a hundred springs

Update: I learned today of a friend’s sudden passing.  I feel shock and sadness and a heavy heart – noticing how loss hits hard and fast, then freezes, then seeps in very slowly, subtly shifting the landscape.  We’re traveling a short journey here, and I am renewing the intention to hold the people in my life (you) with gratitude and to share how I am nourished. Thank you for reading this, for witnessing my journey and for connecting here. 

“If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.”

~Meister Eckhart

That's my Pops.

The past couple years I’ve offered poems to my family members as Christmas gifts. It’s a gift for me too, taking the meditation, holding them in my mind and heart and asking for the words. I feel closer to both them and myself.

When I held the image of my dad this time, I saw a vision of an Indian man too, with six feathers in his hair. I imagined him and my father are not so far apart in the grand scheme of Iowan millenia.

Here’s what I found in the dig.

a hundred springs
and the blessings will
still swim from under rocks
in the ice-fingered stream bed,
as the resurrection of that april frog
made known,
the rocks themselves can sing.

a thousand springs
and the taste of peace
still paints the cheeks
of the man with six feathers
building fire inside the sacred hearth
of family fed;

his family beats a drum
in the bark of a tree
now alight,
sending signals of
children no longer cold.

enough springs
and what came before will
insist there is no space or time—
leaves of rust and saffron
up on the farm
blown here,
still telling us the scent
of home under these early wet flakes—
insisting to the man with six feathers
they know the harmonies of now.

the first spring or the last,
and his elder hope
for simple people
remains as pure as the shout
of the robin
just there:

for these blessings to
be known by his children,
and theirs,

in the resonant sky
of our season
holding spring.

 

silence collecting.

I’m glad blogs don’t need vacuuming.

Instead of dust-bunny collecting it’s just been here silence-collecting, which actually feels like a cleaning. This spring and summer has been one big and unexpected (as these things are) journey of Lisa time – distilling Maslow’s pyramid down to the bottom, then slowly adding every thing back in, now hopefully settling in their places in a more balanced and integrated way. I know I feel more healthy and whole on the other side.

I never stopped writing, but needed to explore my voice with the spaciousness that comes without the conscious or subconscious considerations about how things will land with anyone else. Now the creative-pod-seeds are spilling with much to share and I’m looking forward to being out loud again.

Your eyes and heart, reception and contributions – they challenge and nurture me and I am grateful for your visits and gifts. I’ve missed you!

Speaking of gifts, before I share anything from my own pen, I must proselytize two bits of wonderfulness. Do yourself a favor and check them out.

1) My newest favoritist poem, by Naomi Shihab Nye: Kindness.

2) The bestest-ever mommy-to-be blogumentary of soulsisterwriter Patresa Hartman. She’s documenting her first pregnancy weekly with the perfect mix of poignant wisdom and candid spit-your-espresso-out style. You will be well-rewarded (and learn things) if you take a break from whatever you’re doing and read the archives. It’s been all-the-more interesting for me since I’ll be an aunt around the same time she’s due. So thank you P- if I could hold a hormone cocktail and extra pound or two for you, I would.
Don’t Touch My Belly.

And last for today – with more to come soon – a little gift from Burning Man to me, from me to you:

create this gift for yourself alone,
to generate the greatest gift for others

your guides are unique
though they tell a universal message-

let us marvel in our connectedness
by celebrating you

Moving and Shaking

I’ve spent the bulk of this week feeling abundantly irritable but quietly happy and oddly brave- a weird combo I’m learning to associate with change. Life is feeling alternately fragile and full, earthy and elusive. A week of mindbodyspirit-opening yoga in Mexico, new heart-flowerings, global movements, powerful dreaming, themes of birth and dying coming from everywhere.

Last night I dreamed of nursing babies – feeling life flowing through me so vividly, and still in the dream I felt like I didn’t have enough, that my limitations were disappointing and hurting my children. Today I watched footage of destruction I could not fully take in on the other side of the earth. Tomorrow I hold space for a service in celebration of my grandmother who passed away last week after a full and rich life. I am feeling the movings and shakings of my own tectonic plates.

I know I’m beginning to explore a new, vital, compelling, raw and shifting place in my life- one that does not yet feel ripe for naming. So instead of word-wrangling here, I am trying to drop in, tune in and feel through.

I decided to write tonight only because I picked up a neglected journal and started flipping through pages, and am always surprised when I find the wisdom I seek. From time to time I write love notes to myself. Some poems, some intentions, some reassurances quick and to the point. Here are a few from my flipping, if you’d like to try them on and wear them around too. I’d love to hear one of yours, if you’re in the mood to share.

 

less good ideas
more trust and surrender
guided by the power of intention
there is no wasted time
all is well

 

The price of aliveness is the will to live.

