Wisdom comes through searching, studying, observing, listening, living, experiencing; and through instruction, teachings, proverbs, and ultimately through grace and transcendence. Through wisdom one is matured and capable of seeing and accepting the ways of the Lord. One’s talents become known and a deeper understanding of the whole of life, a deeper reverence for it, and for one’s purpose for being, brings balance and harmony. Wisdom teaches us to love peace and shows us how to strive for it. A peaceful mind reflects a settled soul, a settled soul can sacrifice. Finally, Wisdom comes through love.
The Slow Circle Winding
(A Psalm)
We live with it welling inside
willing us on
while we move in an orbit
toward and away
our slow circle winding...
to the left hand at dawn
to the right at sundown
in a garland of hours
recoiling for now
from its whispered calling
away from the pause of the promising star
to the shallow earth-ring
and to nursing our need...
Tunneling Out
(A Psalm)
...slowly we unfold to the fullness of light to know in unearthly ways, uncultivated and unlearend. Recording with our inner eyes. Allowing the flow, the consummate ripeness of being, our newly illumined existence to be...
we then pause...
...who can embrace without the knowledge that we are embraced; held fast to cycles, circles, a universe of arms -- a spacial place defining the Play that we refer to simply and unevenly, as our lives...
accordingly...
embracing is an act of submission. A turning from the veils and mischeif of ordinary flights, to an exhilarating clarity and wisdom...unraveling with immeasurable ease the new sight, the new will, that guides us to see deeply into the reservoirs of all potentialities...for exploring creatively as well as to see the invariables. And to be made glad in the flush of remarkable peace...
we are brought forth...
the Expressor is unique, common only unto itself; but enmeshed in us all, in the captive image. The Image. The Maker of Images...the imagination...an intriguing manifestation of the expression of ideas, itself an idea arising from suggestion and surprise:
...to spacious rooms and vistas rich in the ovum of creativity's designs...
...where seeds of adventure issue in all the miracle signs and shapes of the intelligence -- advancing its onw Art as the evolving powers of the intellect increase.
writhing toward the moment that is, toward the expression...the pulse where nothing resists...
we are tunneling out...
The Unknown I Crave
(To All Singers)
Poetry is born of pain
the pain of understanding things.
Things that destroy. Things that divine.
Things that lift up what it touches . . .
Changing the order of the words,
one who survives this is the champion;
and who survives the consummation of pain
and hatred into Love; it is she who is the
water-bearer, it is she who has eaten her pain.
What returns is that early pain,
the pain of my youth, my early suffering,
the battle with my Self.
Whose is my voice when I cry out?
What is my purpose when I sing of the singer?
"Pain, ease and give way . . . this is the New Life,
I have eaten you in every refrain."
What is the constant in me, the singer who in grief
cannot evoke the fear of speaking out -- at my feelings?
But the unknown. This is the severest grief . . .
"For whom have I spoken?" "And whom have I saved?"
There is no "Silent Homeland"* Body sings itself out loud!
In the fingers, in the groin, in the chest it rages;
beating out the quiet that is finally the grave . . . . . .
*Octavio Paz
Resurrecting the River
My dear Bruno,
I find I am living. And in my living I am resurrecting the river.
My need was to force my way Home, to swim the sea of ignorance through
the mind and its enthralling ecstacies. To pretend, to separate, to invent.
For no plan of ordered Reason tramples over this.
In my living I restrain myself from lies and multiple realities.
I live in a house of purple. I am a woman, no more, no less.
In my living the grass and the mirror is the same. There is seduction
in each, a planned organic wisdom. What may not be is of no concern to me.
Frivolous things are those without inner enchantment.
I am indifferent to nothing, even machines contain the poetic wisdom of a
man. Vaguely I remember talk and songs of relatives and other inhabitants.
I recall places where Time and Feelings never changed. In the vision
called tomorrow I anticipate the promise; even of rain.
It is and is not forced on me, this voyage into verse. All my lessons
forgotten I find suddenly I am leaving you . . . to take displacement among
the leaves, to write them over and around my soul . . . I revel there -- and
in the alternative --reflection -- the backward swimming . . . when I find
I am leaving you again . . .
The lesson I am living is leading me to let Reason be a torch to my intel-
ligence, to prevail over the Material and things of Form.
This is the rendezvous: through a corridor, the door, spilling into the
empty chamber. The good news carries through the air to my ear as auto-
matic as pictures. I nurse the gray figures like fresh desire. They grow
brilliant, they turn many colors; they burn like fire. The odor is
ravishing, the thrill is building: to my tongue, to my pen, the absurd
and the real. To a flourishing crescendo, to a grand finale!
There is no approach I have not made: blindly, boldly, at times beseeching.
Then words run on insinuating, and I wonder where the river ends . . .
Recluse, lingerer, enraptured beginner. The climax is always new and the same.
Through the limitless, the large tapestry, a different country, another world;
faithful like the Nile that when it dries still rises to the air and hovers
(the dry places are the in-between, the deserts of undreaming, a resting place).
Advancing on the way to missions, a frontier, the summit of mountains, or digging
the tunnel through encumbrances -- like the cities of a shrinking world --
I take my friends.
No house, no existence, is secondary. My companions cannot be eliminated.
