On the Dakota night sky

Driving down highway 83 south in the inky black
midnight
intent on the road
a flashpoint of light out the driver’s side window
catches my eye.
With a gasp I slow the truck
mesmerized
until a sudden bump reminds me of the shoulder
and I pull to a stop
a turn of the key

then

darkness descends. Utter silence surrounds me in the cold night
Sitting in the truck bed alone wrapped in a wool blanket
surrounded by the benevolent arms of creation
The rustle of grasses in the wind are the orchestra
of this Dakota evening
the swishing of their brushing against one another
a brotherhood of prairie flower, sweetgrass and thistle
dancing a swaying dance filling the late summer night.

But my eyes are entranced and the swishing of the grasses fades

for the sky—the sky—wide, horizonless
beckons.
This night makes it easy to believe the legends
We came from the stars, it is said

Then there, to the north
The Big Dipper, named the Seven Council Fires.

Ancient voices whisper on the wind:

A Lakota woman went to marry a star
and then
fell to her death climbing down braided turnip stems
as she tried to return to her village through a hole
in the constellations
as she fell
her child was born
and became the Fallen Star.
And there, Orion’s belt
the backbone of a bison
The Pleiades, the bison’s head
the stars surrounding, low on the horizon
a racetrack around which the animals raced
the prize to the winner
a decision
whether humans got to stay on earth, or
be swept away by the Thunder Beings.
The lowly magpie won the race
and decided humans should stay

and so on earth, this human woman
wonders at the magnificence of the stars
humbled by the largeness of beauty
and my smallness in it
Gratefulness fills me as I make my prayers, and watch
as they ascend to the heavens above
a point of light flying swiftly to join the constellations

an answer

There is no darkness so great that light cannot
pierce it, you see
then

instantly

difficulty falls away
in the miracle of this silent night
the stars are the choir in this
great cathedral Earth
I heard the orchestra of God singing of glories unimaginable
miracles yet to come
of love eternally descending from heaven to earth weaving all humanity and the land, sea
animals and stars together
and back around again endlessly ascending a circle neverceasing
singing the music of the spheres

and I understand in my soul, the phrase mitakuye oyas’in
we are all related

the dance

attraction

thentalktalk for daystalk for hourstalk

then

separation

so the dance begins

that dance in which we circle one another

warily while uncertainty plays

in the background.

long out of practice

relearning

reaching out

not quite touching

content to be

yet cautiously circling

I do not know the steps

For me

you are something good

surprising

I

afraid to move, afraid to touch

afraid all is mirage

so

backing slowly away but

still looking at you

I withdraw to a shadowy corner

waiting for your

next invitation

blue water

long missed
always the sounds
low and longing calls of gulls circling
high overhead
steady crunching beneath my feet
a faint roar.
drawing closer to the slate blue haze
more distinct now
honking of geese moving slowly
across the sand as night drifts in
it’s louder now, the water, leaping and lunging
curling up and cresting wave
washing the hard smooth shore
there, the horizon,
sailboats drifting far off
already
my imagination is there
the wind solidly pushing against my face as
I sit near the bow my boat cutting cleanly through blue water

of course I am not there
always shorebound
staring across the wide blue expanse of Michigan
there, a white bird
circles overhead I drift up and out
with the unbearable lightness of being
my bird-eyes sharply scanning always the surface
when all I knew or ever knew
lies fathoms below

timidly my bare feet inch towards the lapping waves
which also reach for me,
draw back
reach out
draw back
a slow rhythmic motion
like rocking cradle
or a lover’s embrace
I have been at water’s edge as far
back as my memory reaches
and then I am in, freely
and fear slips away
under blue water.

hope

there it is
the sun

in my walk through shadow I had
forgotten how the sun
illuminated the world.
I walk through rows of daffodils
and turn
the wind blowing through my hair
as I look back through the valley
and wonder at how far I’ve come.
Who brought me here?
my weary feet the only thing I saw
clearly during that troubled time
that yawned years of chasms
with no bridges
only long falls
in abysses.
off in the distance where I had
seen nothing
something stands
and it is then the knowing comes
the sense the deer have
when it is going to rain
or when
squirrels know to store away
food for winter
a preparedness comes over me
as I stand between heaven and earth
blowing wind and stars
knowing full well that love and hope
did not cease because I could not see
could it be, could it be my soul sings
could it be that you were there all along
treading the same path as me
each never knowing the other
struggled over rocky ravines
and dry riverbeds
unable to see that life had not died
the same terrible deaths as we thought our hearts
but perhaps we did not die in that
time of darkness but only our hearts hid
until we could again look up and see
we had come into a time of butterflies

In the Northern Lights Cafe open mic–sylvia plath

Lady Lazarus

I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it—–

A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot

A paperweight,
My featureless, fine
Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?——-

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me

And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.
The Peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand in foot ——
The big strip tease.
Gentleman , ladies

These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.

