Tuesday, May 7, 2013

WITHIN SOMETHING-Spirits Trying To Be Free


Dearest Readers,
Last week I talked about finding a handwritten list of evocative words I’d pulled from the introduction to The Essential Rumi, translations by Coleman Barks with John Moyne. This week I’m gravitating to the phrase “within something” from that same stack of words.

On my recent morning walks, nature left traces of an inner life on leaves, bark and branches.
Here are three of our communications, and one ordinary observation of my "disembodied" hand:
Still You Keep Pushing
STILL YOU KEEP PUSHING
You are plagued and tormented
By the swelling at your core.
Still you keep pushing over
and around the restraint
For a taste of the sun.
-Tuesday 4/30/2013
Something Inside
SOMETHING INSIDE
Something inside cannot be denied–
A love or a longing?
A dream never tried?
Perhaps it’s a sickness
Or tumors that show,
Or maybe it's joy
Bubbling up from below.
-Thursday 5/2/2013
The Face in the Tree

THE FACE IN THE TREE
On my street
A tree is trying to be human.
Her spirit presses from the inside out,
Stretching its walls like a gnarly balloon.
Tomorrow perhaps I’ll say hello
And welcome her to the neighborhood.
-Sunday 5.5.2013
Five Fingers
  FIVE FINGERS
Five fingers slung around a glass of beer.
Five rosy glowsticks in a daze of gold.
You seem like someone else’s hand
Caught in the act of being useful.

Dear Hand,
Tonight I see the underside of you.
Palm and appendages highlighted.
Magnified by glass, liquid,
And a soft coil of lightbulb near the bed.
 -Friday 5.3.2013