STORM DAMAGE: Transformative Healing
Musical Poetry Performance
(Visit this link to learn more about STORM DAMAGE Performances 3/23 – 4/6/2025 and the Ensemble)
ORDER OF PERFORMANCE
Written by performed by Lisa Ann Reilich (unless noted otherwise)
Music arranged and performed by Gary Bushee
Images from Moo’s Corner at Walter’s Beach Nature Sanctuary and taken by Lisa Ann Reilich unless otherwise noted.
Letter to Lena, 22 September 2020
INSTANTLY — 22 September 2020
Letter to Lena, 31 December 2020
NEW YEAR’S EVE — 31 December 2020
BROKEN SYMPHONY: Movement One — 4 February 2021
BE A TREE — 21 March 2021
COZY CORNER — 30 March 2021
RETURN FLIGHT — 3 April 2021
COBALT BLUES — 27 October 2021
CAN YOU SEE YOU IN ME — 3 November 2021
My Friend Mellie
GLITTER FOR THE SKY (for Mellie, my Love) — 21 January 2022
HOW WE CAN KNOW (for Margaret Mae) — 27 January 2022
STORM DAMAGE — 27 January 2022
HOW TO GRIEVE ON TUESDAYS WITH FLARE — 3 March 2022
BROWN BREAD AND JELLY BEANS (for Mellie, my Love) — 10 March 2022
SPRING SOON SPRANG — 15 May 2022
STIRRING SLEEPING BEAUTY (An Incantation) — 23 February 2023
HOW MANY, SAY HOW — 3 April 2023
COME SIT AND REST (Ode on All Souls’ Day) — 2 November 2023
FINDING YOU, FINDING ME, HOLDING WE — 7 November 2023
We Are One — composed by Br. Phap Linh, Plum Village
******
“Through writing we preserve history.
We ignite the inner sparks that have been buried beneath the surface
just a little too long.”
~ Maiah Alyssa, March 2020
STORM DAMAGE: Transformative Healing
Musical Poetry Performance
For my Teachers
Maiah, my Heart
Mellie, my Love
&
Thich Naht Hanh (Thay)
******
LETTER TO LENA — The Compassionate Friends
2020
September 22
The Compassionate Friends
Photo Credit Stacia Montenegro 2003
******
September 22, 2020
Letter to Lena
The Compassionate Friends
Dear Lena,
My name is Lisa and I am Maiah’s mom — Maiah left for the Otherside both expectedly and unexpectedly — expectedly in that I had been bracing myself for her leave taking since she was not even one and stood at the top of our steep stairs with an invincible smile, and I caught her just before she could really discover that people cannot fly — and unexpectedly in that only Hollywood could write such a fantastical warning of one gaining their angel wings.
Maiah was almost 19… but really she was 18. I have thought about why it is I so want her to be 19 and maybe it is all the times I heard her predict she would die by the time she was 18 if her path could not be bent, changed — and how I took all my life force and will and bent it … as did she … and indeed it changed … and yet, still, she was 18 and the spinning wheel needle in which she was destined to prick her finger was waiting. And so, she left us happily engaged to the future and amazing possibilities, after scaling sheer cliffs of desperation to arrive … only to learn to fly instead.
She left us on March 3rd… sometime around 10 pm … away at her first semester of college, just out with friends enjoying the night sky … her lack of true comprehension of her own mortality — just when she finally embraced life — finally completed long the proof I had saved her from before she was one … people can’t fly, or they can, but they have to leave their shell behind.
I’ve been told she was trying to cheer up a friend, who had been having panic attacks all day because this friend had a premonition at 4am that before the end of that day, one of them would die. And so, I’ve been told, Maiah hoisted herself out the car window — that she was “screaming happy” — and she grabbed onto the roof rack of the Jeep that was not even going 25 mph… and the rack came off, it came off the car and Maiah flew … and then she landed … and then she really learned to fly.
Great Smokey Mountains National Park —Foothills Parkway
This was all in Tennessee, Maiah was away at her first semester of college, so happy, so expecting of the future … and then that future and all its possibilities was over.
And now the hard work. Making sense of it. Or not. And living with meaning and purpose now that the colors of the world are gone… because Maiah was a 128-crayon Crayola pack with bonus colors … and the world was her palette. And I am a little lost as the understudy to her star performance … and not quite sure where to find the script.
