GOING AWAY

Strolling on the beach with my son
yesterday, sun licking our faces, a sparkling sea
washed over our feet. I breathed a prayer:
Thank you. Thank you for this day.

Fronds of seaweed licked the tidal sands, flickered,
receded–
returned twirling on the next wave.

A little boy, maybe ten years old–freckles,
sandy hair, nose
buried in a melting ice-cream cone–wailed:
My ice-cream is going away! It’s
going away! His mother looked bemused.

Vanilla ice-cream dripped, a bone-white froth
down his fingers. His mouth a jagged sob, face
flushed, furious with refusal.

All month, since I moved from my beloved
home, a ten-year-old in me has wailed:
My home is going away! It’s going away!

Next month, my son, my beautiful baby
boy—six feet tall now, and married to his love—
is going away. A new city will hold him
in its lap. A new home. He’s going

away. No no no no no. They’re all
going away.

This little poem about home is part of a collaborative writing project with Jen Louden, Susan Piver and Mahala Mazerov. My three friends posted their wonderful riffs on Home on their blogs on Friday. I’ve been busy wailing: My home is going away! instead.

Here’s my belated offering.

And, since it’s also Poetry Sunday, please join me by sharing your poems in Comments. Let’s celebrate poetry together.

If this post spoke to you, you might like these as well:

• Tsunamis In the House of Wholeness
• No. Yes.
• Flight to Freedom

NO. YES.

What gives you the right to grab what is not yours
to take? You have grown large on piracy,
swollen like a balloon on breath stolen
from children who no longer sleep or fill
their lungs because you have convinced them the
air belongs to you; their breath, their dreams
belong to you. You have taken the tender
bamboo of their hearts and boiled it into
broth to nourish you, appetite.
You have sucked the marrow from their bones and
grinned with relish at the brine of blood on your
tongue. Your table d’hote is not unique. Genghis
Khan fed at it, made menus of the lives
of those who loved him; cast around for more–
always more–to fill a hole as cavernous
as you.

No

Every no bears in its belly the sibilant
yes: a pomegranate seed white in its
sheath of translucent red

As always, I’d love to hear your poems in Comments. This Sunday ritual of sharing our poems and our hearts nourishes our sovereign selves. It brings us into creative community. Thank you for playing poetry with me!

If this post spoke to you, you might like these as well:

• Sunday Poem #8
• Going Away
• Flight to Freedom

FLIGHT TO FREEDOM

My ancestors launched into the Arabian Sea
in tiny coracles fragile as leaves
to escape the jihad.

Their country
torched by Arab invaders, their people
slaughtered in the name of Allah,

they entrusted their bodies to the tides,
sailed east to India; fled
for their lives and for freedom to worship

Ahura Mazda, the god
of their ancestors. The year
was 760 AD.

Thirteen hundred years later, I took flight
westward across that churning sea.
Seeds of their spirit

in me. Those ancestors,
with their wandering blood, keep me questing,
peregrine.

I do not own the comforts
of their religion, seek instead a god

who lives in me; am impelled
not by raiders but
by this spirit’s urgent embarkation

to be free.

…………………………………………………

As always, I’d love to hear your own poems in Comments. Let’s share the freedom of making poetry together on this Fourth of July Sunday.

If this post spoke to you, you might like these as well:

• Tenaramente
• Elegy
• A Capella

TENARAMENTE

I stand at the boundary. On this side, familiar
terrain. Hills like lyric waves brushed with sage, dew
an aria on my tongue, golden wedge of light on my
elbow. My arms know precisely my baby’s
milky weight, his warm mouth loose against my
breast, my nipple cooling in this lambent dawn.
Moss fur nuzzles the soles of my feet.

This is the threshold: this granite arch soaring
skyward in the middle of a mustard field, keystone
lost in the limpid blue of heaven. Ahead, unknown
country. Images pour through my head like rain:
Death in rusty black cloak, hooded, faceless, scythe
gripped in blanched fingers. And bodies, light as
dried laurel leaves, borne on bamboo biers, covered
in marigolds; tinkling cymbals, heartbeat of drums,
chanting voices bearing the soul back home.

That which is before me is veiled in light. My hand
through the archway no longer a hand, effulgence
of ultraviolet pulsing to a rhythm familiar as my
heartbeat, enigmatic as an atom. I lean my upper
body through the arch. Soft. Smell of almond
blossoms, sticky fig-juice, olive groves. Shiver of
argent sound, bells, chiming inside and out into one,
my skin no longer my skin, no boundary, but a
dissolved definition. An exchange of electrons and
protons with ambient life which once bore many
names–tree, fish, star, mud. My flesh and theirs
transmuted into vibration, dance of particles into
waves, waves and particles, call and answer, calando,
dolce, dolce, tranquillo. I am a sympathetic string in
a great aeolian harp, vibrating to the melody of these
rushing winds, vast ripples of light and air and spirit.

Step now across the slate-gray stones. Prelude over,
my voice flows into this canon which sings the Real.
My infant son plays in the crack between worlds,
time in his right hand, eternity in his left. He puts
God in his mouth and savors, rolling divinity on
his tongue, face rapt, chortling his own cantata.