The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut

As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I’ve a call.

It’s easy enough to do it in a cell.
It’s easy enough to do it and stay put.
It’s the theatrical

Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:

‘A miracle!’
That knocks me out.
There is a charge

For the eyeing my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart—
It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair on my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash—
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there—-

A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.

Investment

The last few days my life has forced me to really reflect on investment.  My experiences with Teach for America has really leaned heavily on what it really is, and I have come to the conclusion that investment has both to do with interest, and with willingness to give, and the necessity for passion to drive both interest in a child and passion for giving to that child so they can be the best they can possibly be.

Yet investment in this regard also translates to life outside too.  Now that I have some feeling for how deeply investment goes, I wonder really, how deeply I have invested myself into the people who have passed in and out of my life.  Some I invested too little–and others, I invested way too much.  I feel now in my own life I have entered a phase which stresses balance in all things and I find myself more patient with who I am, and more fully realistic about who I want to be.  No more do I wish to be famous as I did before.  I believe that wish came out of a feeling that, when I was young, no one was really all that interested in me.  I seemed to have powerful evidence for this contention, in speaking for my particular hardships from childhood on.   But my mother was invested fully in me; as were most of my teachers, and their sense of investment in me, a young girl who thought everything she had to say was worthless, and thought herself not good enough, was able to find a place of safety in school, where achievement was encouraged and hard work an accepted fact of life.  Being supported so much academically was bound to have some kind of positive result, because of how deeply invested and truly interested these people were in me.  Although my self worth would take some time repairing itself, through positive achievement I became academically very self confident.

Personally, investment, true investment seems rare.  There are a lot of lonely people in the world, and especially poignant to me are those who are lonely in relationships because the investment has stopped perhaps on one side, perhaps the other….and I believe that Princess Diana was right when she said that the greatest disease in the world was that of feeling unloved.   Because of my personal experiences, I have not felt like investing anything in anyone in terms of dating; and yet in spite of me I find myself wishing  to walk on nothing, like Indiana Jones, and finding there is something solid beneath my feet.   I know without the shadow of a doubt that investment is a risk.  It takes faith, to be able to see in someone a person they do not yet see, whether they be children, a man, or a woman.  It takes faith to trust someone else’s faith in you, faith to trust that you are who they see.   But I also know that life stops, and the heart shrinks when we stop investment, stop that certain passion that keeps us driving on through life weathering changes, difficulties, and spending those rare moments in the sun.

For faith and trust unlock doors in people’s souls, doors calcified and rusted, and when these doors are loosened, then there comes love, the real thing, that quiet stranger that so many of us do not know because our heads are filled with illusions. We think it has to do with passion and it does not; passion can exist alone. Passion drives us to succeed; passion is a driver and when coupled with investment is a powerful positive tool for change.  But love, I have come to believe, is something gentler, more subtle, endlessly strong and quiet, unseen like the current of a deep river, always constant, always patient, that loves in spite of another’s perceived flaws.

Investment.  it takes faith in what you cannot see, and trust in another’s vision of you, and fidelity to that unsure knowledge of rightness, that glimmer of rightness.  Investment in whatever you do and whomever you interact with is not only worth it–it’s imperative.

as for me….I’m invested. I’m invested in my kids, in the kids I teach, in myself, and in another.  My life, since I have been accepted to TFA, has ballooned into such enormous positive personal change for me, opened me up, and has made me reach farther than I thought I could, and trust that I could achieve.  And that newfound trust has run over into other areas in my life and opened me up in ways that I am still discovering.  I am ready to invest fully in another without reservation.  But I had to be willing to fully invest in myself first.

Elegy One: Rainer Maria Rilke, guest in the Northern Lights Cafe

It’s open mic night again, and tonight we have Mr. Rainer Maria Rilke giving a public reading of a portion of his Duino Elegies….Elegy One.

