Tag Archives: life

Half Acre

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Half Acre

I am holding half an acre
Torn from the map of Michigan
And folded in this scrap of paper
Is a land I grew in
Think of every town you’ve lived in
Every room, you lay your head
And what is it that you remember?
Do you carry every sadness with you
Every hour your heart was broken
Every night the fear and darkness
Lay down with you
A man is walking on the highway
A woman stares out at the sea
And light is only now just breaking
So we carry every sadness with us
Every hour our heart were broken
Every night the fear and darkness
Lay down with us
But I am holding half an acre
Torn from the map of Michigan
I am carrying this scrap of paper
That can crack the darkest sky wide open
Every burden taken from me
Every night my heart unfolding
My home

Hem

Performances

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“I think parents sometimes forget that kids are putting on performances all day, just acting like the people we think we are until, like, ten years from now when we figure out who that actually is.”

–Jake Burt, Greetings from Witness Protection

Except that, as my teacher pointed out, no one really knows after ten years either.

Just Breathe

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No one can find the rewind button, child. So, just breathe.

Just Breathe

Two AM and she calls me ’cause I’m still awake,
Can you help me unravel my latest mistake,
I don’t love him, winter just wasn’t my season
Yeah we walk through the doors, so accusing their eyes
Like they have any right at all to criticize, hypocrites,
You’re all here for the very same reason
‘Cause you can’t jump the track, we’re like cars on a cable
And life’s like an hourglass, glued to the table
No one can find the rewind button girl,
So cradle your head in you hands
And breathe, just breathe,
Whoa breathe, just breathe
May he turn twenty one on the base at Fort Bliss
Just today he sat down to the flask in his fist,
Ain’t been sober, since maybe October of last year.
Here in town you can tell he’s been down for a while,
But my God it’s so beautiful when the boy smiles,
Wanna hold him, maybe I’ll just sing about it.
‘Cause you can’t jump the track, we’re like cars on a cable,
And life’s like an hourglass, glued to the table.
No one can find the rewind button boys,
So cradle your head in your hands,
And breathe, just breathe,
Whoa breathe, just breathe
There’s a light at each end of this tunnel, you shout
But you’re just as far in as you’ll ever be out
These mistakes you’ve made, you’ll just make them again
If you only try turning around.
Two AM and I’m still awake, writing a song
If I get it all down on paper, its no longer
Inside of me, threatening the life it belongs to
And I feel like I’m naked in front of the crowd
‘Cause these words are my diary, screaming out loud
And I know that you’ll use them, however you want to
‘Cause you can’t jump the track, we’re like cars on a cable,
And life’s like an hourglass, glued to the table
No one can find the rewind button now
Sing it if you understand.
And breathe, just breathe
Whoa breathe, just breathe…

Anna Nalick

In Relationship With the Truth

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“The dharma — understanding, peering into the nature of reality — is not specific to Buddhism. The dharma is truth. And the only choice we really have is whether to try to be in relationship with the truth or to live in ignorance. There are no other choices. You have to actively engage. How did I come to be? How do I think of myself? How did I get what I have? (I don’t mean your degrees.) Where did I come from? What land are we on?If it sounds like a lot of work, it is. All of us, in some way, have profited from our wrong knowing.”

— angel Kyodo williams, Your Liberation is on the Line

Like Pearls

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“After all,” Anne had said to Marilla once, “I believe the nicest and sweetest days are not those on which anything very splendid or wonderful or exciting happens but just those that bring simple little pleasures, following one another softly, like pearls slipping off a string.”

–L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea

A Living Continuation

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“The day my mother died I wrote in my journal, “A serious misfortune of my life has arrived.” I suffered for more than one year after the passing away of my mother. But one night, in the highlands of Vietnam, I was sleeping in the hut in my hermitage.

I dreamed of my mother. I saw myself sitting with her, and we were having a wonderful talk. She looked young and beautiful, her hair flowing down. It was so pleasant to sit there and talk to her as if she had never died.

