all of it falls.

The November Angels

Late dazzle
of yellow
flooding
the simplified woods,
spare chipping away
of the afternoon-stone
by a small brown finch —
there is little
for them to do,
and so their gossip is
idle, modest:
low-growing,
tiny-white-flowered.


Below,
the Earth-pelt
dapples and flows
with slow bees
that spin
the thick, deep jute
of the gold time’s going,
the pollen’s
traceless retreat;
kingfishers
enter their kingdom,
their blue crowns on fire,
and feast on
the still-wealthy world.


A single, cold blossom
tumbles, fledged
from the sky’s white branch.
And the angels
look on,
observing what falls:
all of it falls.


Their hands hold
no blessings,
no word
for those who walk
in the tall black pines,
who do not
feel themselves falling —
the ones who believe
the loved companion
will hold them forever,
the ones who cross through
alone and ask for no sign.


The afternoon
lengthens, steepens,
flares out—
no matter for them.
It is assenting
that makes them angels,
neither increased
nor decreased
by the clamorous heart:
their only work
to shine back,
however the passing brightness
hurts their eyes.

- Jane Hirshfield


photo made available for artistic consideration by: rob lee

requiem for a house friend of many years.

gecko on window of 53rd floor, originally uploaded by deirdren.

at the night window,
waiting for the gecko's dance.
how i miss her smile.

to breathe my deep

I am thinking of how,
when Jane was sick -
for a long time, I would kiss her and taste
the subtle shift and changes in her body chemistry.

For months, I begged her to go to the doctor.
She had no symptoms of her cancer, but
I could smell it
on her breath.

It was metallic.
Cold.
Like the thing growing death
inside of her.

I knew.

"Perhaps your fillings are leaching
into your bloodstream?" I said.
For months, I begged her to find out
if something was wrong.

When she finally presented with pain,
it was nearly 6 months later.

The doctor didn't think it was anything...
...but did the requisite bloodwork and culture
all the same.

They caught it,
on the outer edge of phase 1. And.
She's alive to this day.

---------------

I wish.

Someone was there
to hold me in the dark.
Like I held her
then.

To hold me so close, she
inhales my breathing as I sleep.
And whispers a silent prayer,
that I may be healed.


- jen busch

how to disappear.

"i'm growing so quiet," she said.
SHOUT. Discourse. whisper.
[gone]

blessed mercy.

i'm so used to losing.
i live with open hands now.
oh, blessed mercy.

the body remembers what the heart, with grace, wills to forget.

Today. It's painful.
The memory of how I trusted her so completely.
That night she came home at dawn.
The ten thousand ways she shattered my heart;
Sometimes I feel the prick of each shard.
Those endless moments of dying,
Of watching her heart cool to stone.
I loved her still, but love, for her was too much.
[Perfect Love casts out all fear.]
But she, she chose fear instead.

le bon mot du jour. blessed impermanence

In pursuit of the world,
One gains more and more.

In pursuit of the Way, one gains less and less.

Loss upon loss until at last comes rest.

When nothing is done, nothing remains undone.

LAO TZU

from the Tao Te Ching

to keep opening wider my heart.

OPEN

It is a small step to remember
how life led to this
moment's hesitation.

How the door to the deeper world
opens, letting the body fall at last,
toward the few griefs it can call its own.

Oh yes, I know. Our wings catch fire
in that downward flight
and we come to earth afraid
we can never fly again.

But then we always knew
heaven would be a desperate place.
Everything you desired coming
in one fearful moment
to greet you.

Your full presence only in rest
and the love that asks nothing.
The rest where you lie down
and are no longer found at all.

- DAVID WHYTE -

deconstructing the dream.

photo by jerry curtis


Tear Down This House

A hundred thousand new houses can be built
from the transparent yellow carnelian buried beneath

and the only way to get to that
is to do the work of demolishing and then

digging under the foundation. With that value
in hand all the new construction will be done

without effort. And anyway, sooner or later this house
will fall on its own. The jewel treasure will be

uncovered, but it won't be yours then. The buried
wealth is your pay for doing the demolition,

the pick and the shovel work. If you wait and just
let it happen, you'll bite your hand and say,

"I didn't do as I knew I should have." This
is a rented house. You don't own the deed.