The First Elegy
Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels’ hierarchies?

and even if one of them pressed me suddenly against his heart:
I would be consumed in that overwhelming existence.
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are still just able to endure,

and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Every angel is terrifying.
And so I hold myself back and swallow the call-note of my dark sobbing.
Ah, whom can we ever turn to in our need?
Not angels, not humans, and already the knowing animals are aware

that we are not really at home in our interpreted world.
Perhaps there remains for us some tree on a hillside, which every day we can take into our vision;

there remains for us yesterday’s street and the loyalty of a habit so much at ease

when it stayed with us that it moved in and never left.
Oh and night: there is night, when a wind full of infinite space gnaws at our faces.
Whom would it not remain for–that longed-after, mildly disillusioning presence,

which the solitary heart so painfully meets.
Is it any less difficult for lovers?
But they keep on using each other to hide their own fate.
Don’t you know yet?
Fling the emptiness out of your arms into the spaces we breathe;

perhaps the birds will feel the expanded air with more passionate flying. Yes–the springtimes needed you. Often a star was waiting for you to notice it.
A wave rolled toward you out of the distant past,

or as you walked under an open window, a violin yielded itself to your hearing.
All this was mission. But could you accomplish it?
Weren’t you always distracted by expectation, as if every event announced a beloved?
(Where can you find a place to keep her, with all the huge strange thoughts inside you

going and coming and often staying all night.)
But when you feel longing, sing of women in love; for their famous passion is still not immortal.
Sing of women abandoned and desolate (you envy them, almost)

who could love so much more purely than those who were gratified.
Begin again and again the never-attainable praising; remember: the hero lives on;

even his downfall was merely a pretext for achieving his final birth.
But Nature, spent and exhausted, takes lovers back into herself,

as if there were not enough strength to create them a second time.
Have you imagined Gaspara Stampa intensely enough

so that any girl deserted by her beloved might be inspired by that fierce example of soaring,

objectless love and might say to herself, “Perhaps I can be like her?”
Shouldn’t this most ancient of sufferings finally grow more fruitful for us?
Isn’t it time that we lovingly freed ourselves from the beloved and,

quivering, endured: as the arrow endures the bowstring’s tension,

so that gathered in the snap of release it can be more than itself.
For there is no place where we can remain.
Voices. Voices. Listen, my heart, as only saints have listened:

until the gigantic call lifted them off the ground;

yet they kept on, impossibly, kneeling and didn’t notice at all: so complete was their listening.
Not that you could endure God’s voice–far from it.
But listen to the voice of the wind and the ceaseless message that forms itself out of silence.
It is murmuring toward you now from those who died young.
Didn’t their fate, whenever you stepped into a church in Naples or Rome,

quietly come to address you?
Or high up, some eulogy entrusted you with a mission,

as, last year, on the plaque in Santa Maria Formosa.
What they want of me is that I gently remove the appearance of injustice about their death–

which at times slightly hinders their souls from proceeding onward.
Of course, it is strange to inhabit the earth no longer,

to give up customs one barely had time to learn,

not to see roses and other promising Things in terms of a human future;

no longer to be what one was in infinitely anxious hands;

to leave even one’s own first name behind,

forgetting it as easily as a child abandons a broken toy.
Strange to no longer desire one’s desires.
Strange to see meanings that clung together once, floating away in every direction.
And being dead is hard work and full of retrieval before one can gradually feel a trace of eternity.
Though the living are wrong to believe in the too-sharp distinctions which

they themselves have created.
Angels (they say) don’t know whether it is the living they are moving among, or the dead.
The eternal torrent whirls all ages along in it, through both realms forever,

and their voices are drowned out in its thunderous roar.
In the end, those who were carried off early no longer need us:

they are weaned from earth’s sorrows and joys,

as gently as children outgrow the soft breasts of their mothers.
But we, who do need such great mysteries,

we for whom grief is so often the source of our spirit’s growth–:

could we exist without them?
Is the legend meaningless that tells how, in the lament for Linus,

the daring first notes of song pierced through the barren numbness;

and then in the startled space which a youth as lovely as a god has suddenly left forever,

the Void felt for the first time that harmony which now enraptures and comforts and helps us.

the lake of cerulean blue

in the mild morning

I took the advice of sea gulls

and walked out to the lake

the currents danced themselves upward into lake swells

with small waves lapping on the sand

I could not resist

shoes and socks came off and no more was i separated from

what was real by the artificialities of humanity and cities.

