(On Leaving New Camaldoli)
Let me take the silence
of this cell with me
when I go,
not as armor
but a spring inside me
fed by ever melting snow.
May it ripple and reverberate,
contained in the perfect
acoustics of my heart.
I want to hear it in the world,
and if people sense a certain something
when I do, let them wonder what it is.
I will let it spill out –
I can be profligate –
it is an everlasting flow.
At the corner of the garden
brash blossoms as big as my head
fill the sprawling datura.
Are those exuberant upside-down flutes
yellow or orange? I don’t know –
they’re sunshine, egg yolks,
fresh churned butter
from a happy, meadow-grazing cow.
All day long they hang like unrung bells
till setting sun coaxes a farewell,
cascades of perfume flowing
over the garden as if a band of angels
had been keeping vigil just to trumpet
this sun-washed scented goodbye —
no desire to hold darkness at bay,
instead, a vespers explosion
of thank you,
bless us, adieu.
Come moon, come stars now,
roses and rhubarb await their rest,
kohuhu and calla lilies too.
Come, my love, to our pillows and bed.
The window stands open,
my arms await you.
So you think angels are fiction;
come sail on their fragrance
into sleep with me anyway.
Let your REM-induced
atheist reveries mingle
with my hermit dreams
and what we both believe in,
roses and rhubarb,
kohuhu and calla lilies,
the garden we tend
and that tends us too.
Sitting in this quiet library,
looking out at redwoods
taller than its four stories,
it’s hard to imagine
bombs falling on Tehran,
blood and rubble,
the terrified cry of a new orphan.
Harder perhaps for her
to picture this —
crows instead of missiles
flying across blue sky,
a town so lovely
monarch butterflies
choose to winter here,
mothers and fathers
like mine
who grow old.
Born from friction
or sun or lightning kindled,
it is warmth in winter,
light in the darkness.
It is the great destroyer too,
burning the old
to make way for the new.
Given oxygen, given fuel,
it burns as it will,
always burns true.
Seek that flame.
It lives inside of you.
Image courtesy of Sarojani Rohan, “Year of the Fire Horse”
Ask for one wild word,
A portable convent.
In the desert what seems empty is actually full.
Can I let what isn’t essential or nourishing wither?
A portable convent —
What if I were as quiet and spacious as the desert?
Let what isn’t essential or nourishing wither,
Honor the gifts.
What if I were as quiet and spacious as the desert?
In the desert what seems empty is actually full.
Honor the gifts.
Ask for one wild word.
This poem was inspired by an invitation to create a pantoum in the book Give Me a Word: The Promise of an Ancient Practice to Guide Your Year by Christine Valters Paintner. She explains that the “French pantoum is a poetic form with a circular structure that comes from the ordered repetition of lines.” Following her suggestion, I re-read my journal for the month of December and copied down lines that shimmered for me, then put them together according to her template, so this is in a way a found poem — like a mandala made of driftwood collected on the beach.
After “The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry
Living in town, far from wood drake
and heron, where can I go
in the middle of the night to seek
the peace of wild things?
Could I lie down in the cushiony redwood mulch
in my backyard,
never mind the bits of bark that will later cling
to hair and clothes?
Wouldn’t the crickets make room for me
and the bats pass over
as if I were a fallen tree?
Plants and trees have sleep cycles too;
vines are resting from their labors
growing squash, ripening tomatoes,
popping out passion flowers.
Why shouldn’t I?
My own garden,
traversed by possums and raccoons,
presided over by moon and stars,
is wild enough.
There is no tonic like going outdoors.
No bed or chaise lounge can take the place
of the earth beneath my body,
yet no matter the clothes and comforts
I cushion it with, this body
hosts a feral universe; it has
rhythms and demands beyond my ken and control.
When fear stalks in the night
to rob me of rest, let my soul
return to my body, let me remember
that I too am a wild thing.
After “Fear” by Raymond Carver
Doubt the button I sewed on Tom’s sweater will hold
or that my cooking is good enough for company.
