poetry – The Kingdom of Enough

Enter the Sanctuary

It’s all mist and veils to start with –

except for the title,

a line lifted from another poem,

a flame to which I touch

the wick of my small candle.

Carried to the blank page,

it flickers in currents of air

exhaling the breath of so many spirits.

I cup my hands around it

till fire takes hold

of wick and wax,

and I see the opening,

take my first step into the labyrinth.

Though mist still shrouds

the circuits and turns,

candlelight shows

where to set my foot —

and no more.

How this roundabout

twisting-on-itself path

will lead to the center

I do not know,

nor can I yet fathom

what I will find there.

Sometimes the way is overgrown

with brambles and gorse,

thickets so tall and tangled

they hide the center.

I carry no machete,

no pruning hook or shears,

only bare hands

to unravel thorny vines.

Do not shun your doubt and fear.

Be patient. Be humble.

Taste the blood on your torn finger

and heed the spiderweb

as you slip past its dark weaver.

Curious and awestruck

audacity

will take you

where you want

to go.

Dear reader, at this time of winter darkness, about to light the fourth candle on the Advent wreath, watching for the return of light heralded by the winter solstice, and admittedly overwhelmed by the consumerist frenzy that hijacks Christmas in our culture, I wish you sanctuary — your own pool of light in the labyrinth — and a pathway to hope in the New Year.

Why Poetry?

author sitting in the garden writing in a notebok

When children go hungry and migrants have no refuge, when flooding kills thousands in Libya while smoke from Canadian wildfires makes it hard for people in Florida to breathe, when one friend is diagnosed with Parkinson’s and another with cancer, what entitles me to sit in my garden and write a poem? Why make art of any kind when the world is falling apart?

The refugee crisis and world hunger and climate change sometimes paralyze me. What can one ordinary person do after installing solar panels and donating to the food bank? I bake banana bread, read Keats’ “Ode to Autumn,” and drink coffee with my girlfriends— anything to drown out the creeping dread I’m often not even consciously aware of. It eventually finds me in my dreams though: the bus to nowhere, the oncoming wave the size of a mountain, no place to hide from whatever sinister figure is stalking me that night.

When it’s impossible to forget and hard to hope, what can one ordinary person do?

Be curious.

Pay attention.

Resist numbness.

Writing a poem helps me do all three. Close observation and a spirit of exploration are solar power for art-making, and on the occasions when they float me into the zone where I lose all sense of time and place, when it’s just my pen and notebook and me, I get fired up with the exhilaration of the creative process as well as pride in making something. “Do poems make a difference?” poet Jane Hirshfield was asked after a reading at Bookshop Santa Cruz recently. The woman who wrote a book about how great poems transform the world answered, “Any action is an escape from paralysis.” Like signing a petition or composting my food scraps, writing a poem gives me a sense of agency.

Books by Jane Hirshfield including Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World

But it’s not just about me. The poet lights a candle in the dark, both illumination and prayer. Whether I am reading a poem or writing one, it reminds me, in a world that wants saving, I am not alone.

What Will Save Us

We’re all in this together,

looking for the songs to sing

that will hold the world together.

We might look to the soldier or scientist

to save us,

but the hero sits in silence before dawn,

looks out the window at the moon

slender and radiant in her old age,

and listens,

listens below ticking clock

and hooting owl,

listens beyond the whisper of candle flame

and the tinkle from the bells

the ants wear round their feet.

Deep in the earth,

deep in the cave of her heart,

angels sing,

and the poet transcribes.

Originally published in Second Wind: Words & Art of Hope & Resilience.

For the Lifetime of a Minute

Sunrise over the beach — When dawn approaches
on this January day,
sky flaunts willful, windborne
clouds. They resist the usual
palette – all but shades of gray.

At my window I return
to coffee and notebook,
like a fisherman intent
on what hides in the sea.
Hearts beat,
his and mine and the fishes,
and the rhythm
of unwritten poems.

Then, for a minute,
sky accepts the brush
of dawn.
While fish and poems
swim in secret places,
a hint of color snags
me at my desk,
the fisherman on the beach.
For a minute
between slate and silver,
we look up.
The sky is washed
pale pink,
and this is all
we need.

Title from “Revelation” by Jenny George