I choose again to live. To feel the breath of my humanness and bring my formed and formless gifts in this world. I create my reality and choose to see a world of beauty.

 

unfocus.
loss is grace.
the way you take the thread and tie it to your plot-
that is the weight you feel.
the tape replays and reviews-

fuck that.
I want to be inhabited by grace
touching fingertips with the revolution
rolling down the hill sideways
picking up speed on the way to unway
trusting gravity and grass.

there are 10 billion things on the other side of I don’t want to.
surf the wave.

 

There is nothing to know
There is no tomorrow
Your pen writes on the page
until the page turns
Glow
is not a verb
There is nothing to do
Drop into yourself
the way you long to be known.

the man and the crab

A man was walking across a desert-
as he walked, he did not wonder how he found himself there
or where he was going
or how long it would take to arrive.
He did not notice his thirst
or peril,
moving foot by foot,
following a blind power to keep moving.

After some time had passed, a crab came to follow him in the sand.
The crab said to the man,
I will follow you.
I do not know where I am going,
and I seek water and shelter from this heat.

The man turned to the crab, fiercely shouting,
Go! I am blind with hunger.
I follow no path.
I know no water.
I will eat you if you follow.

Still the crab persisted.
But I must! There is no one else to lead.

I am only a small crab in a huge desert.
Eat me if you will, but until then I will follow in your shadow.

The man shouted again, and kicked sand.
Still the crab did not go.
The man grew silent, weakened from his outburst.
He turned and continued walking, the crab following behind.

After many, many miles, the man stopped and turned.
The crab froze, preparing to be eaten.
Then the crab said,
Thank you. You have been a kind and good leader.

The man said,
I do not understand why you follow me blindly.
I have been neither kind nor good and I have no strength to care for you.
I will not eat you, but I must cross this desert alone.

The crab heard him, then gazed ahead and scurried past the man,
saying nothing.

The man watched the crab move ahead, alone in the blazing sun.
He watched until it was out of sight, then fell to his knees in tears.
He did not know why he cried, but knew that without the crab he would not continue on.

After a moment, he stood again and yelled out,
Wait! I am coming! Please wait!
He ran ahead, his eyes desperate and looking.
He said,
You have already been my food.
Your companionship on this journey sustains me.
He ran faster, shouting
Forgive me!

And in that moment he saw the sea.

testimony

A re-write of an old poem. I’ll probably re-write it forever. Sent with love-

testimony

you stand on my coast,
lacing the air with your scent;
until you are more scent than you

your words a dummy trail –
crumbs, leading to an empty room
where the sound of each syllable in my ear is more real than your fingers

this space now, so full of un-you,
how does it live so brightly without even one particle of light?

you are far from here, and so am I;
a story frozen in pictures.

 

I stand, naked
asking the moon the way
Yemaja!
but moons are made of longing.

 

I want to be led down a river
paced and perfectly navigated-
released to a lucid and easy end to our dreaming

I want to touch slowly
eyes and fingers-
giving you my face
and finding yours inside the cracks between hope and what you were

unzip me with a pure breath
and I will find the space below trust to hold whatever’s left
for you

step off with me and we will free fall in a relentless healing-
singing ourselves clean,
saying grace to our crackings

give me the face of the lion and I will kiss and rub her ears
knowing fierce is will and will is juice and juice is what fires the pistons of joy

bring me your spent infant and I will ooze into your cradle
where we can sleep and wake again-
another sacrifice on the altar of Something More-
born, man and woman,

loving ourselves undone-
surrendering to the movement of tides,
our sweat a baptism,
breathlessness breathing us
and our skin teaching us where we don’t end.

 

you pull my cord,
and the ocean shows me a light that has never belonged to her
or the moon.

how am I so slow remembering my own reflection?

there is no place to be apart-
even in darkness,
angled as we are,
the sun is real

in the future

I remember what it feels like to be a man
So I touch my face and lips now like one

I speak many languages
In my belly they remember poems

I see pictures of yours that I recognize
My dreams were photons before I came,
before you-

I drive a mile and it is warmer
These movements of form are microclimates,
nearby shifts

Daffodils still bloom today
Friends go

This is it.

Destiny was a muse of another man
Until I saw he is me

You and I

It has been a ride so far for me this new year, full of magic and change, frought with detours and hiccups.  Thank you Santa, Universe, Full Moon for the countless opportunities to practice acceptance and compassion.  Even when they look like a lump of coal.

