Month: December 2012

Like dolphins nudging

injured swimmers

I feel all the ways

I have been floated into safety,

moved by others’ buoyancy

into new harbours.

 

No heroic intervention,

instinctive caring

rises out of play and daily hunt,

welcoming whatever visits

no matter how it arrives.

 

Let my healing

bring new grace and companions,

moving without a trainer’s dangle

or dependence on regular fish,

a swimmer’s generosity

in trusting ocean.

 

Unlike the rescuers

with ready alarms,

let me move immersed

until the cries find me,

play freely

until I am called

to swim alongside.

We said forever

in the genuine hope

of touching eternity,

as if the protection of vague vastness

could wrap separate

the cold shiver of parting.

 

But here the nakedness of separation

shows falsity

peeping through, not as a lie

but a laying bare

of unsafe promises,

the risk lining commitments

we don’t understand.

 

And no, I am not leaving

but neither can I stay here unchanged

or ask the same of you.

 

We trail our fingertips softly

in the presence of a shifting now

that offers only the solace

we can bear to feel,

and offer up with the next breath.

 

And oh! I am grateful

for your bravery,

the ways you allow me to tremble

and still be here,

the ways you let me in

to see your shaking.

I walk up the hill

in cold rain,

aware of slipping on ice,

and the hill rises to greet me,

its sensual curves

extending the field of my belly.

 

I do not often walk

this low to the ground;

usually it is sky song

filling my head.

 

This is a greeting

more than lovers

or mother-love

or even planet-awe.

 

I have been afraid

of this meeting,

worried that the edges will blur

until I am consort to the world,

or flat-faced pressed

on the icy road

beyond retrieval.

 

But as the rain falls,

warming ice and making more,

washing to reveal,

I feel love call

and am so grateful

my body can answer.

I have a funny book

that makes me laugh,

inviting me to read it

and an email inbox full

of other invitations

and a friend in crisis

and a world to save

and a sink full of dishes

and yes there are bills to pay

and body hairs to pluck

and family waiting for some evidence of love…

 

but it is here

in the quiet game of hide and seek

I play with my true self,

heart pounding as I wait in the dark

or run to lighted corners

for a glimpse,

hoping to be caught;

 

this is the game I need room for.

We can’t craft beauty,

can only unveil it

in sheer draperies

one at a time,

or pungent onion layers peeled,

or even the tender horror

of scabs off wounds.

 

It will find us if we look,

perching on our hearts

that have grown like patient cedars

to be homes for wings,

reservoirs of song.

 

I don’t mean pretty,

and even loveliness is fleeting;

beauty is everywhere,

inviting us to notice.

I am not finished,

the carver said in dreamtime

as he worked, carving diamond holes

on the underside of a beak

for a totem

to be raised that same night

in a town far away.

 

It had seemed complete

which is why the celebration was waiting

and the carver was still sitting on the hill

with a long drive ahead.

 

And I was encouraging,

trying to solve it,

to move him where he needed to go

but I was on a little train myself,

passing him on the hill,

climbing slowly upwards.

 

And now in daylight

with my pen

I feel poking at my throat,

the underside of my jaw,

and wonder about that beak,

whether it is attached

to a bird that will fly.

These mountains

rub my nose into smallness,

fill my belly with clinging

as I crawl on their slopes

seized by fear and shame.

 

The chairlift was fine;

I do not feel comfortable

high on a string

but could catch the glory there,

see the ways of cedar and snow,

the long quiet conversation.

 

There was skittering

on my first descents,

an awkwardness of new

like any fawn

ungainly and wondering

but not afraid to fall,

the heavy snow a pillow.

 

A patient teacher

taught me well

and saw that I could turn

and breathe

and find the echo of dancing.

 

But then the slope looked steep,

the vision of it in my head

not matching the reality

of toddlers and elders there

but issuing a private menace,

not a clear message

except to my sweating limbs,

my terrified heart,

my arms that flailed to brake

and legs begging to hold back.

 

And mind lost its grip,

at least the kind of mind

that soothes and moves forward;

the frozen mind blasted fear

into my muscles

falling over and over

into hopelessness.

 

I took off my skis

in a swelling of sadness

and walked in deep snow,

feeling the false safety.

 

And where the mountain

seemed softer

I skied a little more,

a poignancy of smallness

while others zipped past.

 

You meet yourself on mountains

and we are not all heroes;

even when we see

how heroes put themselves aside,

sometimes we crumble.

Overwhelming

is a word loaded with layers

and I don’t yet know its true opposite.

 

First all the ways

I was told not to be:

the way that overwhelming

takes up space in the room,

more than my fair share.

 

And the way that

overwhelming can scare others,

chasing them away

with the pungency of a beggar

or the jealousy we throw at the rich.

 

Or even the fear of a retinue,

becoming a pied piper

with too many children in tow.

 

But mostly the terror

of being overwhelmed,

the call of the waterfall,

the fear of leaping into

a meaningless death,

or being swallowed with no leap.

 

Despite all this ignorance

I am no longer underwhelmed,

am walking blindly on the precipice

one tentative step at a time.

I have been rappelling

in strange places

and terrified

alongside my joy in the views

 

and I asked you for praise

but really I meant something more essential,

trusting you with my lifeline,

asking you to stand guard

with your strength

where I need it,

asking you to remind me

that you don’t have a knife,

and call encouragement

on my journey through this pit

or maybe cavern

or maybe bright mountainside.

 

I have no clue

and barely any right to ask

but am asking anyway

and want to believe

you have already agreed

and these tugs are yours

and not just imaginary.

These gleaners

feel wind on their faces

as they move firmly on the earth,

bent to their tasks.

 

Hoisted like a scarecrow,

fooling no one,

my rags flutter

in the same wind

 

my scary, tender stance

of invitation, broken,

pointing in several directions

at once

towards a freedom

they already have.