Sunday, December 1, 2013

Poem for a Sunday afternoon

Green

Yesterday, drooping, you gave up hope,
Your silent screams becoming again a language I could read.
Interpreting my behavior as indifference,
            you buried your dreams, contenting yourself with survival
                        -- I don’t blame you.

Accustomed to our cyclical dance,
I apologetically did my part and,
when my back was turned,
you reassumed your habitually proud posture.

For some time I had known that this
lush green masquerade
was belying your true condition –
Stifled by walls of opposition, you could grow no further.
But in my selfish hurry, I chose the comfortable blindness of
Someday (Later).

Though I know not why, Someday came today,
            Replacing my denial with a wild love
                        that left you exposed –
            Roots pressed, redoubled back in wishful self-deceit
 -- or perhaps resilient hope
-- if you kept reaching, maybe, just maybe…

You were right to hold fast to that hidden glimmer
For now, safe in new soil, you’re free to dream again.
The color of hope becomes you.

 

 

I've never been much of a house plant person, but this plant I got about a year ago as a birthday present is teaching me more about life and love than I expected, especially today as I finally transplanted it. Observing the roots as I did so got me asking all sorts of questions like, "In what ways do I choose to keep growing roots in spaces that are too small instead of moving (metaphorically) to new soil (the greatly desired but also feared space of growth)?"  À méditer...

  

Sunday, September 15, 2013

Shall we begin with poetry?

This morning, I was awakened at 6:45 by the beginning lines of an unwritten poem stirring in me. So I took the time to give it life. I offer it to you along with another one I wrote this summer, after a memorable conversation on a flight from Paris to Budapest. 

A Meeting

Recalcitrant piece of driftwood,
I know your nature to float and flee
     with the ebbing tide, worn smooth by the waves,
thinking you’re finished but really just
          numb.

I looked on you with love when a sapling,
     striving upward toward my light,
Long before the storm uprooted you and
     sent you reeling toward the sea.

Though well-masked by years of tossing,
     your innermost rings still carry my dreams.

Here. In the stillness of our encounter,
I see you as far more than a washed-up, shore-bound log,
     biding time until the next rising tide sweeps you
          into rolling forgetfulness.

If you’re willing, I will lean down and take you in my hands.
Fully known yet strangely unafraid,
     you’ll yield to my soul-sounding gaze,
          your memory stirred by a long-forgotten silent whisper.

Carved by our closeness, what’s dead in you will fall away
and the beauty of your contours emerge
          – a breath of hope to all who see.

At rest from your drifting, I’ll fill you with a new kind of water
          – life unending for the thirsty
                    pouring forth from the vessel of your being
                              as you journey homeward.



Meret's Boots

That leather could surely tell stories...
     of resting after a long walk
          as she sipped maté, mind keen to understand
     her new friends' world.
With heart untuned to the music of walled-in books,
     her feet took to the roads and rails and skies... of Beyond,
Sure, rubber-soled steps shrouding a foundation
     still under construction... her soul like the
     houses she would one day build.
Only One knows if the wonder of a Bogotá sunrise,
     a journey shared with a stranger,
          the hope of footprints left behind,
               and His splendor in the trees
     will give her roots like them
          long after her boots fall to pieces.


                                                         (July 24, 2013)