Me and Mom, on a warmer day

My year started tenderly- before the new year actually, as I arrived back in Iowa Christmas Day on the heels of my mom having major surgery. I found her home in bed, hurting and frustrated, with my dad taking up the nearly-as-crappy spot: he-who-watches-the-hurting-and-frustrated.  There were sweet and warm and normal moments, before the weather postponed my flight back to Cali for three days- on the same day I went down with fever and my mom went back to the hospital.   I spent my New Years in bed ringing in a pity party for one, kicking off my big annual existential crisis. But the weather eventually cleared just fine, in every sense, and got me home warm in my Big Sur nest soon enough.  Mom has had a rougher go, after four more trips in and out of the hospital with every imaginable complication.  The surgery was deemed a success, but it’s been hard to feel that way, since she hasn’t felt good since.

She was as low as I’ve heard her today when I talked to her.  I wanted to offer support and instead gave advice. I felt helpless so I gave advice to make myself feel better, and the advice I gave her was to quit thinking about what she should be giving for two seconds and focus on receiving the support she needs.  Irony’s always a close companion to advice.  Love you Mom.  Thank you mirror.

I have to say this giving and receiving business is tricky – the balance between both is so delicate and essential. The part of me that needs to be reminded is listening to the me that talks about this all the time when I teach.  One of my favorite things to bring awareness to in group singing is that it’s an intense practice of giving and receiving simultaneously.  You let your own voice fly while at the same time taking in a room full of sound.  I think we can only be as fulfilled in our experience and in our relationships as we have the capacity to do both of these in our lives. Giving is a full loop.  Everyone who has ever felt the bottom drop out after giving a meaningful gift to someone who didn’t appreciate it knows this. So does anyone who’s found relief writing a letter that’s never sent.  Receiving is a gift, and the biggest beneficiary of our giving is usually ourselves.

This Christmas I wanted to give presents to myself and family with a little more depth and consideration than I would with my wallet at the mall.  I was also feeling the poignancy that comes amidst challenge and suffering, that always seems to make the gifts feel more precious.   So I stayed up all Christmas night writing four poems. For my brother, sister-in-law, mom and dad, respectively.  I meditated on each of them before I wrote – felt what I perceived of their essence, and of our relationship.  Then came the business of distilling what I felt into words.  It took all night.  Writing has always been effortful for me by the way – there’s no tumbling out in some graceful array – it’s a searching and wrestling and wrangling till I feel the click.

After talking to Mom again today I’m remembering what I wrote for her, our family warrior. Of the four poems this one took the most wrangling.  How to distill the complexities of this bond between mother and daughter?  The greatest mirrors and teachers to each other, with all the love and crazy that comes with it.

You and I

With one stroke of the brush
She painted a wave of the ocean
And the page was no longer empty

The wave longed for company.
Paint me a whale!
Give me a boat or shore or sky!

And the artist said
You are enough.
We are complete.

We are the painter and the painted.

I cannot know how my maker sees this water-
I feel her brush and the space around me on the page.

I cannot know how my ocean longs-
I trust I have done enough.

We are wide angled portals
One and apart
Creator and created-

Like two stars in orbit, we are bound
and unimaginable.

the eyes before me

Thank you Linda for The Gift of Hafiz. I read him again today and found my own poem inside-

the eyes before me

look into the eyes of every lover and say

do not worry that your cutting word, your wounded-ness, your indifference or un-knowing will cause me pain.
rest easy-

your gifts are gifts

I drink from you like a cup that will bring me salvation
because you will

for no good reason
but that you are here.

mind and heart talking

I do not understand my trust
and that is its nature

mind and faith cannot know each other fully
and that which cannot be known cannot be trusted fully

or, is it so?

The mind says:
Faith is another word for stupidity.

The heart says:
I have knowing that defies logic or reason.

The mind says:
You believe so you can sleep.

The heart says:
Wake with me.

The mind says:
We mean nothing. We are nothing. There is nothing. You are dust.

The heart says:
That’s something.

The mind says:
If you practiced – if you woke up and watched and were aware of everything, you would understand the universe. You would not need to believe.

The heart says:
In the moment before I die, I will not seek to understand. I will seek to love.

The mind says:
I keep you safe.

The heart says:
I fear nothing.

The mind says:
You are beautiful, you are brilliant.

The heart says:
(nothing. Shine.)

The mind says:
Who can I share this with, to make it more perfect?

The heart says:
There is no more perfection, than perfection.

The mind says:
Than why your longing? Always longing?

The heart says:
To evolve. The purpose of longing is evolution.

the stream

today I decided that
tension
is an about word
as opposed to an alive word

alive words come in a stream
ink on the page.
about words come from the left,
chosen and chewed.

I suppose it’s unfair to just cast you out,
tension
I’m sure you’re perfectly alive someplace.

But like looking for ghosts,
this work is an exercise
in seeing without looking

picking up the stream