When I woke up it was about two in the morning, and I felt very strongly that I had never lost my mother. The impression that my mother was still with me was very clear. I understood then that the idea of having lost my mother was just an idea. It was obvious in that moment that my mother is always alive in me.

I opened the door and went outside. The entire hillside was bathed in moonlight. It was a hill covered with tea plants, and my hut was set behind the temple halfway up. Walking slowly in the moonlight through the rows of tea plants, I noticed my mother was still with me. She was the moonlight caressing me as she had done so often, very tender, very sweet… wonderful! Each time my feet touched the earth I knew my mother was there with me.

I knew this body was not mine but a living continuation of my mother and my father and my grandparents and great-grandparents. Of all my ancestors. Those feet that I saw as “my” feet were actually “our” feet. Together my mother and I were leaving footprints in the damp soil.

From that moment on, the idea that I had lost my mother no longer existed. All I had to do was look at the palm of my hand, feel the breeze on my face or the earth under my feet to remember that my mother is always with me, available at any time.”

–Thích Nhat Hanh, No Death, No Fear

We Are Not the Designers

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“But we do neither: we never fail, and we never succeed. We are not the designers of our lives. Life is the designer of us. Life is vast and grand, intelligent, clever, and completely unknowable. It always has the last word. It is the last word. Life interrupts us when we are at our most self-assured. Life diverts us when we are hellbent on going elsewhere. Life arrives in a precise and yet unplanned sequence to deliver exactly what we need in order to realize our greatest potential. The delivery is not often what we would choose, and almost never how we intend to satisfy ourselves, because our potential is well beyond our limited, ego-bound choices and self serving intentions.”

–Karen Maezen Miller, Hand Wash Cold: Care Instructions for an Ordinary Life

The Dance

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For Swap-bot, I joined a project that required writing a sestina.

According to the Academy of American Poets:

“The sestina follows a strict pattern of the repetition of the initial six end-words of the first stanza through the remaining five six-line stanzas, culminating in a three-line envoi. The lines may be of any length, though in its initial incarnation, the sestina followed a syllabic restriction. The form is as follows, where each numeral indicates the stanza position and the letters represent end-words:

ABCDEF
FAEBDC
CFDABE
ECBFAD
DEACFB
BDFECA
(envoi)(tercet) BE. DC. FA.
The envoi, a tercet, must contain two of the repeated words per line.”

So, here is what created itself within me.

The Dance

There I stood, waiting for the express
While pondering ways to renew
my flagging spirit, which struggled to climb
life’s mounting challenges, when I saw you, serene,
your hands moving in the air, a kind of dance —
the glorious joy on your face making you rich.

Gazing around, I noticed the world’s colors were rich.
In each person I sensed the soul’s desire to express,
to enter into the dance.
I felt that I could summon the energy to renew
and make myself serene
like an arbor trellis with those roses that climb.

To reach far, to stretch toward goals that require I climb —
this makes life worthwhile, and I feel rich.
In these moments, my heart beats serene.
I vibrate with life and tremble to express,
to evolve, to embrace impermanence and thus renew
life’s eternal dance.

So, which steps will we choose to dance?
Will it be the hustle, the two-step, the fandango climb?
Or maybe a slow waltz, to allow our breathing to renew
while rhythmically moving to the beat, slow and rich.
Perhaps we will lean in to share a kiss, to express
what tantalizes us as we attempt to appear serene.

We might do this under the silver light of the moon, serene
in the movement of the dance
and the people watching — their murmurs will express
how desire steeps, distills, intensifies, like the climb
of mercury trapped in a glass tube, the red rich
like blood, like the lungs give oxygen to renew.

And after we untwine ourselves, we turn within to renew
the relationship with the One who never leaves, the serene
companion who understands money does not make one rich;
nor does having it guarantee an invitation to the dance
and that life is often one painful, slogging climb
to an illusory summit that cannot contain all we express.

The koan: how to renew attention, surrender to the dance
or rest serene, no longer compelled to grasp or climb,
sitting in life’s rich mystery, waiting on emptiness to express.

