Category: Poems

Some words for a coming-of-age ceremony or as vows before a marriage:

I promise to love my body

and care for it with healthy compassion

to the best of my changing capacity.

 

I promise to listen to my feelings

and pay attention to what they can teach me.

I will try to be courageous and humble

when I share them.

 

I promise to seek alignment

with my own true journey,

and notice when I am being pulled off course,

and care about the journeying.

 

I promise to hold out my arms to the world

even when I am afraid of risk,

and honour whatever finds its way into my embrace.

 

I promise to keep discovering more about myself,

my limits and my expanse,

so I can know and share authentic goodness.

Do you know

she once gave a butterfly necklace

and a much-needed cup of praise

to a thirsty girl

who then became an artist?

 

And she doesn’t remember

but I know it was her

because of her affinity for transformation

and the way she used butterflies

to spread subversion,

promoting flight.

 

And usually I like to hide

the fountains of my wisdom

under universal disguises,

but this source is obvious:

my lovely mother,

who touched so many lives

and does not often get to see

the fruitful rains

stirred up by her wings.

I am the birther,

head flung back

and then staring forward

without a plan

and only the deep contraction of pain

that is also exhultation.

 

Too long I worried about

what kind of creatures

I was growing,

whether they had what they needed

to suck nourishment

instead of paltry poison,

and what they looked like

in the light.

 

Too long I worried

that the bleeding was not fresh,

a residue of afterbirths

layering in my womb.

 

Too long I feared

the debt of caretaking

with all this proliferation,

and even had the gall

to question the parenting

of many I hold dear.

 

The labour room has space

for all of us,

come lie down

for the rest

between the times you are gripped,

listen to my moans

and I will hear your panting,

know

that we are safe from madness

through our surrender.

“To birth the baby and dwell on the baby at the same time engenders madness.” – Chogyam Trungpa

 

Arise

aroused,

let life take shape

inside your messy form,

 

watch before dawn

for curtains of aurora

blown in breezes that you cannot touch,

stand still

so their movement has even more visible flux.

Let the bright cry of starlight

fill your heart

and empty your chest;

the momentary flash

of yet another meteorite

reminding you of an urgency;

the sky will only chuckle.

 

Try to bathe

in the puddle of your desire,

wallowing it deeper

until it swells into a ditch

that might meet

the large river.

 

Follow shadows

with the curiosity that comes

from remembering

they are a gift of the light,

an offering of insubstantial perspective,

another means to see.

 

Remember too that colour

needs you to see it,

that all this splendour

waits for your eyes to open.

 

“I am strong but lazy”

I said as a joke

but it is true…

why is easy for me to turn a blind eye

to the fact of the world’s dying

as if I don’t need

to take it personally?

 

Why is there

such sweet temptation

in the offer of help?

 

How do I channel

this restlessness

and shoulder my part of the load?

They belong in the wood boiler

those poems,

about the way the young lover

took me by surprise

even though it was planned

from my first gasp,

and the way I was a madam

in the whorehouse

that I never even saw

or knew the way to.

 

It is not fun,

but perhaps necessary

to let the ego run around the room

for what might be the last time,

watch the way it preens

or has a tantrum of unrequited need

that it calls love,

because it has no other word.

 

There is a hot spring nearby

that has a source

and runs back into the earth

so it is not trapped

but fully fluid.

 

My pretty ego,

my Gollum in disguise,

my crying child

and frustrated mid-life lover

intermingled

can feel the draw of warmth

by the water’s edge

and are getting ready

but not gracefully

to enter.

Fecundity

and libido,

both protrusions;

both require a way of making room

for new shapes,

for the discomfort of thrust

from within and without,

for the letting go of plans

in order to receive.

 

Inextricable

and different,

they entangle me

when I let them

and then sometimes

there is no me

but just the sound of bodies panting.

And because the word “tousled”

does not do justice

to the wild unfettered red of his hair,

let me say this:

when he said it was better

to be a pessimist

because then you don’t get hurt,

I smiled at him with courage,

not bravado

or false cheeriness,

and said

that optimists

can roll with the pain

and open up to letting in

so much more.

No wonder the words

were so dramatic,

all that smiting and rivening

and splitting asunder,

all those elephant gods

and serpents with wings

and voices inside fires or clouds or mountains.

 

Now we make bright magic on our screens,

we see the billowing gladnesses

at our fingertips

and turn down the thunder.

 

Now we need different words

to nudge us,

images that lure us away

from the flash

to breathe in one real dew,

or actually notice

how three snowflakes are different

from each other

and from the mitten.

 

We need words

that help us find the space between them,

the sound of a bloodstream

with as much or more intense beauty

and complex function

as the system on Olympus.

 

Athena, Shiva,

Thor and Yahweh

pulse magnificently

as they did before,

beckoning or beseeching,

inviting or commanding

our immersion.

 

The river is the same eternal one,

the riverbank still awaits,

the sound is still trickling or tumultuous.

 

The access points

are everywhere.

I am ashamed of these riches,

this shame is what has helped me hide;

there is an embarrassment

of plenitude,

this rich unfurling passion

that is not lust

but its opposite,

a honey flowering of generosity,

a lush spilling of diamonds.

 

It is the shame of the woman at the feast,

consuming delicacies

while the urchins crowd near

but out of reach;

not gluttony,

but a fearfulness of stretching,

and maybe too

that caviar will be received badly,

too salty or fishy.

 

I am embarrassed by the strength

of my own need,

the power of my own undone contractions,

the deep effervescence

of this bright champagne

uncorked.