In
the past few months, change has spilled through my life. Many of the changes
have been positive, but hard. The changes have pushed me, and sometimes have
hurt, but they have given me back my rich inner life. They have given me back
my heart.
I'm
sharing two of these changes today.
Change
One:
I
learned to sit with discomfort, especially with anger and fear. I learned to
breathe through it, and let the hearth within me grow warm. I learned, through
this, to meditate -- finally, after decades, I have found my breath again.
This
change taught my nervous system to step down the alarm. It taught me to weave
the first threads of acceptance. And it has given me the cat pictured above,
one of my inner teachers now.
Change
Two:
I
learned, once again, to make poems. When I was in my late teens and early
twenties, poetry saved my life. This is not an exaggeration. It is time I give
poetry its own life back.
I
wrote this poem for Wonder Anew. Happy first birthday, Wonder Anew, with many
more years to come.
The
Good, Clean Water
Just
where the cranberry farms begin, behind
that
arched sign and the long, rutted drive,
the
gutter flows. It's a water ditch,
carved
deep by rain, seeping south into the pasture
where
cows once nosed through wire fence
for
grass. I was new to nature then, and stared
at
their raspy coats, their hooves delicate
in
mud, and of course their curtained eyes.
The
water rolls, white foam caught in snags
of
weeds, leaves of buttercups flattened in the flood.
It's
louder than a river, this fat channel
falling
toward the sea. I walk its edge
to
the source: A farm at harvest, a drain
from
the clay bogs where cranberries grow.
Everything
grows,
even
the stones we have made ourselves swallow.
At
nineteen, I pushed open the door to a meditation class.
I
sat down, and I failed.
Outside
the class window, the pale sky snagged me.
Small
birds dropped from eave to sidewalk and moved
as
though native to the undercarriage of cars.
Long
light shot in at sunset; how could I not love
that
light, and follow it everywhere with my eyes?
The
teacher talked, his voice launched
from
its goateed roost, from the collar
that
sprouted his head. Around me, women
were
caught in his current, their foam and leaves
razed
in his tide. And I itched
for
nine o'clock when I could bolt.
I
sat still. I tried. But lightning
flared
through my chest. Flood warnings
flashed,
my good sense screamed.
I
never returned.
For
twenty more years, I must have breathed;
I
don't remember.
In
the ditch, the water moves, seaming through dips,
leaping
white thickets of foam.
Cranberries,
dropped from harvest trucks,
stud
the weeds at the edge of the road.
At
thirty-nine, my own mother now, I gave myself
breath
again, slowly, shaking. I gave myself breath
and
this: the guttering flow of the slim, swift stream,
its
waves like silver fish, like fingerlings, frogs
as
thick as Doug fir bark, and there,
a
bright cup of yellow petals jolted in the flow.
I
walk now, startled new by nature.
I
walk the hill to the source of the stream,
the
clay bog where the cranberries grow,
where
once the cows in their mud-streaked light
rooted
and moved. I walk in the stream, water curving
round
my calves, and feel the current take me, take us:
woman
and cow, water-choked weeds, words
from
a man in some breed of collar now lost to me.
We
all course downstream, gutted and drained
at
harvest time, red jewels bouncing from truckbeds,
flowers
bending to tides. We course downstream,
the
water knows its way. The good, clean water
knows
its way, and latches us back to our home.
Harmony Harrison - poet, writer, artist, and photographer.
Harmony's blog (Harmony With Animals) and Facebook page
Image credit: Harmony Harrison
Harmony's blog (Harmony With Animals) and Facebook page
Image credit: Harmony Harrison