So thank you. Thank you for being there to understand. To allow me to feel heard. That seems the hardest thing of all … living in a world that really is uncomfortable being an audience to what must be felt and experienced now that the star of our show is gone.
*******
INSTANTLY
2020
September 22
******
INSTANTLY
They told me my Maiah died “instantly” —
the time of death and circumstances so tragic
and vague I could construct my own home movie
with the brush strokes …
As more details arrived in the news and mail box,
trickling in like Chinese water torture,
drips spaced just far enough apart I forgot
to expect them …
Finally —
a piece of paper arrived through the air
with an official stamp that my fingers could
not feel and declared “Minutes” —
as in the time of death from impact …
Not so “instantly” ….
But by then all the B-tape on my cutting room floor
had been pasted into the final cut masterpiece
of my perceived reality.
Seven months of interviews and puzzle-piece fitting,
reconstruction and early morning dreaming …
and in the “Story of Your Death”, Maiah —
still you died “instantly”.
Or —
you stopped knowing life and pain “instantly”.
Because in that version I can forgive myself for
not being there to hold your hand, cover you
like the magic blanket I always believed myself to be,
with just enough pixie dust on my wings that I always
had the power to take ALL the pain and fear away,
no matter the terror —
Or so I always chose to believe.
You were gone “instantly“ …
And —
I will never know
why I did not know
you were gone —
Instantly.
*********
LETTER TO LENA — The Compassionate Friends
2020
December 31
******
December 31, 2020
Letter to Lena
The Compassionate Friends
Dear Lena,
Today marks the one year anniversary of Maiah’s departure from Maine incarnate forever, though at the time we could not have known this …. I find I cannot sleep or rest. Instead, I woke at 3am — as I did on this day 1 year ago — and was filled with what I could not name or express. Then, I woke to milk the goats in time to make a bus. Now, I am woken by the ripeness, fullness of the hindsight perceptions. Out tumbled these words …..
Sending Love,
Lisa
Maiah’s mom
******
NEW YEAR’S EVE
2020
December 31
******
NEW YEAR’S EVE
3 am
I am running,
the minutes are moving,
sliding
colliding with the next
cold, crisp.
The bus is not there yet —
it is waiting and I
am running, moving, counting,
counting minutes, counting seconds, counting —
counting.
Breath crisp, fog rising, snow crunching
3 am
5 am
we are running,
packed inside a future we cannot see yet
we are moving, reaching, fear-laced yearning
the bus is not there, yet —
it is waiting and we
are running,
knuckles white, breath crisp,
hurtling through the dark,
the snow, sliding in the white
5 am
7 am
you are running, just barely
time to catch —
the bus is there, yet,
it is waiting, impatient waiting
knuckles white, I grip tighter,
watch you smile, wave, board,
pull, thin threads pull, tear,
absorb the waiting
washing over and away
from you onto me
in the dark and snow.
Cold.
Empty.
Echoes are waiting
7 am
What is in a moment?
A year.
A daydream. A heartbeat.
A word.
Least of all — a word.
60 seconds more
60 seconds more and
we would have missed it.
We were grateful. Blessed
our relief, laughter exhaling ripples
across the frosty pavement.
The bus was there, yet —
you could have missed it.
We could have missed it and …
you
would
be
here
waiting.
3 am
The bus is not there yet —
it is waiting.
The snow is falling, packed inside
hurtling me, us, we, you to a future …
I
cannot
see
Yet I am moving.
And Waiting.
The bus is not there, yet,
it is waiting.
3 am
New Year’s Eve.
******
BROKEN SYMPHONY — Movement One
2021
February 4
******
BROKEN SYMPHONY
Movement One
There was a scream, but I did not hear it. I only know there was one because Margaret told me later. And that it was mine.
What could I feel? Nothing. Nothing at all. Only heartbreak. And relief. Such a strange mix, and — yet — I am so familiar with holding this juxtaposition.
I think it was cold. My feet were bare, which they never are in our cold farmhouse. And mostly I wanted to wake up, while my brain simultaneously started searching for solutions. I am a fixer, you know that. I can fix anything. Not your normal leaky sills and busted pipes, but fix “situations” — retrieving escaped horses, pigs, dogs and goats; sorting through possible futures and honing in on the next one to visualize; searching for missing daughters; massaging college essays; arranging life flights at 2am; finding silver-linings.
A huge uniformed man stood clumsily over me in the half light of nothingness. I wondered dully if he had been here before. Some other distant middle-of-the-night occasion. Perhaps. And my brain sprung into action:
Quick, what is the silver-lining? How do we fix this? How is this good news? GO!
