The two poems below appear in And Now, Still (January 2016).
If you’d like to read selections from This Open Eye: Seeing What We Do (2003-2005 images of the futility of war and violence), Who Lives Better Than We Do? (selected poems, 2001), or additional poems from And Now, Still click on a title.
__________
When I Make Myself Small
When missing coins
newer clothes and cars
finer wines
wonderful workshops
alluring eyes
prospective or even
present promise
pleasure or pain
define me
my vision narrows
I feel small and can
no longer lose or risk
losing what leaves
or what I love and still
live and love fully.
Within my small embrace
fear fills the little bit of
me that’s left. I’m not
good enough and
how could you
do this to me
become useful
meaningful or
even true.
When I make
myself small
the world and you
are small and
our separate smallness
blends and blames
until it becomes us
and all there is.
How much smallness in
this infinite unfolding is
mine
yours
ours
theirs?
Interesting questions
and irrelevant.
Time to let go.
__________
The Rickety Bridge
1.
Heart aroused
I walk across
the rickety bridge
above the roaring gorge,
fear falling, collapse
exhaustion and
attribute
perhaps
my aroused heart
to the woman standing
on solid ground where
the bridge ends,
beyond which I
neither see nor know
anything. She invites
and resists my approach.
2.
I stand on shaky ground
and watch him walk
across the rickety bridge
toward me in a fog
of difficulty behind, within
and looming below. He
misattributes his aroused
heart to me, mistakes me
and my ground as solid,
unaware what’s behind and
within me. He gets steadily
closer, my own heart
aroused, anxious
from a patterned path
perhaps
I yearn for the hand
he offers
alluring danger,
frightening safety,
open heart.
3.
Amid one Story and billions of stories
one man crosses a rickety bridge
toward a woman who waits
on the other side.
He attributes his aroused heart
to her. She’s not so sure.
How each responds as he
approaches determines
and is determined by
what they do next. They
love and fear, have
complete and no control.
They choose and are chosen.
Each moment is theirs,
holds and is
everything.
