Now that it is truly feeling like the crisp autumn is upon us,
a time of feeling a pull inward to the darkness, that, however difficult,
I feel I must resist against for the moment,
I danced last night for the last time for a few weeks,
as I begin my journey to Florida, to share some richness of family.
I take this poem with me,
to inspire, to inquire, to explore, to sort it out, to understand,
to dance the poem in my life, as I did last night to the shortest line,
I float.
This poem could not be more perfect for me to delve into,
and move through into the darkness the end of the year brings.
It offers such richness and depth. Ironic, that this line, I float,
chose me last night, since I have not been feeling grounded lately,
yet not feeling the lightness of being that the vision of floating
brings into my mind either. Instead, I need to be grounded, rooted,
yet I will be flying once again, traveling that does not come easily to me.
How does one float and stay grounded simultaneously?
It seems like an oxymoron.
I feel like my arms are the wings that are being used to fly,
although weighted down with emotions of many sorts,
making it difficult for my arms, my wings, to lift in flight.
They are heavy with burden, yet I try to lift them anyways,
and float, glide, if I can. Trying to gain the momentum I need,
to propel myself forward into the darkness,
and carry my family with me. But for now,
I will try to enter the long black branches, to try to become rooted,
grounded, and savor every word, every line my fellow dancers
began to dance last night with me, and I will continue to dance
into the growing darkness, as the longer darkening days of autumn
slip silently upon us. I will take them all in on my travels,
and dance them, however my life shows up at the moment.
I will try to gain wisdom and strength from these words,
as I carry my family on my wings and still try to reach that
lightness of being and be able to soar, and in the words of Mary Oliver
.............determined to do the only thing you could do
--determined to save the only life you could save.....
Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches?
~ Mary Oliver~
"Have you ever tried to enter the long black branches of other lives --
tried to imagine what the crisp fringes, full of honey, hanging
from the branches of the young locust trees, in early morning, feel like?
Do you think this world was only an entertainment for you?
Never to enter the sea and notice how the water divides
with perfect courtesy, to let you in!
Never to lie down on the grass, as though you were the grass!
Never to leap to the air as you open your wings over the dark acorn of your heart!
No wonder we hear, in your mournful voice, the complaint
that something is missing from your life!
Who can open the door who does not reach for the latch?
Who can travel the miles who does not put one foot
in front of the other, all attentive to what presents itself
continually?
Who will behold the inner chamber who has not observed
with admiration, even with rapture, the outer stone?
Well, there is time left --
fields everywhere invite you into them.
And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away
from wherever you are, to look for your soul?
Quickly, then, get up, put on your coat, leave your desk!
To put one's foot into the door of the grass, which is
the mystery, which is death as well as life, and
not be afraid!
To set one's foot in the door of death, and be overcome
with amazement!
To sit down in front of the weeds, and imagine
god the ten-fingered, sailing out of his house of straw,
nodding this way and that way, to the flowers of the
present hour,
to the song falling out of the mockingbird's pink mouth,
to the tippets of the honeysuckle, that have opened
in the night
To sit down, like a weed among weeds, and rustle in the wind!
Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?
While the soul, after all, is only a window,
and the opening of the window no more difficult
than the wakening from a little sleep.
Only last week I went out among the thorns and said
to the wild roses:
deny me not,
but suffer my devotion.
Then, all afternoon, I sat among them. Maybe
I even heard a curl or tow of music, damp and rouge red,
hurrying from their stubby buds, from their delicate watery bodies.
For how long will you continue to listen to those dark shouters,
caution and prudence?
Fall in! Fall in!
A woman standing in the weeds.
A small boat flounders in the deep waves, and what's coming next
is coming with its own heave and grace.
Meanwhile, once in a while, I have chanced, among the quick things,
upon the immutable.
What more could one ask?
And I would touch the faces of the daises,
and I would bow down
to think about it.
That was then, which hasn't ended yet.
Now the sun begins to swing down. Under the peach-light,
I cross the fields and the dunes, I follow the ocean's edge.
I climb, I backtrack.
I float.
I ramble my way home."
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