I wake in the morning
and do not like my own face.
I sit back down at the desk and keep writing.
I walk around reading some words aloud
and do not like the sound of my own voice.
I sit back down at the desk and keep writing.
All but my hands are still.
I sit like a cat, alert and wary,
and pray to give way to silence.
The day is past understanding,
the pink clouds at sunset surpass my poem,
and the word of the little child, ‘wow,’
surpasses in truth the words of the poem
written to surpass, written for preeminence,
to impress a woman, perhaps,
a woman beautiful in all ways,
especially in the way she receives impressions,
so much more like the child than the man
that she, so gently, with such complete understanding,
rejects.
She is so beautiful, but I cannot see her in this fog.
I remember her, I’ve known her, and I’ve known her beauty.
But something happened
and we were separated from each other,
and now she too lives in the fog.
We cannot see
each other.
The fog seems to lift in the middle of the morning,
but look closely and you’ll see
that it never lifts. It is always here.
I fear I will be in it always
and never see her as she is.
If only loneliness could move mountains.
But who wants to move mountains?
Some nights I consider everything,
and it all looks futile.
Other nights I consider nothing,
and it all looks all right.
If only she sat beside me, I could find
some other reason to be dissatisfied.
Some mornings I wake up before even the monks,
and God is all.
Other mornings I do not wake up at all,
and God is not.
One red light blinking.
Two blue eyes yearning.
Ten pale and frantic fingers.
Each one of us is so beautiful, but so few of us can see it in this fog.
I remember a place where sight is granted,
but I cannot remember
how to get back there, I cannot remember
who I saw there, who saw me bare and naked, and did not laugh.
But I remember laughter too, full and hearty,
I remember you, you were there, laughing with me.
I cannot remember why we left,
why we came to this place
where we drift without sight in this fog.
Who brought me to this vale
where I travel or travail?
Who said be, and a valley
appeared below to tempt me?
Lover, I notice you are weeping
as if through a heavy veil.
Why not take off your dark shawl
and reveal the real beauty of tears,
of joy seduced by sorrow?
Did you expect me to repress my joy
because you’ve expressed your sorrow?
Take me in your arms,
and together we can unite joy and sorrow.
Who fought me when I was still
and praised me as I began to struggle?
Who said do, when I could not be,
and do more, when I had no more left?
Lover, I notice you are laughing
as if through a light veil.
Why not take off your bright shawl
and reveal the real beauty of laughter,
of sorrow seduced by joy?
Did you expect me to repress my sorrow
because you’ve expressed your joy?
Take me in your arms,
and together we can unite joy and sorrow.
Who sought me when I was soft
and left me as I began to harden?
Who said die, when I could not hear,
and live, when I began to pay attention.
Lover, I notice you are,
but I have no words for what you are.
For what you are, I can only yearn.
I yearn to live with your love
in this unknown place
that has come between
before and after.
Why do you look at me?
Why do you speak to me?
Can’t you see I am not here?
I’ve gone somewhere without going anywhere,
and where I’ve gone you will never go.
Don’t look for me,
don’t ask me where I’ve gone.
Go yourself where I will never go,
and you will know something
about where I’ve gone.
There is nowhere else to go
but where no one else can go.
Today I may go to church,
and maybe I’ll see you there,
whoever you are, I hope you are singing.
If I see you, do not ask me
where I’ve been since last I saw you.
Go yourself where I will never go,
and you will know where I’ve been.
I could go on a journey, I could
take to the road with these well-worn shoes.
I could go out planning never to return.
You could follow me, you could
go with me too, if it pleased you.
But though we’d be together,
you might notice, from time to time,
that I am gone, and that where I’ve gone
you will never go.
Go yourself where I will never go,
and you will know where I am.
I see you looking at me like a puppy dog,
as if you are expecting an answer
to your question: where are you?
How could I answer?
Where I am no one is at one
with themselves, no one believes in words.
The words spoken here are not spoken there.
Can you truly condemn anyone in me
for not believing in these words?
Go yourself where I will never go,
and you will no longer ask me such questions.
What should I believe in tonight?
Should I believe in the power of the unseen?
Should I go somewhere?
I can go somewhere without going anywhere.
Watch me be gone.
Be gone!
Be still, bewildered one.
And go some place where no one can follow.
Go somewhere without going anywhere.
Go yourself where I will never go,
and you will know where I am when I’m gone.
It is time to open, my reluctant one.
When you close the door to be alone with your sorrow,
you close the door also on your joy.
