post. apocalypse.

i have read...
and immediately responded
to your letter.
call.
and.
response.
...and eeked out with passion
...in furtive splotches of clumsy ink.
black.
the thought carried
for so long, my heart
craters a constant
hole.
it aches.
it haunts.
a footfall,
remarkably like yours.

and after tears and tears and years and tears.
[i've cried so long, even tragedies seem quaint]
i fumbled the word out
on the page.
the word.
made flesh.
the flesh.
made alive between us.
[and neither
of us,
were ever the same.]

so. after
crying. and sitting
in silence.
like a catatonic wretch.
i let the words come.
come.
flood forth,
and they came.

and finally after days of carrying the tiny missile.
i rent asunder the lines
that connect
the far-flung
ties
that still bind.
even now.

and stitched together.
like suturing
a binding, piercing
my heart.
my hands.
my all.
for you.

check the box.
the mailman cometh.

and all God's children gots travelin' shoes.

so.
some day.
i'm gonna cash in my chips and give
away my books. i'm gonna
kiss the coming gravestones
for my tiniest kitters, and
yank the ball and chain
on my cloister's light bulb.
one.
last.
time.
that rusty door hinge
will sigh, goodbye
...and donning my tough soles, i
will wander my way
outta
town.

look for me
in the winter stars. and
in the wind-seduced trees. i
will be.
that sound of wings o'erhead. i
will be.
the remarkable and noted quiet. i
will be.
every child grinning back in the
grocery store wagon. i
will be.
the twilight and the morning light.
and when you wonder where i wander...
stop
a minute,
and say hello to a stranger.
a notty, aged, and weather-warn, street person.
take
a moment.
to.
see.
them.
be kind.
say hello then.
and i will smile.

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.

if you are happy.

Memories of Horses

The lines in the hands of old people
gradually curve over and will point soon toward earth.
They take with them their secret language,
cloud-words and wind-letters,
all the signs the heart gathers up in the lean year.

Sorrow bleaches out and turns to face the stars
but memories of horses, women's feet, children
flow from their old people's faces down to the grass kingdom.

In huge trees we can often see
images of the peace in the sides of animals,
and the wind sketches in the grass, if you are happy,
running children and horses.

- Rolf Jacobsen
translated by Robert Bly

centering [it was spoken in a word today] for 2009.

[and then, i stumbled upon this]


Centering [excerpt]

“But how are we to love when we are stiff and numb and disinterested? How are we to transform ourselves into limber and soft organisms lying open to the world at the quick? By what process and what agency do we perform the Great Work, transforming lowly materials into gold? Love, like its counterpart Death, is a yielding at the center. Not in the sentiment. Nor in the genitals. Look deep into my eyes and see the love-light. Figured forth in intelligent cooperation, sensitive congeniality, physical warmth. At the center the love must live. One gives up all that one has for this. This is the love that resides in the self, the self-love, out of which all love pours. The fountain, the source. At the center. One gives up all the treasured sorrow and self-mistrust, all the precious loathing and suspicion, all the secret triumphs of withdrawal. One bends in the wind. There are many disciplines that strengthen one’s athleticism for love. It takes all one’s strength. And yet it takes all one’s weakness too. Sometimes it is only by having all one’s so called strength pulverized that one is weak enough, strong enough, to yield. It takes that power of nature in one which is neither strength nor weakness but closer perhaps to virtu, person, personalized energy. Do not speak about strength and weakness, manliness and womanliness, aggressiveness and submissiveness. Look at this flower. Look at this child. Look at this rock with lichen growing on it. Listen to this gull scream as he drops through the air to gobble the bread I throw and clumsily rights himself in the wind. Bear ye one another’s burdens, the Lord said, and he was talking law. Love is not a doctrine, Peace is not an international agreement. Love and peace are beings who live as possibilities in us.”


- Mary Caroline Richards

at thirty-four [and contemplating what it means to die]

Gestalt at Sixty [excerpt]

I am not ready to die,
But I am learning to trust death
As I have trusted life.
I am moving
Toward a new freedom
Born of detachment,
And a sweeter grace—
Learning to let go.

I am not ready to die,
But as I approach sixty
I turn my face toward the sea.
I shall go where tides replace time,
Where my world will open to a far horizon.

Over the floating, never-still flux and change.
I shall go with the changes,
I shall look far out over golden grasses
And blue waters....

There are no farewells.

Praise God for His mercies,
For His austere demands,
For His light
And for His darkness.

- May Sarton