Feet in, the sudden cold shock made me glance down and

in the shallow sun reflected back I realized the water had colors

some yellows, some rainbows as it moved and undulated around my feet and legs

and I glanced up looking outward and in front of me an ocean of blue that

seemed to make the clear morning sky endless

and I endless in it

even the canadian geese floating on the clear water

bowed their heads

acknowledging my existence

travelling through the Tao

Recently, feeling a bit of a void in my life, I was wandering aimlessly through the local Barnes & Noble.  My favorite section of the store other than the literature section is the Bargain Books section where they get rid of old hardcovers that have now emigrated in book-life to new trade paperback status.  Imagine my delight when I found a beautiful hardbound copy of the Tao Te Ching with lovely photographs, and each verse artfully done in the corners of the pages in the original Chinese!   Today I have started a project, then, that mirrors my life. I  am travelling on to a new place and a new job, after a cycle in which I lived a dormant and insular life full of contemplation, much like a monk in a monastery.  Change is manifesting again, as it does cyclically; last cycle found me in a state of chrysalis, preparing to bloom into an agent for positive change in the world…I was in school for the last seven years. I find it interesting that life cycles seem to engage every seven years or so for huge changes!   Now I am on the runway, preparing for takeoff in this new cycle beginning transcendence.

So here then is a contemplation on the first verse of the Tao:

I.  Transcending

The Tao that can be told is not the universal Tao.

The name that can be named is not the universal name.

In the infancy of the universe,

there were no names.

Naming fragments the mysteries of life into

ten thousand things and their manifestations.

Yet mysteries and manifestation spring from the same source:

The Great Integrity

which is the mystery within manifestation,

the manifestation within mystery,

the naming of the unnamed,

and the un-naming of the named.

When these interpenetrations

are in full attendance, we will pass the gates

of naming notions in our journey

toward transcendence.

For me, this verse asks me to consider resisting the urge to label.  We label because we wish to define everything to its barest element.  What if we could just resist the urge to name, and just….experience?  What if we could be content not to have to cling so tightly to having to have everything in our lives, including our spirituality neatly categorized? W e spend so much time trying to prove “God” that we lose ourselves in the minutia and forget about the purpose of The Great Integrity, that something that moves us to have to make choices in our lives, whether moral or mundane, that causes us to live by that natural law that speaks to our conscience and tells us when to stop, when to go, and when to pause.  We want to go, go, go though..and miss the cues to pause.  How much have we missed in life in our hurried day to day living, going to work, worrying about money, stepping on eggshells around people, getting what we think we “need” only to find the things we’ve acquired do not fill that hole in our souls?  Even our “vacations” are hurried–we have to see everything, so we hurry from point to point, but see nothing at all in the end because we’re too tired after all of that hurrying to get to where we want to go.   Too many times we mistake the pause for a stop and become frightened that we have no place else to go. And in the pause…we find out that we have more places to go than we ever imagined, but internally.

This verse speaks to me of limitless potential encased in our humanity.   If we can just pause…just “be”..what would we discover about ourselves?

We are limitless.  We cannot name and classify limitless.  We are not comfortable with “limitless.”  We see limitlessness as wandering, and wandering is confused with being unfocused.   Being in limitlessness is the un-naming of the named, and herein lies transcendence.

Buddhist discourses (Samyutta Nikaya: 1.10)
They do not dwell in remorse over the past, nor do they brood over the future: they abide in the present: therefore they are radiant.

beauty

john keats began his descent into the abyss when

a thing of beauty is a joy forever was writing itself

desperately into his psyche the first son of a

stable-keeper the aquiline beauty of horses’ arching

necks entranced him before things got broken

fallen knights on demon chessboard white is black

and black is white and who knows whose move

is next he glances outside

and sees the grasses waving yellow-green in the wind

and sees the pond where, with Shelley they lived

as dapper gentlemen sailing smoothly across love & mirror

water until fissures appeared slicing the images

into unequal chaos and then

a flash–a tree waving in the wind growing out

of the softly bending grasses such beauty

is never written but are pictures of God singing

up from the abyss and darkness into

light.