But this was not a situation that I could fix in the ordinary sense. No. There was a finality to the words shocking the cold and blackness of 2:30 am.
“I have some bad news. Your daughter…”
That was the moment. That was when there was a scream I did not hear or feel or witness. The law of gravity brought me to the ground and all that was for sure was the floor.
**********
BE A TREE
2021
March 21
******
BE A TREE
Be a Tree — says the mother of seven, resting gently in my office chair.
Slipping hints of patient irony, her eyes smile — See, a Tree.
Very simple really, elementary and, yet, not at all,
for roots grasping rocks along the shore, this Sea Tree…
Punishing tides, frigid winds, blistering sun and small pause
for branches fractured, splintered — leaning strong– little Dream Tree.
Some must fall, laying dormant and unsettled, moss creeping,
seaweed clinging — Earth does not hold or plead with these Trees.
Maybe they would fly or float would they could, or leave their fruit
and seed to sprout — so desperately, achingly they want to be Free Trees.
For me, though, I think I will never quite know how to sit so still,
waiting, beating, holding, breathing — and patiently. Sad to yearn to be a Tree.
*****
COZY CORNER
2021
March 30
******
COZY CORNER
Life is a collection of stories we tell ourselves
to get through the days. Sometimes the last
moments and goodbyes don’t happen
by a hospital bed; yet the memories linger,
a map tracing newly-found wisdom.
Like when we sat in the Cozy Corner —
you, me and Marmee – and you said
it was “selfish for people to want to keep
people here who
were in pain.”
Our last months were, I think now,
a long set of goodbyes.
Would I rather they happened
with you in pain?
Struggling for each breath?
Or angry at the World?
Or not knowing where
you were?
Would I rather you went slowly,
painfully
or dragged over years
just so I wasn’t robbed
of your company?
Would you hate me if I said —
“Yes”?
******
RETURN FLIGHT
2021
April 3
******
RETURN FLIGHT
Face-painted butterflies
flutter from snapshots.
Where do they fly?
Far from here?
They soar home.
Through sun, storm, no matter —
their wings whisper,
Let’s find our way
HOME.
*******
COBALT BLUES
2021
October 27
******
COBALT BLUES
Blue Jay jeers and soars swift to sea,
cobalt streaks high. And far below,
Farmer starts, stares, “What does it mean —
Blue Jay jeers … and soars swift to sea?”
Sky Girl awaits Jay in the breeze!
Where she goes, her azure follows
Blue Jay jeers and — soars swift to sea;
Cobalt streaks high and far below.
******
CAN YOU SEE YOU IN ME
2021
November 3
******
CAN YOU SEE YOU IN ME
(Bell, Bell)
Can you see?
Shadow-lit sky weaves
life in the flattest mud,
Stardust breathes deep
you in me…
Tonight it rains.
(Bell, bell)
******
MY FRIEND MELLIE
Photo of Mellie — photographer unknown
******
MY FRIEND MELLIE
There are a handful or two of people I owe my life to following Maiah’s unexpected leavetaking to the Otherside — but perhaps the greatest credit goes to my remaining children Margaret Mae and Ella, for whom I found reason to live; and my dear friend Mellie, who knew the mysterious art of “showing up” for others with consistency and equanimity, and who helped me learn through her presence how to show up for myself.
Mellie has been my deepest friend since 2003. I cannot say I was the same to her, only that I tried the best I could with what I had. She continues in that capacity today although she left this world as I know it on January 21, 2022, one day shy of her 53 birthday.
Mellie showed up in my driveway with a book for me under her arm one week after Maiah’s transition following a sizable absence from my life — she returned every Thursday and most Sundays after that — never needing a thing from me, which was good because I was barely able to breathe for over a year. She kept showing up until her own health struggles made that impossible. Yet she still gave freely of her presence by phone, text, whatever she was able — and gradually I learned through her example to do the same. I am grateful for every minute her light shines upon me, which is still tangibly with me in the here and now. As am I for her.
This next poem was written on the afternoon of her passing. I walked into Maiah’s Nature Sanctuary, that Mellie helped me create, and had just taken this photo — overwhelmed by the glittering beauty on the snow and in the air in the cold — when the call came. She had transitioned surrounded by her beloveds at 5:30 that morning.