Doubt that I can see, when I prune them,
how the roses really want to grow.
Doubt when I speak to the new widow
that I will know what to say
or avoid useless cliché.
Doubt I’ll ever be cool, but now
I’m old enough I doubt it matters.
Doubt that I’ll ever stop
being stupefied by spring
or startled in a silent house
by the muted plink of a petal
dropping from its bouquet.
Doubt there will ever be a better way
than in Tom’s arms to start the day.
Doubt I have the wisdom,
as an unchecked autocrat
drops bombs on a whim,
to be a patriot and a peacemaker.
Doubt that the vulnerability
of this fragile world can be borne.
Doubt that I will ever stop bearing it.
For a sailor without a port no wind is favorable. — Seneca
I may as well throw out my to-do list.
Those old tasks have no point now.
Lost, I don’t know
where I’m going, let alone
how to get there.
I’d like to fly away home,
but the ships in the harbor are burning.
The whole city is on fire,
books packed tightly
on their shelves
feel the lick of the flame.
Still, I know where I came from,
and even if the hollow eyes
of the monsters who lit the match
are glowing in the darkness,
I am not alone.
In the flickering light
I see you too.
After Psalm 138
The weeds that withered and the ones I pulled
are risen in a flurry of flowers —
floods of maroon-tipped white ramping-fumitory
and meadows full of sunbright yellow oxalis.
Amidst last winter’s lettuce, henbit deadnettle flaunts
small purple velvet blooms
unfurling
yet smaller
speckled petals.
The beauty of what I call weeds
startles me into gratitude,
and I sing praise to the earth.
I name you, holy uninvited —
nettle and broom,
thistle and vinca –
and bow before your tenacious ingenuity,
for you glorify the Author of Life
in your surging greenness.
When I looked out my window,
you showed me your loveliness;
your bounty reminded me of our plenty.
All the fearful would surely recognize abundance
if they could see the unstoppable
flowering in this garden,
if they only breathed in the aromas of
sweet peas and angel’s trumpet.
Though the Beloved dwells in paradise,
She cares for the nettle and broom
as much as the jasmine and rose;
both planted and uninvited
are holy in Her sight.
Though I fear scarcity,
you fill this plot with hurtling life.
You offer enough to feed us all,
more than enough to save us.
The earth will make good her purpose for me;
O Sacred Earth, your greening endures forever;
do not abandon the fruits of your flowering.
Audio version of The Holy Uninvited
A note about this poem: In January I started reading the book Understorey: A Year Among Weeds by Anna Chapman Parker, and it inspired me to pay attention to the weeds in my garden. Although oxalis dominates with its neon yellow flowers, when I set out to explore the verdant greenery currently burgeoning in my backyard, I identified twenty other species— many of which I would have considered wildflowers if I’d discovered them on a hike. And now that I know another name for oxalis is Bermuda buttercup, how could I not want to make peace with it?
Then last week, for an online retreat through Abbey of the Arts called Earth Psalter: Writing Psalms for the Anthropocene, I was asked to “bring an object from an outdoor place that is meaningful to your experience of your ecosystem.” Minutes before I was supposed to show up on Zoom, I raced out to the still dewy backyard with my clippers and put together a small bouquet of weeds/wildflowers that inspired this song of praise and gratitude.
Thank you to Abbey of the Arts for this new approach to the psalms!
I slip my spade through the weedy tangle
and slice into the earth,
dig as deep as the blade will go
to come up under the root mass,
and tug an entire oxalis from soil
where lilies and echevaria want to grow.
Sometimes the garden yields its invader,
bulbs clinging to white tendrils
as I pull them gently from the dirt,
then toss them
without ceremony or remorse
into my bucket.
But mostly the roots go deep,
and bulbs remain
nestled in their secret places,
sucking sunlight and water
meant for the bird of paradise.
In this little square of earth
under my neighbor’s redwood,
I want to be the American army liberating Paris,
but I am only one humble partisan,
and this looks to be a long battle.
The Kingdom of Enough 