filling out a form
i was asked
when were you born ¿
there was no room to answer,
i was born a thousand times
yesterday alone
i am being born right now,
do you not see the blood ¿
do you not feel the contractions ¿
can you not hear
the endless mother-cry of
healed and broken joy ¿
— december 20, 2007
(by Theodore Roethke)
In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood —
A lord of nature weeping to a tree.
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.
What’s madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.
That place among the rocks — is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.
A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is —
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.
Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.
i am emerging into wholeness
through shards of brokenness
i seem to long to watch me
nearly-not-survive —
i dodge life-ending fragments of my past
in bullet time
i am the actor,
i trained the actor,
i am the finished scene
i am behind the camera, watching me
not-knowing what the end will be
— September 25, 2008
(by Carrie Fountain)
The wasps outside
the kitchen window
are making that
thick, unraveling sound
again, floating in
and out of the bald head
of their nest,
seeming not to move
while moving,
and it has just occurred
to me, standing,
washing the coffeepot,
watching them hang
loosely in the air-thin
wings; thick, elongated
abdomens; sad, down-
pointing antennae-
that this
is the heart’s constant
project: this simple
learning; learning
how to hold
hopelessness
and hope together;
to see on the unharmed
surface of one
the great scar
of the other;
to desire everything
and nothing
at once and to desire it
all the time;
and to contain that desire
fleshly, in a body;
to wash it and rest it
and feed it; to learn
its name and from whence
it came; and to speak
to it-oh, most of all
to speak to it-
every day, every day,
saying to one part,
“Well, maybe this is all
you get,” while saying
to the other, “Go on,
break it open, let it go.”
(Shared by the author as part of The Writer’s Almanac for October 20, 2015)
it has to do with calculus,
with breaking free
of the need to see
that one last step, the one that is
infinitely small,
as needing to be measured and divided
in its turn
it is zeno’s paradox,
we have puzzled it
for 2500 years,
circling the point,
at times infinitely close,
reaching for reunion with the whole,
yet always
steps beyond counting away,
kept at bay
by this mind-made trick
that makes us stop to carve
one last small digital divide
between
us
and the welcome
waiting
on the other side
— December 17, 2005
i’m sorry i didn’t answer your message
i was busy being born
the trouble is
it happens every day —
how do i live, when
being born
keeps getting in the way ¿
— March 28, 2006
(Rumi, version by Coleman Barks)
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.