I sat down in the red Adirondack chair where we had shared so many Sunday conversations and wrote these lines.
******
GLITTER FOR THE SKY ~ for Mellie, my Love
2022
January 21
******
GLITTER FOR THE SKY
~ for Mellie, my Love
And on this day, at this hour
the hand on the clock faltered, stood still, failed.
All the arrows and fingers pointed to
the bright comet tracing a line in the sky,
but they could not follow the destination,
only glimpse her silver footsteps as her bright light
faded, transitioned —, and imagine
where they might lead.
The time for that knowing waits, yet to unfold,
whispering with the wind.
************
HOW WE CAN KNOW ~ for Margaret Mae
2022
January 27
******
HOW WE CAN KNOW
~ for Margaret Mae
My blue, now gradually pinkening,
daughter is handed to me,
now rests on my bare breast
still attached by our cord,
half submerged in water,
as a mermaid;
Or like a spring crocus, where from
Mother Earth’s winter she has sprung,
flowered into existence from
my now emptying womb.
How can we know the mundane magic
moments that will weave us again,
like our start, into one?
Snow ice cream shared until we shiver
from a February new snowfall;
Lyrics made up and sung, while dancing, laughing
together in our cozy well-worn farm kitchen;
Your homemade Mothers’ Day Cookie as big
as my face strewn with dandelions
and visited in our greening clover-filled
pasture by buzzing bees;
Late night OJ, hot chocolate and fresh-baked
cookies consumed in the dark with forced cheer,
colliding with exhaustion between hospital vigils
for your sister –
then you –
as modern-day imperiled paupers
seeking grace, refuge, shelter in the shiny
communal kitchen of our shared home
away from home.
How can we know the shatterings
that will bond us beyond all?
How can we know?
We can’t.
*******
STORM DAMAGE
2022
January 27
******
STORM DAMAGE
I am fascinated by the Trees.
Green trees, brown trees, and most
especially the long, gray sprouting
Red Maple Trees. Their tenacity,
even when sawed close to the ground,
to recover and come yet again, sprouts
shooting from their severed trunk. Puzzling.
Entrancing even … and even more, I am fascinated
by the tall and rough black-barked elders of these kind,
reaching seventy feet high, (maybe more?) stretching
festive limbs filled with delicately-fingered branches
reaching to heaven — only to have them heavy and strong
seemingly torn from their sockets, leaving fresh orange
and brown sap-laden rough holes after one solid storm.
And was it the wind (that tore off the limb)?
Or was the limb only waiting
for the wind to arrive so it could fall?
Was she biding her time while still
reaching for the sun? Letting go a little
here, a little there, only noticed if
you listened carefully for her creaking
on bitter black February nights?
And what of the Mother tree left so marred,
gaping widely and slack-mouthed
from her splintered wound? Her two left leaders
stretch still to the heavens, and soon Spring sap
will fill her and them out in festive red seed wings
trimmed with green-hued unfurling leaves.
Surely, she still feels the pain, the absence,
looking down, (her fallen self) her daughter
heavy at her feet — her child who, even now,
through some God-bestowed drive, like a death spiral,
unfurls green leaves from herself, as if her last breath —
her final offering to still hungry fawns who have,
in the wombs of their starving mothers,
this Winter overcome.
*******
HOW TO GRIEVE ON TUESDAYS WITH FLARE
2022
March 3
******
HOW TO GRIEVE ON TUESDAYS WITH FLARE
Cry in your cheerios –
make sure the milk gets
extra salty.
Listen to all her favorite songs until
you can sing them acapella,
all six hundred and ten;
Burn all the junk mail and recyclables
outside, be sure to bring the marshmallows
just because she would;
Watch “Merlin” by the campfire pretending
the tiki torches are from Camelot
and that Puff the Magic Dragon is
just around the bend.
Cry in your cheerios –
take care the milk gets
extra salty.
Sit on her favorite ocean rock at dusk and stare out until
you are sure every star in the cosmos is lit;
Squeal with delight and wonder for each “new”
memory her friends share;
Hang a pinata from a tree in the woods filled with party
favor bubbles, punch balloons and Reese’s peanut butter cups –
Hit it really, really hard
like she would.
Cry in your cheerios –
even if the milk gets
super salty.
Paint her chair blue and sprinkle it with glitter
because life is more magical with glitter;
Dance at midnight in the kitchen to “Dancing Queen”
with absolutely no one at all just because she would;
Bury tulip bulbs in October so you will remember
that flowers playing dead
come back to life in the Spring.