Leave that door open, my despairing one,
let the plaintive cries of the others reach you,
touch you, bring you to your knees,
and let them bring you up again,
to the surface where a child smiles
at you in line at the supermarket,
as you take the change from the cashier
with her eyes so sorrowful, so beautiful,
so full of a hidden mystery
she yearns to express.
Express her yearning, my searching one,
as she tells you, in a voice so melancholy
and weary, so soft and precious,
to have a good day. If only you could
somehow make her day great, somehow point
to the greatness she has in herself,
then you could say truly
today was good.
Feel the wind on your skin, my inward one,
let this power touch you continually,
feel it even in the protected stillness of your room.
You are never so estranged from the world
that the wind cannot embrace you.
Open to it, and its’ touch
will not end at your skin.
It is not yet time for another.
It is time to be alone,
time to wait for grace
to pull me up muddied and waterlogged
from the turbid lake I chose to dive into.
Time to sit here, watch the world go by,
let my youth be taken from me,
take notes now and then as I am given
these resplendent moments, when I realize
that nothing needs to be changed.
From the Latin, abundare: to overflow;
antonym: lack.
I have never lacked the capacity to feel,
but to feel abundance itself,
to feel filled, to welcome
and accept my own lack—
this is rare.
True abundance includes lack;
the abundant one feels fully her deficiencies.
In her fullness, she does not repress her emptiness.
In her wholeness, she invites the pain of her imperfection
to be partner to her joy.
Spirit of Abundance, show me the heart so true to you
that it embraces its own lack and limitation,
the soul so full that it loves its own emptiness.
Grant me vision, Spirit of Abundance,
allow me to see you
when my nature sees lack, and lack only.
Show me the one who loves with you in her;
I will love her in her loving.
If I cannot love the seeming lack of perfect love within myself,
let me love her, the abundant one,
knowing she too experiences
the same lack that I do.
Grant me hearing, Spirit of Abundance,
let me listen for your music, music that erupts
like a fountain out of the body, overflowing
from the abundance of song in the soul.
Let the mad river of my heart stream out in dance
when I am overwhelmed by you, in me,
a dance of my emptiness and your fullness,
a rhythmic embrace of the whole.
Never am I closer to your abundance
than when I dance in time with my emptiness.
To find you there, at the center of that deep hole.
Even there.
You can hear the Trumpet of Escape beckon you,
you can feel the Iceberg of Loneliness sink you,
you can suffer as the Whale of Dread swallows you whole.
You can still know abundance in the midst of it all.
Somehow.
Don’t ask me how. I’m no expert here.
But somehow.
Somehow, beauty weaves through it all,
and beauty, in truth, is always abundant.
Beauty is the tremendous weaver,
and abundance the hand with which she weaves.
Are you here in this darkness?
I don’t hear you.
You are silent, just like me,
but my silence knows no peace,
and in your silence, I hear,
I know, there is nothing else.
The peace of your silence
would shatter my nature.
Half-formed vestiges shatter;
I grow deaf in the silence after.
Shards are strewn on the ground,
my feet bleed from the glass.
I look down and see my nature
reflected in the fragments.
I do not see you there.
Where are you in this darkness?
I do not see you,
I do not hear you,
and I cannot touch you,
but I can speak you,
so soundlessly I murmur your name.
Heart that will not let itself belong,
I speak from you, to you,
not to distract you away
from the ways you suffer,
but to redeem you in your suffering.
Be in it, since you must.
Let it be there, since it is.
I cannot help but be here, where you are,
but there are countless ways you can evade,
escape, exaggerate, distort, transport yourself
elsewhere. You’ve done it before,
you’ve done it today, this hour.
In this minute be with the pain
without naming it,
possess it by letting yourself belong
to it. Allow it, give it room to breathe,
as you sit in this room
and listen to the voice of your longing
grow louder.
Heart that will not let itself belong,
let your resistance persist,
allow yourself to feel
your struggle to allow yourself
to belong
here, or anywhere.
Anywhere else,
the heart sings in its refrain.
Anywhere but here.
Take me away,
give me the sharp fleeting pain
of parting,
take from me the dull continual suffering
of this settled state.
Restless heart, I speak to you,
and as always I speak from you.
Where can you go
where what you feel now
will not go with you?
Heart that will not let itself belong,
that longs without cease, listen
as the voice of your longing grows
deafening. It is a commanding voice.
Another voice speaks
in silence;
it does not command.
Listen: is this the voice
that will let you belong?
Drink in this silence as the earth
drinks in the summer rains.
