Somehow and with no clear direction or vision of the future of my expression, poetry has been speaking the language of my heart newly. Through circles of grief and love, and inspiration from those who wrote and mused poetry before me, I’m allowing the direction and vision to unfold naturally. Mary Oliver, Pablo Neruda, Kim Rosen, Wendell Berry, Tara Brach, Leonard Cohen, Mark Nepo, and so many more have become my teachers.
It has been a while since I’ve posted. I’ve been writing plenty but more for personal processing and it’s felt as though my mind has been adjusting to a new way of placing words down to say the things that seem to lie behind life’s mystery. I read poetry. I sit in meditation. I prepare for my meditation through study and movement and pranayama. Then, I just write whatever comes out of me and I look at the paper and think “who wrote that?” as I’ve been allowing an opening for a language that was previously unfamiliar to me. When I write lately, something becomes propelled from a force that doesn’t exist in my day to day realm of cognitive operating. So, here I risk sharing with you an example of this language of spirit we call poetry.
Prayer For The Ending Of Your Suffering
I wish I could set your heart
free form the entrapment of its cage.
I wish I could sow wings or gills
on this vessel you embody.
I wish I could invent an eraser for your memories.
And I wish I had the capability of traveling you into
a time when you’d know
the possibility of healing.
I watch you
and I hold your spirit
with this prayer
for the ending of your suffering.
I wish I could set your heart
free from the entrapment of its cage.
And I only know
of this one…
perhaps seemingly contradictory,
way.
I will sit here, by your side,
opening my heart to yours
to give space for you to recognize that
your heart has gone on beating
and pulsating life force
through this vessel you embody.
You need not grow wings or gills
to fly above earth
or breathe in the drowning.
Instead,
I am here, by your side,
in silence, listening,
opening my heart to yours
to give space for you to recognize that
your heart has gone on beating
and pulsating life force
through this vessel you embody.
You need not an eraser for your memories.
Instead I am here, by your side,
in silence, listening,
opening my heart to yours
so that the confines of those memories
may disperse into ether
where you have space to recognize that
your heart, like mine,
and the hearts of the whole Universe’s creations,
has gone on beating
and pulsating life force
through this vessel you embody.
I am here.
I sit here
by your side,
in silence, listening
to your heart beat.
And I’m witnessing
the pulsating life force
through this vessel you embody.
There’s no need to skip over
this moment in time when the healing is happening.
I hold intention for you to choose
to be here ,
awake,
alive,
and with me.
Let’s not time travel over
the miracle unfolding.
I see you, simply, and I hold your spirit
with this prayer for the ending of your suffering.
And I wait, patiently,
for you to release your own heart from
the entrapment of its cage
and to witness with me
the miracle that
the same heart that endured atrocity
has gone on beating,
reliably,
consistently,
persistently,
pulsating life force
through this vessel you embody.