………………………………………

As always, I’d love to hear your own poems in Comments. Let’s share the voices of our hearts with each other.

If this post spoke to you, you might like these as well:

• Flight to Freedom
• Elegy
• A Capella

ELEGY

When I bend and bind
squeeze my soul into narrow shoes,
deck it out in gaudy hues
of other people’s clothing;
when I alter my inherent shape, strut
through attenuated alleyways of dialectic,
I lose you, crumble. I know
you are in me but I cannot reach you
in the rubble of my ignorance.

Such loneliness engulfs me
then, not all the soft-voiced friends, sultry
gongs of lust and wine assuage.
I am orphaned,
a lover bereft, a leather-shod beast without
breath, a vast homesick wail
in the wilderness.

I am homesick.

…………………………………………………………………..

As always, I’d love to hear your poems in Comments. Let’s celebrate the poetry of our hearts together.

If this post spoke to you, you might like these as well:

• In the Center of My Ribs…
• Flight to Freedom
• Tenaramente

A CAPELLA

My life is bread-making.
Daily I work the dough.

My hands blend, shape it
into supple balls and then

I wait for your sacrament
of warm brown flour, sea-salt

water, a sprinkled
benediction,

to expand in me,
dissolving this mass

becoming
a fine leavening.

As always, I’d love to hear your own poems, visions, dreams and doodles in Comments. Let’s share the heart’s delight of poetry together.

If this post spoke to you, you might like these as well:

• Flight to Freedom
• Tenaramente
• Elegy

BODH GAYA

So this is where you sat,
having vowed not to move
until you’d grasped what you were looking for–
the root of human suffering.

To see things as they are. Girders
of life, architecture of light
underlying all creation. You met

demons, temptresses, your own
body’s fearful trembling, heartbeat
slipping sideways into a crack of time
no bigger than a sliver, torso held upright
by implacable will. So you sat,
vision turned inward, cross-legged
in the shade of this Bodhi tree. Emerged
at last from your long quest, simooms
blowing through the sockets of your eyes.

Stripped to the bones, this
is what you saw. All phenomena annicca–
impermanent as a flower,
death sprouting darkly with the seed.
Sunyata–emptiness–at the heart of all
being. You smiled,
offered a lotus blossom to your faithful disciple
in lieu of a doctrine.

Now, 2400 years later, an adamant temple
towers hundreds of feet into the dusty ochre sky
of Bodh Gaya. Carved with images of your face,
your serene smile repeated over
and over, ubiquitous as the Golden
Arches. Your radical discovery of nothingness
is surrounded now by an economic empire.

Priests, pilgrims, vendors of yak tea
and prayer flags. Rivers of coins empty
into temple coffers. Young Tibetan monks
perform a hundred thousand prostrations
in the cobbled walkway,
kneepads and mittens cushioning the scrape
of shale on flesh. Enlightenment

without dukkha. And you smile, oh Buddha,
at these lonely stances on the rim
of the Great Void.

………………………………………..

As always, I’d love to hear your own poems, thoughts and insights in Comments. Let’s share the voices of our hearts together.

If this post spoke to you, you might like these as well:

• Flight to Freedom
• Tenaramente
• Elegy

MEDITATIONS FROM THE CENTER: 5

In the center of my ribs, a silver salmon
leaps

In the center of my ribs, a rock of granite
from earth to heaven

In the shelter of an oak a red-winged
blackbird
nests

In a viridian
pond, mallards teach
their ducklings to swim

In the center of my ribs, an infant
breathes

an angel
with hair of green willow
in the center of my ribs

…………………………………………………..

As always, I’d love to hear your own poems here, in Comments. Let’s share the magic of poetry together.

If this post spoke to you, you might like these as well:

• Elegy
• Flight to Freedom
• Tenaramente

MEDITATIONS FROM THE CENTER: 4

In the center of my throat is templed
silence

the Great Void swells in the center of my throat

boat skims the sea on
wind-whipped sails

lanyards sing in the center of my throat

underground river-run
red-rock canyon-roar

in the center in the center

center of my throat

whispering clanging clamorous bells in the
center of my throat

in the center, in the center, round the center of
my throat

……………………………………….

As always, I’d love to hear your voice–your poems, insights, musings, thoughts–here. Please share them in Comments. Let’s celebrate the poems of our hearts together.

If this post spoke to you, you might like these as well:

• Elegy
• In the Center of My Ribs…
• In the Center of my Crown…

MEDITATIONS FROM THE CENTER: 3

In the center of my crown an ocean laughs

In the center of my crown a great blue heron
skims the rim of Earth

In the center of my crown
a cloud-wreathed peak
pierces the skin of eternity

In the center of my crown is a
wooden ladder you climb
down to meet me
and I
climb up to meet you

In the center of our crown, an orbit
of grace

a meadow of wildflowers
in which we lie down crushing woodviolets

blue, blue fragrance in the center
of my crown

………………………………..

As always, I’d love to hear your poems, thoughts and insights in Comments. Let’s share the voices of our heart together.

If this post spoke to you, you might like these as well:

• Elegy
• In the Center of My Ribs…
• In the Center of my Throat. . .