Rain

 

Splat, drip, plunk, sploosh

raindrops careen hard into car's glass

crashing almost, alien.

The arc of mechanical arms swinging side to side

sweeping droplets off the clear, curved surface.

Flattened ovals pulled like shooting stars

across the transparent galaxy, trailing off.

To see, we look beyond you to the space

between your liquid origin's existence

and beyond even the path of

your arrival.

Headlights

slicing

the

distance,

parsing

reality,

ever a digit, a beacon 

pointing towards the moon;

to where both the explosion of stars

and collision of raindrops

are but a bead

 in a wellspring

of unlimited potential

rippling forever

outward.

 

Dangerous Truth

Before they put him to rest they sang songs that called him nice.

And celebrated him with accolades.

He was always diplomatic, sweet,  careful.

words weighed to balance equations as he spoke.

Angling  pictures perfectly on the wall.

But even colorful, flat two-dimensional portraits can only represent depth.

And what is emerging now is no longer nice.

Instead it speaks of bare honesty.

honesty that will let nothing hide.

honesty of a searing glare.

honesty  willing to

sacrifice all because it is all.

Truth will set you free.

It will strip away more than you bargained for.

It will ask everything of you.

It will take everything.

If it did anything less, it would not be truth.

Adrienne’s Song

There is a cruel voice in everyone’s head.
Today mine is lip syncing that I should not
weep for the loss of a hero.
After all, technically, I did not know her.
We shared no heritage, we barely ever met.
But since when was it true that the only way
to know someone was by blood or proximity?

Some souls courageously write their lives in words
And thus teach us all how to be.
Their life is their art, as much as art is their life.
This is how we come to know them and ourselves.
a resonance of souls, connecting, harmonizing
a common language beyond words and form.
It is no dream.
They speak of something deep and dear
And when you are still enough or quiet enough
Their rhythm becomes a part of you and you joyfully dance.

My beloved Adrienne,
I wonder if you know how many souls you set in motion
How many bodies sway, gyrate, tap, swirl, and swing
to the music you elevated. The music you gifted us.
Though for many years your own crooked and pained frame
hobbled on hard paths, you set the world free,
indeed you birthed us all
and allowed us to begin dancing.
I owe you my world and for this I am eternally grateful.
This is why I weep for this loss.

And to the hardened voice that would disparage this feeling,
I offer this space, this dulcet silence,
this stillness, these salty tears
Whose phrasing you shaped AR, with your own powerful breath and
which can easily hold all, the cacophony, the immense depth of
my gratitude and my raw grief for losing a soul whose beautiful, haunting
and rousing music helped conduct the tempo and sweet melody of this life here.

An Ode to Adrienne Rich, Poet, Feminist, Author, Essayist – and one of my supreme heroes who died March 27, 2012

What Have You Done with Your Whole Heart Today?

What have you done today with your whole heart?
Was there even a brief moment
when your entire existence rode on some action or state of being,
as if you would be blinked out of existence afterwards.
Not that it mattered whether you succeeded or not,
but just simply that all of you was at hand in every fiber.
A pen stroke like this vs the routine mechanical glide
Is the difference between heaven and hell.

Too often desire gets a bad rap.
Desiring is mistaken for “unspiritual”
A cancer on our souls.
So we seek to eradicate it like
caked mud on the boots of our sacred spiritual journey.
But desire is gorgeous, it is beautiful.
It is a smile so wide it swallows the universe.

Our trouble is we close compassion’s door on desire
to let it rot and fester outside supposedly.
We even think our satisfaction lies in obtaining our object of desire
And sometimes it does for a little while
But if we look closely enough the desire and desired aren’t separate.
Truly what we are looking for is what is looking.


Follow desire down the rabbit hole and see what it wants.
What if it simply seeks to be acknowledged to its depth
Perhap you are afraid you will never climb back up.
You do not see that desire has wings and you will soar when you befriend it.