Cry in your cheerios –
make sure the milk gets
good and salty.
Play her pennywhistle every night
even though you don’t know how;
Collect the last apples from her apple tree
on Halloween standing on the trampoline, jump
to get the high ones;
Watch “Coco” in the firelit dark
to make your candle collection look
not quite so over the top;
Make up a new Holiday and name it
after her insisting
everyone celebrate.
Cry in your cheerios –
think about how the milk might taste
without so much salt.
Hang a fairy wind chime in the maple by the sea
so you can hear her sing;
Write poems to find the pieces you are missing
and give those pieces flavor and depth;
Put on your favorite play just to find out
where she went between the lines;
Register for college classes even though
you are over fifty
just so you can finish what she started;
Invite her to dinner and smile because you know
it makes her smile just to watch you eat;
Read “Runaway Bunny” to her at night so
you might find her at the end.
Cry in your cheerios –
be careful the milk doesn’t get
too salty.
Hide easter eggs pretending you are her and then
go find them pretending to be you;
Feed the birds in her park only on Tuesdays
so they are sure to make a special trip;
Take a stuffed sloth with you everywhere,
just because she took a stuffed sloth with her
everywhere;
Go to her college chapel service
every Tuesday knowing
you will find her in the air;
Sing out and loud and slightly off key –
just because she did;
Make her favorite lemon squares and eat them
remembering to smile because
she might be watching.
Cry in your cheerios –
salt the milk
lightly with love.
Put together the jigsaw puzzle
with missing pieces because
maybe the pieces will be found;
Paint your nails a baby blue that is so her
you can feel her in your fingertips;
Play all her favorite songs extra loud
on road trips, just because she did;
Share all your favorite pictures, and the ones
you never took, painting them
into life with words;
Discover a new religion and consider
running away and becoming a nun;
Join the circus –
just kidding.
Cry in your cheerios –
but eat them before
they get too soggy.
Travel by train cross country
so you can catch
time going backwards
behind the glass –
It might even stop.
Live like
there is no tomorrow
because there isn’t.
Love like
your life depends on it
because it does.
Feel her
in your fingertips.
Eat your cheerios
just as they are –
the milk tastes better
unsalted.
Remember to dance
with the stuffed sloth especially
at midnight –
Dancing in the kitchen, at the sea,
in the car, around the fire and
just because –
She would.
******
Return to Index
BROWN BREAD AND JELLY BEANS ~ for Mellie, my Love
2022
March 10
******
BROWN BREAD AND JELLY BEANS
~ for Mellie, my Love
I really want to make your special brown bread
muffins, the ones with the whole wheat flour
and organic molasses that you brought me each
Sunday morning and that we ate by the sea
in our vibrant Adirondack chairs smiling up
at the waving poplar leaves with salt
air scenting our nostrils. But I keep buying
and eating fake colored Easter jelly beans instead.
I know better. I know. Your eyes tell me so.
Forgiveness and acceptance speaking
louder than imagined reproach.
If “why” were your question
my answer would be, “Silence.”
The world is so silent —
Why doesn’t it make a sound?
Where is the sound?
Since as long as I can remember, from frozen
vinyl backseat nights of toddlerhood, hurtling
through the darkness of night to the quiet of now,
my most unwelcome companion has been silence
and in its vacuum disapproval speaks louder than
the words I long to hear or the ears I clamor to be heard.
Not the silence of nature and birdsong and hearing
myself think. Those friends I greet warmly. No,
the silence of absence, of removal, of stepping
away, setting apart, disconnecting. This is the silence
knocking on my every door of now.
If I were a piece of glass, when I hit
the floor I would bounce because of its
absence, like I forgot it was my nature
to break, there is that much absence of sound.
And I find myself shouting in each jammed
direction, like an off-kilter compass’
zigzagging search to find home.
But home left with the geese in the fall,
and my faith it will return with them
in the spring doesn’t even have enough
breath to fill a dime-store faded balloon,
let alone make it float.
If sound is home and home is you
it’s just too silent to know
where to go to find you.
Or me.
You were always listening.
I accepted this, expecting it. Except
when you were gone. And those
were the loneliest times of all.
I grew so sure of your listening, when
you left, I forgot how to talk.
I tucked my chatter into a locker
for the “lost and found” and locked it
with a silver key because that’s what
I had left in my pocket at the time.
