name the disaster.
Pronouncements are not easily recieved
by the ones fixated upon the one, true path.
Imagine all suffering slowly dissolving itself
into the mystical heart of comprehension,
the home of radical hospitality,
where a passing interest opens the way
for anger to fade into the place of dissipation.
Have mercy on the undissolved.

Reflection

The singing voices can be heard at the end of the dark hall
where light outlines the shape of a door on the carpet.
Waves of sound compete with waves of sight to leave
an impression on my newly awakened memory;
dancing with other images and impressions:
laughter at a meal,
heads bowed in prayer,
the reflection of a chandelier
in the curvature of a spoon,
the glance from one end
of the table to the other
holding all the meaning in the world.
And then the good-byes offered at the front door
upon leaving.

Maze Instructions

"I touched the thread and wept." - Mary Oliver

If you find yourself in the maze of Life
be sure to reach deep into your pocket
for the spool of red thread one always carries.

Always turn Right (or always turn Left).
Neither way is preferred
but consistency will save your life.

Look how the flight of Starlings
rotates together in the air
wingtip to beating wingtip.

Upon landing in a grove of trees
the chatter of success
dominates their avian Conversation.

When You arrive in the center
and have no one to talk with
shed a tear and let go of the thread.