Satellite

    You have your gravity. 

    This little satellite's settling in.

    What might it be like, being you?

    With one like me, devoted, orbiting,

    circling, at bay.

    You have your compelling way.

    I would not know.

    I've never held my ground,

  

    or been face to face.

    I want to stay invisible,

    but I want to stay.

Dreams before waking

I received two significant dreams before waking.  Close on the heels of those dreams, this poem by Adrienne Rich appeared before me, in the normal way that dreams and poems appear, often unbidden, frequently troubling, worth holding.  And it seems relevant to what's going on "now."  I'm in receiving mode now.  Synchronicities are piling up.

                       ____________________________

Dreams
Before Waking
 
by Adrienne Rich

Despair is the question.
-- Elie Wiesel

Hasta tu país cambió. Lo has
cambiado tú mismo.
-- Nancy Morejón


Despair falls:
the shadow of a building
they are raising in the direct path
of your slender ray of sunlight
Slowly the steel girders grow
the skeletal framework rises
yet the western light still filters
through it all
still glances off the plastic sheeting
they wrap around it
for dead of winter

At the end of winter something changes
a faint subtraction
from consolations you expected
an innocent brilliance that does not come
though the flower shops set out
once again on the pavement
their pots of tight-budded sprays
the bunches of jonquils stiff with cold
and at such a price
though someone must buy them
you study those hues as if with hunger


Despair falls
like the day you come home
from work, a summer evening
transparent with rose-blue light
and see they are filling in
the framework
the girders are rising
beyond your window
that seriously you live
in a different place
though you have never moved

and will not move, not yet
but will give away
your potted plants to a friend
on the other side of town
along with the cut crystal flashing
in the window-frame
will forget the evenings
of watching the street, the sky
the planes in the feathered afterglow:
will learn to feel grateful simply for this foothold

where still you can manage
to go on paying rent
where still you can believe
it's the old neighborhood:
even the woman who sleeps at night
in the barred doorway -- wasn't she always there?
and the man glancing, darting
for food in the supermarket trash --
when did his hunger come to this?
what made the difference?
what will make it for you?
What will make it for you?
You don't want to know the stages
and those who go through them don't want to tell
You have four locks on the door
your savings, your respectable past
your strangely querulous body, suffering
sicknesses of the city no one can name
You have your pride, your bitterness
your memories of sunset
you think you can make it straight through
if you don't speak of despair.

What would it mean to live
in a city whose people were changing
each other's despair into hope? --
You yourself must change it. --
what would it feel like to know
your country was changing? --
You yourself must change it. --
Though your life felt arduous
new and unmapped and strange
what would it mean to stand on the first
page of the end of despair?

1983

Your Native Land, Your Life: Poems by Adrienne Rich (c) 1986 by Adrienne Rich. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Samaya

This is from Pema Chodron's book, "When Things Fall Apart."  I read it while sitting under the dryer at the hairdresser, of all places.

In the vajrayana, there is something called the samaya bond, whereby the student's total experience is bound to the path.  At a certain time, after a lot of intelligent questioning, the student may finally feel ready to enter into a samaya relationship with his or her teacher.  If the student accepts and trusts the teacher completely and the teacher accepts the student, they can enter into the unconditional relationship called samaya.  The teacher will never give up on the student no matter how mixed up he or she might be, and the student will also never leave the teacher, no matter what.

The student and teacher are bound together.  It's like a pact that they make to attain enlightenment together.  Another definition of samaya is "sacred oath," or "sacred commitment."  But it's nothing holy; it's a commitment to sanity---to indestructible sanity.  Samaya is like a marriage with reality, a marriage with the phenomenal world.  But it's a trick.  This marriage is a little bit like having amnesia.  We think that we have decided to marry this partner of our own free choice; however, unknown to us, we already are married.

Salvation

  

     

        why not just give you everything I've got?  

        it isn't much

        it isn't fake

        there's something to it

        the time has come

        rabbit senses hawk's eye

        not a twitch now

        not a breath

        this is another place

        the shadow of the valley

     
        no use thrashing here

        no mercy for the show of tears
        the girlish smiles
        the clever remarks

        the time has come

        for this frantic soul

        to hold perfectly still

Math = Life?

"It's empty, but it's complicated," says Arthur. 

Ritual

OUR WHOLE LIFE COULD BE A RITUAL

We could learn to stop when the sun goes down and when the sun comes up. We could learn to listen to the wind; we could learn to notice that it’s raining or snowing or hailing or calm. We could reconnect with the weather that is ourselves, and we could realize that it’s sad. The sadder it is, and the vaster it is, the more our heart opens. We can stop thinking that good practice is when it’s smooth and calm, and bad practice is when it’s rough and dark. If we can hold it all in our hearts, then we can make a proper cup of tea. 

--- Pema Chodron

... or a proper crossword puzzle ...

... or a proper omelet ... 

... or a proper bill payment ... 

... or a proper declaration of love ...   

Jordan

    

     braving the river

     you show me where it’s coldest

     Lord, I can’t stand still

     here it is coldest

     hold your breath as you hold mine

     yes, our hearts might break

     please teach me this too

     lost, found, loved, ill-fated you

     Lord, I can’t stand still