"prise the reluctant heart wide open"

This past Friday, I journeyed to see the Sandhill Cranes who take a break from their bi-annual migration in Monte Vista, CO. There is a lovely wildlife refuge just outside of town. A dear friend and I made the hour and a half drive to catch the birds waking near dawn. Their voices were glorious. Thousands of them chatting it up. Perhaps about the chill of the morning air, or whether they would cross the road for breakfast.

We watched as they stirred, and stretched, and danced their crane-dance. Hop, hop, hop - wings expanding, long legs bouncing. Graceful birds. Awkward birds. Slowly small groups would take to the air, their majestic wings welcoming the lift of sky, their voices a chorus of lyrical trumpeting. Here is a poem that recently inspired me...





Anyone Can Sing

Anyone can sing. You just open your mouth,
and give shape to a sound. Anyone can sing.
What is harder, is to proclaim the soul,
to initiate a wild and necessary deepening:
to give the voice broad, sonorous wings
of solitude, grief, and celebration,
to fill the body with the echoes of voices
lost long ago to bravery, and silence,
to prise the reluctant heart wide open,
to witness defeat, to suffer contempt,
to shrink, lose face, go down in ignominy,
to retreat to the last dark hiding-place
where the tattered remnants of your pride
still gather themselves around your nakedness,
to know these rags as your only protection
and yet still open - to face the possibility
that your innermost core may hold nothing at all,
and to sing from that - to fill the void
with every hurt, every harm, every hard-won joy
that staves off death yet honours its coming,
to sing both full and utterly empty,
alone and conjoined, exiled and at home,
to sing what people feel most keenly
yet never acknowledge until you sing it.
Anyone can sing. Yes. Anyone can sing.

~ William Ayot ~

(Small Things that Matter)

So I Began to Sit Very Still

Dwayne VanHoose practicing stillness

So I Began to Sit Very Still

I said to God,
but how can you love me?
I said to God,
I am sorry.
I said to God,
I am sorry but I don’t want to change.
I said to God,
Please.
But I did not know if I meant please help me
or please go away,
please let me be your servant
or please let me be my own god.

I said to God,
I am scared.
I said to God,
All is well.
I said to God,
I see you, everywhere.
I said to God,
where have you gone?

I sought and stopped seeking,
I got down on my knees.
I ran. I hid in my own skin.
I hid in my name.
I hid in my own questions.

I said God,
show me.
I said God,
I’m too small.
I said God,
I don’t believe in you.

I climbed mountains.
I ran. I knelt in the pew.
I read. I listened
with half an ear.

I said, I said, I said, I said
I said too much for God to enter. 



Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
http://ryezome.wordpress.com/2011/02/06/so-i-began-to-sit-very-still/

L - O - V - E

with gratitude to Syed Masood who graciously shared this photo from Pakistan

Happy Valentine's Day everyone! And Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad (tomorrow, the 15th)!

Here is a poem I wrote last year. I dedicate this to all the new daddies of daughters (like my brother and others whom I have been seeing on Facebook!) who will teach them how to dance and be in this world by letting them stand on their toes till they get the moves down (my favorite memory of my dad). I dedicate this to all the mom's who tirelessly hold and sing to their sons who need calming (especially my sister). I dedicate this to all the wannabe mommies and daddies who are working so hard to adopt and give good homes, and to all those who have adopted and are raising children born of their hearts (like Kate, Lis, Chrissy). 

I dedicate this poem to all who love with no apparent show of love in return to remember that we are the result of the love of thousands. It is IMPOSSIBLE to be without some expression of love at some point in our lives. Today I celebrate THIS love - the love that reaches out to us beyond our boundaries of what love is "supposed" to look like. I dedicate this poem to all who have learned to open their heart to the fire of love that purifies us into ever more selfless human beings, caring for each other and for all of life with reverence. May you remember you are loved!

Below it I have a poem by my dear sister friend Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. I love the tender gratitude expressed in this pure and simple poem about companionship. I dedicate this poem to all who are in this kind of love, putting the work in that it takes to see each other through the challenges. I dedicate this poem to all who dream of such love someday who are putting the work in to BECOME such exemplary companions. Thank you R!

Imagine that

You are the result of the love of thousands.
-Linda Hogan

The love of thousands
can a mind even embrace
such a thought? That love,

not just from obligatory blood,
not only of a few friends here
and there, but thousands.