And then I threw my silver key into the sea
praying it would float. But I’m sure it sank.
Into the mud. Flat and sound.
And years from now some small girl
child with flaming red curls will be wading
in the salty mud, pudgy sturdy legs guiding her
through our childhood of growing up and growing old,
and she will hear the echoes of my sadness, of my
missing you, and of the World’s answering silence.
And she will reach down, listening for my key,
the silver travel trailer of our heart, hearing it
hum with her muddy fingers made smooth
by the salty water of forever.
And when her soft child fingers finally reach it,
our corroded relic hanging out cozy
next to the blood worms and clams
and crustaceans of before, she’ll pull it
from its warm hiding bed of time,
like the diamond at the center
of every Princesses’ crown. It will shine.
And at that moment, that very moment
of wide-eyed freckled sunlit delight,
all the apple blossoms on the waiting shore will burst
open in soft whites and pinks, like the breaking
of all our hearts and the centuries of held breath,
and the chatter released from their waiting
will be a symphony of glee that flies like the geese
up into the sky and home will be you
and you will be sound and I —
I will be free. And broken.
Finally broken, I will again
be able to be whole.
And the little girl child standing ankle deep
in the low-tide mudflats of our pondering,
our recollecting, our revisioning, she will giggle
outloud, crinkle her freckled nose and clear
eyes and give us a full “missing her front-teeth”
grin, knowing just how beautiful it is
to be home. And saying so.
And you and I. We will most certainly
from our granite sea-worn ledge, like two
gulls nesting in love, gaze forward through
time, touching shoulders and knees,
and radiate her knowing back. And in listening,
we will say so, a picnic of brown bread muffins
and colorful jelly beans by our side.
*****
SPRING SOON SPRANG
2022
May 15
******
SPRING SOON SPRANG
Blue Jay and Sky Girl perch on branches thin,
waves green and brackish reach for rock strewn shores
below. They watch Lady Jay from treetops as
she tends her rest, expects arrival soon,
new babes will have her nest soon full — blue skies,
tommorows, loud voices and beaks will pierce,
telling of stomachs aching for brought food
by Blue Jay surely Lady, his love, knows.
Today’s for waiting, telling tales on thin
branches, Sky Girl’s sweet laughter fills Blue Jay’s
ears and Father Sun glints warm on Auntie Stone.
Time for tomorrow’s cares long after Sister Moon’s
shine and Cousin Star’s shimmer dusts the air —
red tulips, branches green with leaves will have sprung.
******
STIRRING SLEEPING BEAUTY(An Incantation)
2023
February 23
******
STIRRING SLEEPING BEAUTY
(An Incantation)
You predicted,
preplanned,
premeditated
death ‘til the end.
Like a dance or a game
courting ghosts
wrapped in flame
‘til you burned.
Here we stand, holding air
like your breath, pray to dusk
that it counts
like your heartbeat
once stopped.
Your heartbeat
now stopped.
You flirted with flames
one moment too long.
And not even God
starts your heart
once breath stops.
Stop.
Don’t stop.
Beat.
Breathe.
Believe.
Live — Don’t stop.
Babes crawl to walk,
dance tightropes with ghosts.
(Pray gently)
Crawl gently, walk gently,
dance gently my Loves,
lest you fall.
Don’t Fall.
Live.
Don’t. Stop.
Don’t Sleep.
Don’t Die.
Wake Up…
******
HOW MANY, SAY HOW
2023
April 3
******
HOW MANY, SAY HOW
I sit in the doctor’s office, or
it could be the train, or even
the store, the park, the plane.
She casually asks, without looking up
her clipboard littered, characters
spilled across. She peers through them
and scribes, her holy grail of 9 to 5,
struggling to decipher, to impart, but not taste.
“How many children do you have?” she asks,
tight curls ringing her yet innocent face.
Time stills as I ponder, it’s freezing,
all frozen as I step outside of now
and then and into tomorrow. I consider.
How shall I answer? Say how.
I must think, predict, choose with care
or not, the next gate will open, ledges
stretching through and out.
Will an avalanche begin?
Will I be buried alive?
Is it too precious to say?
Or imperative that I sign?
Who is she (that she needs know)?
And, when I do answer (somehow I must),
will the winds blow me over
into torrential sea or will there just
be light and breeze that caresses
my tired hands, and worn knees?
When I answer, and I do — and must —
and say “three”, have I told the truth?
Aren’t there some left behind? Some I forgot?