The grand and the impossible began as dreams. The immensity of grief mothers
our liberty. And Joy makes voices, that we may all comprehend.
My friends talk "because" and "whereas." They dazzle themselves with little
riches; but this too is the walk, the odyssey, the rising up from the
condition. We keep the well till one made strong becomes the safe-keeper,
the guardian of fidelity. It is then we speak the tongue, the assurance,
and what is destined.
We fell them, the beautiful trees: to know, to see, not to believe. To mouth
some other common legend. Yet one river does not erode but shrivels to a quiet
stream. Fugitives from the sea our voice is shallow and we dream; the secret,
though it sleeps, a pathway is unlaid. My friends make a tumultuous cry and
all within are saved! I speak of dreams, also of words.
I sift and reject in my adventure. At times I spill over into alarm.
Forgetting flowers, and stars, and virtue -- remembering the important differ-
ences among us. And for good or ill, the things that happen; forced on us by
accident.
Ah Sweet Sweet Life! We are the fruit of ourselves. We play the melodic
dwelling within. (Without this covenant of dance and song we play the desperate
alien consumed by the human's hungering to win). We live to live this is all
we know.
The river slips, shallows, and slows us down. The journey is a monument. One
beautiful and vicious, funny and strange. Marking our head-way to a bridge,
a high-way, our safe stepping-stones. Nearing our Home, the heart is a river . . .
soothing us still drunk from wonder.
I am thinking of the debt we owe to Madness, the grace that steps from nowhere,
and takes us with her. And how well Grief plays its part . . . though it may kill us
it does not keep us from feeling.
I am thinking of my Mother who loved me even before I was born.
How a current of wind carried her away -- across the meadows, out from our island,
through the lilting sand and into the Sea . . .
I am living a lover's dream. I am resurrecting the river.
Yielding
(A Psalm)
To yield, to increase, to hold . . .
Cold knees that will not bend,
heart-core of cactus-bristles, that stick into the blood
yet will not be spilled. Now I rise from these marshes to gaze
on a star, how many faces is the face of God? How many places
does he begin? Is there a purpose? Where is the end?
In this search of short-breathed hope I remonstrate for my old
innocence; rushing off as if from a leper . . . when it is only a
guise of God.
To give in, to give up, to unfold before it . . .
Is this the glory; to be unworthy, to affront my stiff-necked hope,
to bereft my soul of its unshackled dignity; to leave it so rent
it tears itself apart?
It is too late my bones are girder-hard, a mere shake and this house
will crumble, this temple will collapse. And as for wisdom, I shun
it all . . . for whom shall I love, and for whose sake?
And I am caught atop a mountain in the center of an island; the star-
people like planets orbiting me . . . a strange woman under a street light
swirling in air against the blurring visions of imperfect spheres . . .
soul eyes ablaze, feeling the purple . . . alive and alone, and hearing the
wind; the heart brims to the feel of the flugelhorn, singing and praying
like a God that mourns, like a mother mourning the way for me. Overwrought
by the grief and vile of my scorn . . . afired by God's voice in the flugelhorn . . .
"Sinner, sinner, where can you run? The earth is too shallow, the road
is too long? Sinner, sinner, where you gonna run? You can't cross
the water and your livin ain't done? Get up to the mountain, leap high
and leap long, you can't cross the water and your livin ain't long!"
I yield, I increase, I hold . . .
I laugh at the idiot in the cold . . .
The pull against wind and fear is too strong . . .
My heart leaps . . . God Lives . . . His Praise is the cry of the Flügelhorn!
The House of my Guardian
(A Psalm)
The house of my Guardian leads the imagination . . .
My life is to see in the mirror my legacy,
in the fertile conditions of the earth . . .
it is the blood of being
it is the breath of yearning
it is the sweet dream and the umbilical
The land that I inhabit is encompassed by great seas.
It is hallowed by the human spirit . . .
Amen; by Great Love I am Conceived!
We Answer in a Word
Mind: We cannot hope for more.
Spirit: It is adventure for which we claim the universe.
Mind: There is no exit. All doors lead to centers, walls.
And no redemption keeps us from the cruel . . .
Spirit: Nor penance from the umbrage of the fool.
Mind: There is tenderness.
Spirit: There is always destiny.
Mind: There is always the reason to be judged.
Spirit: You free me or it will never come to pass.
Mind: We seize this time from many eons.
Spirit: Truly it is death when I no longer hear you laugh.
I am Amazed
(A Psalm)
"Life is the portal of all love.
One hour passes slowly, yet the years go flying,
flying, all too fast . . .
To see the seasons change I need only watch my face
age in the glass.
And to recollect my youth I need only hold my temper,
and to laugh . . .
I am amazed.
Gravely, humility pours forth . . .
How many curses in my youth were uttered when I failed
to comprehend, that despite the veil, my duty was to stand?
Now we are two: one who laughs, and one who tries . . .
the pattern of the warrior is made plain --
with patience in myself my heart may last; without it I will
never sing of peace . . .
I am amazed."
Because We Know
Because we know that pain is envious
Because we know that blame is generous
Because we know humility runs deep
Because we know regret devours
Because we know that shame is treacherous
We know and tell that radiance is brave.