–Kathryn Harper

dancers

Glimpses of My Daughter at Age Six

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Glimpses of My Daughter At Age Six

She is a sunflower-yellow
hourglass with a
center of nipple pink intensity
bouncing, twirling, burbling, squawking
like a Steller’s jay.
She is inside with Peter, Paul, and Mary,
multiplying three times infinity
in her rocking chair.
She is an apple, crisp and fresh,
the guitar singing melodies
sometimes jarring and jangling ears.
She’s a meandering stream of galaxies,
an ancient Redwood soul, not
fearing abandonment –
a kaleidoscope of wonder.

–Kathryn Harper

Farewell Stella

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My dear Fur Person friend, Stella Bella the cat, died today. She was 17 years old. She had tumors in her bladder and on her lung. Sometime I will write about the adventures we had with her, and her many catly qualities. But today, just this.

Farewell Stella

I stroke your fur
no purr
frail limbs give
no resistance
laid out tenderly
no movement
eyes half open
no vision.
It was a good life
a long life
and we let you go
before we wanted
to spare you suffering.
It is the least we could do
for all the joy and love
you gave us.

–Kathryn Harper

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Oh Little One: Four Haiku

Oh Little One: Four Haiku

That brave little neck,
the stem of a sunflower;
your brain is blooming.
—–
Your luscious curved cheek
is a small apple that begs
for tender kisses.
—–
The tree sapling back
nourishes roots and branches;
may it grow mighty.
—–
Hands touch but don’t clutch
like curious mice seeking
their fortune in cheese.

–Kathryn Harper

she loves books

How I love her!

Surreal

Surreal

At the turn of the century
it is a long way down
to the mind’s I. A treehouse
chronicles my journey to this
lost continent, which requires
the amber spyglass to navigate.
When I arrive I am barely a
shadow. There is
snow falling on cedars; through
the woods I hear the single hound
wailing for her hometown. After
twenty years at Hull House, I
mourn for that bastard out of
Carolina who left her tender
at the bone. I wander through
trees toward her cries and find
her. My journey ends across the
river, past the canal town. Before
crossing over, I ask her for
directions. “I don’t know,” she
replies. “I’m a stranger here myself.”

–Kathryn Harper

Our Life’s Prayer

blood art

Our Life’s Prayer

Carnal syrup which flows within,
why not make it art?
It has been spilled
enough to fill
the gloomy pit of Tartarus.
Ferry to us the draught of life.
Preserve us from dissolution,
for our gene codes fight dauntlessly,
against this.
Be not used to segregate others,
for humanity is one tribe.
Thou art the mystery, the
sinew, and the richness
that makes our lives worth living. Yes.

–Kathryn Harper

—
For Poetry Thursday. This poem is based on a Poetry Thursday exercise using a style called ekphrasis. The photograph is of a piece by René de Guzman and is titled Blood Color Theory. His artworks allude to current issues such as the HIV/AIDS crisis in the early 1990s. In this piece, de Guzman sandwiched his own blood, mixed with preservatives, between two Plexiglass sheets. The work’s impact lies partly in the shock value to convey the message, and the work takes on the formal qualities of a minimalist painting. What I find intriguing are the images reflected. This poem, which echoes The Lord’s Prayer, is the result.

Excursion

Excursion

Saturday wakes to the scent
of burnt toast wafting through
rattling Venetian-blind palms as
the gonging mission bell cuts
my sleep-hazed mind and
I cross Mercy Street watching

blacktop roses bowing to the
gentle breeze, walk with
lopsided longing toward the kazoo

hum of the Farmer’s Market,
where a blind troubadour sporting
tattoos on her arms courts

seekers and idlers with her
church-bell voice, a
farmer hawks Yukon golds

as if they were treasure.
Beyond these nuggets, past
the fruit waiting patiently as

people nibble nuts, savor honey,
bargain with vendors, the spicy
orange day beckons to me.

–Kathryn Harper