Tag: tumble

Feel Like a Leaf

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Walk around feeling like a leaf. Know you could tumble any second.
Then decide what to do with your time.
~ Naomi Shihab Nye from “The Art of Disappearing” from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems

I’ll tell a secret instead:
poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes,
they are sleeping. They are the shadows
drifting across our ceilings the moment 
before we wake up. What we have to do
is live in a way that lets us find them.
~Naomi Shihab Nye from “Valentine for Ernest Mann” from The Red Suitcase

photo by Josh Scholten

Poems were hidden from me for decades. 

I was oblivious a hundred times a day to their secrets: dripping right over me in the shower,  rising over hills bright pink, tucked under a toadstool, breathing deeply as I auscultated a chest, unfolding with each blossom, folding with each piece of laundry, settling heavily on my eyelids at night.

The day I awoke to them was the day 23 years ago when thousands of innocents died in sudden cataclysm of airplanes and buildings and fire — people not knowing when they got up that day it would be their last.

And such tragic tumbling of life happens without cease – from wars, gun violence, suicide, pandemics and preventable diseases –
our world weeps and hearts continue to break.

Suddenly poems show themselves. I try to see, listen, touch, smell, taste as if each day would be my last. I try to feel like a leaf about to let go.

I have learned to live in a way that lets me see through the hiddenness and now it overwhelms me.  Poems – sad, insightful, clever, funny, and mysterious – are everywhere I look.

And I don’t know if I have enough time left to write them all down.

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The Impeded Stream

barnstormingblog1 Comment

It may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work and that when we no longer know which way to go we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.The world, the truth, is more abounding, more delightful, more demanding than we thought. What appeared for a time perhaps to be mere dutifulness … suddenly breaks open in sweetness — and we are not where we thought we were, nowhere that we could have expected to be.
~Wendell Berry from “Poetry and Marriage: The Use of Old Forms,” in Standing By Words

Who among us knows with certainty each morning
what we are meant to do that day
or where we are to go?

Or do we make our best guess by
putting one foot ahead of the other as we were taught
until the day is done and it is time to rest?

For me, over four decades,
I woke baffled each day
that I was allowed
to eavesdrop on heartbeats,
touch tender bellies,
sew up broken skin,
set fractured bones,
listen to and through tears.

I woke humbled with commitment and duty
to keep going even when too tired,
to offer care even when rejected.
to keep striving even if impeded.

Doing that work, I learned that
obstacles will slow but cannot stop
the cascade of love and hope over the rocks of life.

My days overflow with the uncertainty
of what comes next:
finding my real work
is to wade in deep,
tumbling over the barriers
and still keep singing.

Simply keep singing.

photo by Josh Scholten

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Like a Leaf

barnstormingblog2 Comments

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sunsetleaf

 

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rainykale2

 

Walk around feeling like a leaf. Know you could tumble any second.
Then decide what to do with your time.
— Naomi Shihab Nye

 

 

fallenleaf

 

fallenleaftoosoon

fallenleaf2

We have had three weeks of delightfully temperate weather — days in the 70’s, nights cooling to the 50’s, gentle breezes which at times gust and shake the foliage and fruit from branches.

It feels a bit like autumn in July, with leaves loosening from tree branches, tumbling to the ground two months early. Our annual July family gathering is coming up soon, but without an older generation of birthdays to celebrate as in previous years: the last of our family elders passed on two months ago. The inevitable shifting and sifting of generations is keenly felt; we middle aged folk now bounce grandchildren on our laps rather than our own children.   The last fifteen years have changed much in our family tree.

I feel badly for the trees parting with their leaves too soon.  I am sad our family has parted with our elders before we’re ready.

I am no longer invulnerable, seemingly protected by a veneer of youth and vigor.   Located high in the canopy of branches, I may wave bravely in the breezes, dew glistening like sweat on my skin, feeling the sun on my back and the raindrops running off my leafy shoulders.   Yet my grip is loosening, slowly, surely.  My color is subtly fading.  My edges are starting to fray, and there may be a hole rent here or there.  Yes, I am feeling more and more leaf-like, knowing how far I could fall any time.

That knowledge makes all the difference.   I hang on ever more tightly while I can.

This is no time to waste.

 

chlorophyllholes

 

kaledrop