Small with Everything

Tags

Alameda, Love, pizza

In Anne Lamott’s book Stitches
she quotes Ram Dass.

Ordered my pizza, small
with everything,
sat down with my book,
annoyed by the loud young men,
voices too big for the room,
shouting about sports; my table
beneath the speaker playing
a song for people decades
younger; my view the parking lot;

as my pizza arrived, I read,
we’re all just walking
each other home,
and heard the joy
in the voices and laughter,
felt the beauty of the music
soaring golden above me,
saw late afternoon sun
shining on trees beyond
the parking lot, and remembered
yet again my life is small,
but with everything.

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Rousseau’s Dream

Tags

birds, dreams, elephant, jungle, lions, moon, poetry

Painting by Henri Rousseau, The Dream

Moon in the deepening dusk
awakens a vision of harmony,
each separate thing
part of the whole,
one with nature
and the mystery:
lions, elephant, snake,
bright-feathered birds
unmoving yet vibrant, alive;
plants growing before my eyes,
flowers fed by moonlight;
woman, strong, sensual, gleaming,
listening to the black man
play an endless melody
sent from the stars.

Past Life: Healer in Russia

Tags

death, healer, Love, past lives, poetry, Russia

Nineteenth century

I had no words for what I did;
born with a light shining
in me, I knew, even as a child,
I was to help everyone
in the village;

their well-being was my work.
Snow everywhere, always cold,
those are my memories, as I walked
from one home to another,
wherever illness called me.

I was small, too slight
for the fire in me, a candle
burning much too fast. Thin
and always thinner,
I never bore a child.
My husband, big and brown
as a bear, expected me one day;
I never came. He found me
—only time for a kiss.

The light in me so great,
my body was warm for days;
I looked like I was sleeping.
Everyone wept.

Sundays at Elaine’s

Tags

blocked emotions, emotions, Oakland, soul, writing

Oakland, CA 2014

In late afternoon, we gather in her kitchen,
six or seven women, sometimes a brave man or two.
Light-filled room, beyond the back porch
a patchwork of trees and other houses,
a feast on the kitchen table:
bowls of nuts, plates of cookies,
cups of coffee, glasses of lemon-mint water.

Our voices laugh and murmur, rise and fall,
until Elaine suggests that we begin:
a topic is chosen, timer set,
silence descends, and pens are put to paper.
She gently guides us as we move
from one subject to the next; we write
of secrets hiding in the chambers
of our souls, frozen fears, old aches
and open wounds, the stream of love,
flowing or blocked; memories that
charm us, haunt us, move us; courage,
how we bear the unbearable; and finally,
the desires that call to us, that float us up
to the blue heavens. We read our writings aloud,
unless reading the outpourings of the heart
to ourselves is more than enough.

Sacred time, when we invite our souls
to come forth in a ritual as old
as the dawn of language, when the tribe gathered
around a fire in a cave and gave birth
to myths and legends; now we sit in a circle
and tell our stories, rewriting
the myths of our lives.

Four Birds Fly West

Tags

birds, death, messages from the Universe, poetry, setting sun

My husband, Eugene “Charlie” Chase, passed away,
age 93, four months after the event described below.

I step outside at dusk,
the long day done,
the long night just begun.

My husband sleeps upon his bed,
too weak to turn and tired
from the wandering of his mind,
the long day done,
the long night just begun.

All day I’ve wondered
will the latest drug turn him around
or is his final passage near?
I ask the dusk, “Is he headed
for death?” I look up as I say
the words and see four birds
fly west above the sugar pine,
a message from the Universe
(birds are its favorite messengers).
The Four of Wands, a rite of passage
marked, the Four of Swords,
the warrior takes his rest,
the west, direction of the setting sun,
to minds of old, the home of death.
So now I know, his soul will soon
take flight,
the long day done,
the long night just begun.

Picnic at the Beach

Tags

blessing, ocean, omen, picnic, poetry, Pt. Reyes, Relationships

Pt. Reyes, 1983

After the wine and the picnic,
after Dale and George leave,
waves break on the beach
and slip back out to sea;
fullness, emptiness.

Charlie and I fall asleep on a rise of sand,
awake to find water all around,
but we are dry,
omen of protection, of blessing,
unsustained but perfect moment;
fullness, emptiness.

Choir Practice

Sunday morning sermons,
about the souls of the damned burning
in the lake of fire, seemed to a child
like the deeper truth
that made the sunshine streaming
through the tall windows a lie.
 
But Tuesday evenings brought the truth
I still live by; my mother put her coat
onto a pew and I lay down in the dark;
the only light in the church shone
on the choir. As they practiced,
their harmonies, like woven strands of love,
rose gently into the vastness of the night.