Dropping off the truck at a friend’s who lets us park there when we are staying somewhere that doesn’t have room for two cars, I got in the car with Barbara and said, “Let’s go home,” which is funny because we don’t have one. So I laughed at myself and tried to see what I could have meant, what feeling I was pointing toward that I called “home.”
I’ve thought of it before, long ago, when we were first married and we fixed up a bus and drove across the country for three months looking for a place to settle…
Face on the floor
Alone with my shock
Don’t wish me strength
It’s not force that I need
Sure, help me sit up
Let me cry if I must
But show me love
The profound tenderness of silence
Let me breathe your fierce peace
Crystal clear assurance
Grace under sublime pressure
A caress amid thorns
We sympathize with the humping dog
Forgive the murderous cat
But demand human be human
Or show sufficient shame
How horrid to discover
Repeated animal acts
Unabashed lies from our idols
Our leaders
Paid assistance from confederates
Power having corrupted
All we blinded by outer glory
No single accusation believed
No single crime reckoned
Until by divine wind the wall is tumbled
We see an animal in man-shape
Grotesque characature.
And question our ancestry
Our uprightness on sinking sand
From our little hole
We must rebuild Creation
From our tiny hut
Encompass its width and glory
From our midnight bed
Expand ourselves to its edges
Let go of our boundaries
Blow ourselves up
Reach
A soaring, flying reach
Out everywhere
Become completely everything
And then when it is yours
Pull
Squeeze
Bend creation
Invert it down
Fold it as our wings
Straighten and tuck
Rustle and shake
Preen the universe
Master All and yourself
Alive
Aglow
Ready once again to kick ass
Silly for the soul
For the eyes to cry
Squeeze water
When all is lost
Or when sudden happiness
Breaks open the heart
Leather gloved fingers
Upon the neck
Throttling speech
Why stop the uttering of
The indescribable
Incapacity mirroring
Inner helplessness
Where is my reason to explain
The senselessness of caring
The impossibility of such beauty
Such tenderness existing
That I should have witnessed it
Ever; and never again
This wave is of the ocean
The ocean is of the earth
In its grip
In the curl
The illusion is that the wave is yours
That your involvement with the wave is particular
That this wave turns for you
Is meant for you
The ocean is of the earth
The earth is of the sun
Our tumbling with the wave
The cutting, slashing, joy, and dumping
Is of the world
Is of the sun
We are nowhere
Unless we are everywhere
Into your pain
I wish admittance
Your ache becomes mine
Becomes double
You still suffer
But not alone
Your groping through darkness
Is now accompanied
And you are distracted
By wondering who is this idiot
Blundering through pain beside you
Hail! Dear friend from afar!
Can you hear me? I believe somehow that I can reach you.
My heart burns for news from you, for pictures, weather reports, statements of faith, ideas, sensations from your standpoint there where you live, there where you breathe, where you contemplate the movement of seasons, the tide of events. Speak!
I stand looking out toward you, toward where you may be, gazing with all my eyes to the outer reaches, surrounded here and alone, the ocean before me a desert of hidden life, deep, uniformly complex, unfathomable, insurmountable.
I sing my truest song in…
I love people I can’t remember
Like Paul, Annie, & Mahogany who we lived with in Michigan
Who I only stumbled on in my memory yesterday thinking of harvesting carrots before the frost
And there they were so wonderful
Which made me wonder how many others there are
Real people lost in my thoughts but alive and I love them
Not to mention the amazing friends I see every night
Those I risk my life with
Who surround and laugh with me
Who I know so intimately
Yet when I wake I lose
And don’t remember
But I love
Put pretending to good use. It is the power we employed as children to fathom the world. Use the power of pretending now as an adult to open your heart.
While walking alone on a trail, pretend that every plant you pass tells you what it can do for you. Totally pretend! You pass a weed and let your imagination jump to the idea that it would be excellent in soup. See an oak and hear the tree say that it’s good for tanning leather. A grass “says” it would keep you warm as insulation.
Let it be that within…
