Quotations

On the brow of the hill, behind a silent chapel,
two windmills spin new soundscapes over
the land, cart-wheeling alleluias.

Cloistered granite holds an orchestration
of birds, and eerie whirr, tremulous sounds
of curlew and lapwing. The wind

through the metal gate is a speaking in tongues
with the broken feed-hoop tuning in:
other-worldly, intimately insistent.

All this music to attend to, to slip into:
an old organ droning, an uproarious lullaby.
Up over da hill, arms turn, the heart lifts.

On my way back from Alabama, the birds were on their way wherever.
Their bodies, so many strewn in long lines across the sky, looked like
the words I wrote as a child before I knew how to write words.
I thought my thoughts would simply announce themselves to the page
if I pressed my pencil to it. And still, as I write this poem, I'm waiting
to see what I'm going to tell myself. The birds landed in an empty
field, gleaning for whatever it was they'd find. The clouds, so whipped
by wind, turned the sky a milky blue, pouring down fast and thick as paint
as I drove under it. There is so much missing in the world I try to write about:
I don't know what kind of birds or what had been planted or what to call
a cloud that does that. I'd like to say I don't need to know to love them,
but why else did I spend a lifetime looking for my name? I promise myself
I will look into it later so for now I look at their bodies, try to remember.
For now, a correction: the field was not an empty field. It was so full of birds.

...The journey might take you a few hours, a day, a year, a few years, a hundred, a thousand or even more.

Watch your mind. Without training it might run away and leave your heart for the immense human feast set by the thieves of time.

Do not hold regrets...

Cut the ties you have to failure and shame.

Let go the pain you are holding in your mind, your shoulders, your heart, all the way to your feet. Let go the pain of your ancestors to make way for those who are heading in our direction.

Ask for forgiveness.

Call upon the help of those who love you. These helpers take many forms: animal, element, bird, angel, saint, stone, or ancestor.

Call your spirit back. It may be caught in corners and creases of shame, judgment, and human abuse.

You must call in a way that your spirit will want to return.

Speak to it as you would to a beloved child.

Welcome your spirit back from its wandering. It may return in pieces, in tatters. Gather them together. They will be happy to be found after being lost for so long.

Your spirit will need to sleep awhile after it is bathed and given clean clothes.

Now you can have a party. Invite everyone you know who loves and supports you.

Keep room for those who have no place else to go.

Make a giveaway, and remember, keep the speeches short.

Then, you must do this: help the next person find their way through the dark.

...with thanks to James Crews

My friend James calls it the rough blessing,
the blessing that rubs, that chafes,
that scrapes. Perhaps I wanted blessings
to only feel good, to be gentle. But the word itself
comes from the practice of sprinkling blood
on an altar. Why should I be surprised when
the blood for the rite is my own? I am thinking
of how today when I was hemorrhaging fear,
my friend comforted me when I called her in tears.
I felt so loved when she listened and soothed.
Such luminous intimacy grew from my wound.
Oh, ache of being human. Oh, the blessing.

...The times are urgent, let us go slowly down into sanctuary. The times are urgent, let us be slowed down by the beings that exceed us. The times are urgent, let us be defeated by things that we cannot understand. The times are urgent, let us defract our ways of knowing. The times are urgent, let us be released from the traps of the things we already know.

I bow, hoping to become a person who does not settle for familiarity, but always takes on new challenges.

I say...

The water rises steady below them
but never overtakes them-

When they reach the mountaintop
they collapse breathless,
laying on the rain-soaked rock.

A child tugs at his parent's shirt.
Through the exhaustion
she barely opens her eyes enough
to see a miraculous prism of light
arcing from the mountaintop
to the floodlands underneath.

That's when they see the ark
drifting below
its occupant so convinced
of his uprightness
that he lays claim
to all the promises of goodness.
The children begin to run and dance
as the mountaintop dries.

The women begin to look around,
assessing what can be used for
a celebratory feast-
a blessing that their worst isn't an end.

The daughter picks an olive branch,
gives it to the dove on her shoulder
and instructs it to fly,
offering it to the lonely man below,
inviting him to the feast.

But you can't spend your whole life hoping people will ask you the right questions. You must learn to love and answer the questions they already ask.