Is it not exquisite to want something with the entirety of your being?
Why then would we get rid of this?
The aching sweetness of yearning, longing.
It does not matter at all whether you get your desire.

Fall deeply into it.
Trouble emerges not
because you yearn

But because you
fault yourself for wanting it

ALL.

Who Am I ?

Who am I ?
What a delicious question.
I could savor it for a lifetime.
When I truly bite into it there is a deep satisfaction.
I am sated through and through.
Oh it’s not because the fibers of eden’s apple cling to my belly.
On the contrary the question creates an immense
unfathomable and unknowable void
But where I used to Fill that Void with the many practices that
constitute a life, and call that happy, now, the void fills the practices that constitute a life, and contentment girds my actions.
Nor does the question grip me because I rejoice in celebration of
some laudably (and bemusedly) formed abstraction of having arrived somewhere.
That would be too convenient, and leave out the whimsy of a wild journey.
A journey that never was about getting anywhere but here anyway.
I could list a thousand conditions that claim to be me and in a way they are.
For they certainly aren’t separate.
It’s just that if I try to answer who am I from the depths of my being
the sweetness of a question mark is much more compelling than
A period.

The World In A Train

When the world is moving through this frame
I must heartily cry or laugh
It is the embrace of ten-thousand joys and sorrows;
the palpable exquisite beauty inherent in all
that animates these arms, legs, gut, mind.

In these moments I know so deeply who I am.
I want nothing, need nothing.
This is more than enough - a gift beyond measure.
I soulfully ache. I burst in an explosion of sound and color
my boundaries dissolve.

In these moments I know from my deepest heart
that there isn't anything I would not do for
anything or anyone.

I looked into the souls of fellow travelers on the metro today
a pregnant woman bringing new life into this world - feeling
a bit naseauted from the bumpy, jolting ride.
a wrinkled wise woman who in another era might have handed down jewels
of wisdom from bygone days but who today looked weary and burdened;
A gaggle of giggling teenagers
making enough noise with their uncontained joy
to disrupt the austere and saddled adults;
A blind man with his trusted companiion a loyal
and smiling yellow lab, slumbering at his feet.

Each is so dear to me.
Each working so hard for his and her happiness.
Each breathing, living, eating, loving.
I want to hold you so close I can hear your heart beat next to me
I want to cradle you in my arms
rocking back and forth on the floor and tell you I love you.

You are my sisters and brothers. Nothing that matters
separates this from that; you from me, the tear from
the water bottle rolling to ad fro on the floor.
All moved by silent forces.
All embraced.

When the world moves through this frame it is all present
and I explode with emotion.
We are all of us jammed together on this rattling cylinder
hurtling to our destiny. Here.

Death

When you come death, may you be recognized and celebrated.
With your seductive face, gentle whispers,
and your unspoken promise
Let there be no fear as your steady hand
unlocks a new mystery
A mystery so vast and unfathomable that to begin to speak
of its depth is only to play the first note
in a never-ending symphony.
In you life joins hands.
May you be welcomed as a friend
for indeed you have been a companion to life
None is promised even a moment.
To exist, that is our gift.
All is so precious
The days I have shared
have been more than enough
Just this, Just this, Just this.

I witnessed from a distance a friend stoically rooted
to his family, community, the earth,
take your hand as you guided him across the threshold.
He faced you with such courage and compassion
And though his physical body shriveled as the cancer ravaged his insides
his belonging and his wholeness expanded beyond measure
We are not what we seem. There are no limits.
We all glowed in that presence.
And yet we grieve in that absence.

Death you will come for us all
And for all our scientific advances
The hour of your touch still eludes.
When the hour of your beckoning comes, may it be known that
the meaning of life, is life itself, no more, no less
May that which is here, revel, knowing that the love which came
through this, is this, played enchanting cadenzas while it lasted.
And may that which still plays be comforted by the cycle
of beauty in the inherited melody currently sung
but one day relinquished too.