Ahhh, but that story is too long, not to be
told this day. Time is quickening again,
impatience vibrating visibly in her pen
before I can think more, I count.
“Three,” I say, deciding to focus
on the living even if dead. For what
is death but something we
don’t yet understand?
If even that at all.
“Three,” I say, knowing the storm
gathers — for her only banter and politeness,
for me, the next gate and cliff —
“Oh, How lovely! Do they live nearby?”
Ahh, do they live nearby… yes, indeed they do.
In my bent spine, my mending heart, in my voice,
my step, doesn’t that say enough?
“Yes”, I say. And then expound —
for in me the pressure to explain,
speaks up, with voice, to name
that which I cannot
yet know as deeply
as my breath.
“One,” I say, “is only an hour away
by fast car, but is the furthest
from reach; one I clutch to my bosom
every night before the death that is
called sleep; and the last, who is also
the middle and the first, dwells
in my heartbeat, lives in this air
we now breathe. Do you sense her now,
coming through your startled eyes?
Do you see her swimming through
the chasms of your dreams? Yes,
she lives closest of all if we but
have eyes to see. She is me,
and also you and we, and we,
well now, we
are also
she.”
******
COME SIT AND REST (Ode on All Souls’ Day)
2023
November 2
******
COME SIT AND REST
(Ode on All Souls’ Day)
This last storm there was just wind
and rain; It barely made a dent.
I laugh out loud in the swirling and the wet —
“At least it isn’t snow! I don’t have to shovel!”
It took some days for the heaviness
to take over my feeling of good fortune.
It took passing Great Grandma Maple,
or more circling her three limbs now sprawled
in deep prayer around her, one still dangerously
suspended in the sky by Sister Spruce, caught
in her arms, as in heartbreak, mid fall.
Passing by was no longer possible.
Circling was all that was left.
Once they held up my heavens and defined
every waking sky from my bedroom window.
Harbingers of Spring; Stark companions through Winter.
Now, like deflated lawn ornaments, they are heavy,
no longer buoyant, and block my daily way
on rounds to field, barns, raspberries overgrown.
Yet still there is the old oak swing on her
remaining narrow branch, vaulted starkly upwards,
dressing herself in remnants of Autumn treasures,
somewhat apologetic now and insecure it seems
without her sisters filling her out against the sky.
Great Grandma Maple, still giving in her sorrow
all she can, whispers —
“Here,” she beckons, “Come sit and rest awhile
Dear Child as in old days. Rest here on Cousin Swing.
We can hold you still my Child, bear your weight
and worries. Swing on my arm as before while you rest.
You are weary from this day like us all.
Come rest.”
And I do.
Grateful for her embrace
on this day and so many
befores.
******
Return to Index
FINDING YOU, FINDING ME, HOLDING WE
2023
November 7
******
FINDING YOU, FINDING ME, HOLDING WE
Wherever you are, I will find you.
Even when that takes turning hard
away from where you last went.
Or spinning ‘round and ‘round ‘til I fall,
tasting you finally in the salt scent of my pores.
Or loving me more than I ever loved you,
even though we know I loved you, always, best.
For where are you if not in me, and how
would I find you but in finding myself?
My Love looks into me, dives deep, piercing
through her eyes, rivers through time.
She thinks me mad, surely insane —
“What are you trying to do??”
Find You.
“How are you going to do that??”
I don’t know.
But,
I will.
My teacher says, “The Way Out is In.”
And the Universe whispers the same —
Without words, and more true.
So I draw spirals inward, go backwards to go forward,
digging deep into the warm, dark recesses of what.
Where I will find you is in me, where you started,
(was there start?) your first home (or end?)
My womb waits softly, deeply, darkly,
for all to unfold again.
And how I can know you best is to learn
this kernel of truth, I embrace it.
If truly there is no beginning, no end, then
we have always been one, shape shifting.
Seeking warmth and shelter from, for each other;
now a breeze, next a touch; now the moon,
next the sea. Yes, to find you, I must only
come Home to me. And through that journey
I behold You, behold Me — and hold us all, We.
And in the center of our womb,
of our love, of our is-ness,
there will We all be,
as We always were.
Held. And as one.
You, Me, We.
*******
WE ARE ONE
Composed by Br. Phap Linh
Plum Village
******
WE ARE ONE
We are One
One with the Earth
One with Grief
One with Joy
(Bell, Bell, Bell)
(bell)