Tag: shadow work

discovering lascaux

wellcome library, london (wikimedia commons)

shed your skins,
their undersides
are covered with art

you have been making
in the dark,
your own lascaux

how deep
will you dare to go ¿

— march 2, 2007

when were you born ¿

Light streaming through clouds in the Inner Hebrides
inner hebrides, november 30, 2017 · ben wolfe

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

my anger came back

photo: ben wolfe
photo: ben wolfe

my anger came back —
the bastard moved into my basement :
he wants to tell me my story again

can i be a patient friend ¿
let him say his peace ¿
open my hands, like a priest
saddled with a self-absorbed parishioner
and say :
“tell me about that” ¿

i need him to stop his complaining
he had me on the run today
i got nothing done today,
i was just jerking around
letting him pull my strings

maybe if i listen
maybe if i can breathe my frustration away

and hear what he has to say

the bastard

will go away

— September 11, 2005

 

In a Dark Time

(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.

shadow work

Kintsugi

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

 

i hope that i will someday see

(with apologies to ogden nash)

i hope that i will someday see
that every they becomes a we

indeed, unless the theys all fall
there’ll never be someday at all

— Oct. 23, 2008

 

Circle Limit IV