The exquisite Jaimie Greenbaum in Wonderland
Dance when you’re broken open, dance if you’ve torn the bandage off, dance in the middle of the fighting, dance in your blood, dance when you’re perfectly free.
– Rumi
It is possible that things will not get better
than they are now, or have been known to be.
It is possible that we are past the middle now.
It is possible that we have crossed the great water
without knowing it, and stand now on the other side.
Yes: I think that we have crossed it. Now
we are being given tickets, and they are not
tickets to the show we had been thinking of,
but to a different show, clearly inferior.
Check again: it is our own name on the envelope.
The tickets are to that other show.
It is possible that we will walk out of the darkened hall
without waiting for the last act: people do.
Some people do. But it is probable
that we will stay seated in our narrow seats
all through the tedious denouement
to the unsurprising end- riveted, as it were;
spellbound by our own imperfect lives
because they are lives,
and because they are ours.
“Riveted” by Robyn Sarah, from A Day’s Grace. © The Porcupine’s Quill. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)
Go deeper
past thought
into silence
past silence
into stillness
deeper still
past stillness
into the heart
now
let the love
consume
whatever is left of you
from Hubble: Lagoon Nebula in the Sagittarius constellation.
There is the ocean of gratitude
because I awaken
because you are there
because there is a cat cuddled in
the crook of my elbow.
There is the ocean of sorrow
because she is gone
because I am lost
because this precious
day is waning.
There is the ocean of memory
filled with sensation
with laughter
with tenderness and cruelty
and a pinch of bitter and sweet.
There is the ocean
in which I place my body
the briney, waving, cold
that holds me, that
reminds me to swim.