Even just to be result,
outcome of sweetness
divine in magnitude

that the very life coursing
through our existence
is because of love

suddenly becoming
as us,
as me.


Heather Barron

Sock Monkey Love - my V-day gift from my nephew Gare-Bear

  
When

I say I,
I mean more
than this flesh
that walks around
calling herself by
a name. Somehow,
it’s as if
there are stars
involved, too, and
birds, of course,
and rivers. And
trees, fruit, rye,
and every infinite
shade of sky.

And when I
say love, it’s
a single syllable
trying to carry
the weight of
something weightless. That’s
no easy task.
I mean that
you are the
silence that links
every word to
every other word,
and you are
the song inside
my every hum.
That is wildly
insufficient.

And when I
say you, I
mean the vulnerable
you, the broken
you, the lost
you. I mean
the you when
you first wake
up and the
you when you
stub your toe.
And the shining
you, the funny
you, the you
who would cleanse
my eyes with
warm compresses when
I have pink
eye, the you
who is utterly
indefinable in three
word lines and
this attempt is
also wildly insufficient.
Is it any
wonder I kiss
you every chance
possible, oh you? 

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
http://ryezome.wordpress.com

FIre

Eating this one up right now, or rather allowing this fire to consume me and burn away all my impatience, distrust, fear of the future, and any other limiting beliefs that try to tempt me away from this perfectly wonderful present moment...
 

Fire

What makes a fire burn
is space between the logs,
a breathing space.
Too much of a good thing,
too many logs
packed in too tight
can douse the flames
almost as surely
as a pail of water would.
So building fires
requires attention
to the spaces in between,
as much as to the wood.

When we are able to build
open spaces
in the same way
we have learned
to pile on the logs,
then we can come to see how
it is fuel, and absence of the fuel
together, that make fire possible.

We only need to lay a log
lightly from time to time.
A fire
grows
simply because the space is there,
with openings
in which the flame
that knows just how it wants to burn
can find its way.

~ Judy Brown ~

(Leading from Within, ed. by Sam M. Intrator and Megan Scribner)

Time Enough - a poem

Time Enough

“When God made time, he made enough of it.”
            Good Earth tea bag


Perhaps on the seventh day
when God rested, he had not
yet considered that there

would be modems and email.
Could he have foreseen error 17099?
Did he know of null paths? Could

he anticipate the long, long wait while
the Microsoft phone lines connect
to India and reconnect to Novia Scotia,

where a stuttering agent named Andrew
eventually answers my call only
to tell me that the case number

I’ve been assigned does not exist?
God surely didn’t think all this would all happen
as my two-year-old daughter wakes

up from her nap, early, and needs to pee.
Immediately. Surely he did not plan
on my neighbors arriving to pick up

some things just as Andrew walks
me through Accounts and Tools
and Preferences. But he probably did

send Rumi, who pushes me from
the keyboard with an easy grin and says,
“When the moment cracks open, ecstasy

leaps out. You will come to see
that all evolves us.” And he hangs up
on Andrew and leads me to the window

to see how the snow is still falling
as it has been all day. And the field
deepens. The little girl, untended, cuts

my to do list, of course, into tiny pieces
and throws them around the room.
You can’t do much but laugh then,

and make some hot tea,
dark and full with Indian spice.
Another day. Another night.


*with Rumi quotes from Daniel Ladinsky’s translation of “That Lives in Us”
By Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Poetess Extraordinaire (http://ryezome.wordpress.com/)

Trust That Which Looks Devastating

Olive growing from a fire-scorched tree in Samos, Greece

A man was breaking up soil

when another man came by, "Why 

are you ruining this land?"

"Don't be a fool!  Nothing can

grow until the ground 

is turned over and crumbled.

There can be no roses 

and no orchard

without first this that looks devastating."

"The Illuminated Rumi," translated by Coleman Barks

Oh

Oh

One morning I noticed
that I was looking
somewhere else

thinking, There.
There is my path,
the one I should

be on. There the path
I have dreamed of.
The path that was

promised me.
The path I once thought
I was on. I can’t say

exactly whose voice
it was that said
Here. But I began

to notice my feet
were under me
and my path was

this exactly this tangle,
this lostness, this
wherever I happen to be.

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

http://ryezome.wordpress.com/