You have a lease, and you've set up a little shop,
where you barely make a living sewing patches

on torn clothing. Yet only a few feet underneath
are two veins, pure red and bright gold carnelian.

Take the pickaxe and pry the foundation.
You've got to quit this seamstress work.

What does the patch-sewing mean you ask? Eating
and drinking. The heavy cloak of the body

is always getting torn. You patch it with food
and other restless ego satisfactions. Rip up

one board from the shop floor and look into
the basement. You'll see two glints in the dirt.

- rumi -

le bon mot du jour: vision.

our real blessings often
appear to us in the shapes of
pains, losses, and disappointments;
but let us have patience, and we soon shall see them
in their proper figures.

- joseph addison [c.1672 - 1719], england -

blessed impermanence.

but a breath
all we have
fleeting moment dawns
and then gone
from flower to seed to flower to dust
everything that now shines
soon will rust

the only thing that makes sense anymore.

photo by michael wilson

KINDNESS

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes any sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend

- Naomi Shihab Nye -

feel as though you’ve lost everything? [or sacrifice comes full circle to sanctification]...

In many religions sacrifice is the most effective way of invoking the Divine.
In early societies it was symbolized in the killing of an animal or the pouring out of a precious liquid. Today we might feel the sting of sacrifice in personal decision-making or strokes of fate. In all these cases sacrifice is an emptying out of personal will so that the spirit can have a greater presence. In everyday life certain losses and surrenders may signal an opening of the self that serves the purpose of sacrifice in the religious sense.

It is possible to stumble across the sacred already in existence, as in an old moss-covered oak in the thick of a virgin wood or in a hoary statue of the Buddha hat has been resting in an ancient temple for centuries. But sometimes the sacred has to be brought into being through art and effort.

"The Glen" by Maxfield Parrish

In ancient times people sacrificed an animal, placing their prized possession and important food in the hands of divinity rather than using it for themselves. They gave up something they cherished to make room for the holy.

Life gives us plenty of opportunities to make sacrifices. Getting a divorce or changing jobs may entail the kind of sacrifice that increases the holiness of one's life depending on how we deal with it. Sacrifice and sanctifying are natural processes available in every life.

Today it easy to dismiss the importance of sacrifice. We may consider only the giving-up part and not the sanctifying element. The very idea of sacrifice may seem anachronistic. Only primitive people kill animals in the name of their gods. Or the idea of sacrifice may go against all that seems reasonable in a secular world. Why give up the very things one has worked for and achieved? What good is an attitude of self-denial? These sentiments are full of worldly wisdom, but they overlook the profound insight of religion:

The giving up of ego transforms the person radically, placing him in a much vaster notion of what it means to be a human being. It puts him in touch with the incomprehensible mysteries that shape life regardless of our awareness and appreciation of them.
A modern person may find it difficult to imagine living from a place other than ego. Secularism and ego go together, and it may seem only prudent to do whatever is possible to be a conscious, evolving, and successful individual. But the religions teach a different set of values with a focus on eternal concerns and radical community.

They promote a different notion of self—if the word self is appropriate at all. They suggest that a person might feel profoundly fulfilled by being a receptor of life rather than a doer and achiever, a conduit of power rather than the originator.

When in the past people killed their precious livestock for the sake of religion, they were doing something both symbolic and literal. The animal represented what they considered valuable, and they were willing to give it up for a divine blessing. Giving over what they most prized, they felt a great loss. If sacrifice is a mere formality, it simply doesn't work because the emotional sting indicates a letting go of something felt as precious.

Every sacrifice
transforms the person
in a
small way,
and bit by bit
life becomes
holy.


By allowing a greater will to have a role, the person is deliteralized, made into something less centripetal. Even the mystic, so interiorly absorbed, looks beyond the self for meaning. Sacrifice chips away at the self, allowing the deep soul to take over.

The need to insist on our own existence gives way to a more relaxed appreciation of the life passing through us, achieving its own ends, which, mysteriously, creates a fuller version of self than what we might have created from our own designs.


- excerpted from In Every Sacrifice, God is Born
from "The Soul's Religion" by Thomas Moore -