longing

self again

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Somehow here the self exists. What is it about writing to total strangers that allows her to skip about a bit, joyfully?

How did I find myself hemmed in with responsibilities that crush what I find so very valuable and precious?

The responsibilities are precious too.

Why am I particularly unable to feel my deepest feelings unless I have acres of time and space, and beauty? Other people seem to dwell in their feelings all the time.

The particular excavation it takes me to unearth a truly honest felt-response despite the glare of inconvenience, disapproval and doubt is so arduous.

I’ve got summer panic; the sensation that before I have had a chance to find her again I will find myself boxed up and transported to Other Things. That we will endure another forced separation. That I will spend my life in the journey between returning to retrieve her and the rushing back to fulfil my commitments. That I will be forever swimming down to the depths to discover the deep secrets only to find, on glimpsing a treasure, that it’s time to be back at the surface. That the treasures of the depths will continually elude us, because of the clamour in which our lives so continuously take place.

season shift, glimpsing the unseen

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I return to the theme of the season shift, which I am almost through, I think. Today was a treat day to a spa with friends – a rare event – but of course it meant soaking and cleansing in hot pools and bubble pools and terribly cold water pools, and scrubbing through (apparently) Japanese cleansing rituals and soaking weary feet.

I am more or less always on an inner alert for poetics and watery moments always evoke for me the feeling of baptism; death and birth. It is surprising how often in my life moments of transition coincide with moments of immersion.

The other women discussed lying on the sofa, which I could see was an eminently suitable choice for the weary restedness of a post-spa afternoon. But I felt alert, restless. I did not want to lie down indoors. Some kind of inner part of me is alive and suddenly feels renewed after a long trudge of weary tasks.

My being is vibrating and I am so relieved, as a kind of deadness kept threatening to take hold. I tried to reassure myself that this deadness was a mere effect of exhaustion, but I was afraid.

Returning home I didn’t know what to do. There are mountains of undone chores still, neglected as a result of too many work deadlines, too much travel. Food has run out, supplies have dwindled, friends languish unanswered.

Something deeper than a desire for progress overtook me, a calling, and, as it happens, into the still-furnished garden. One more day.

But where I sat yesterday looking back, today I sit in the present. I sit in the cleansed state of my spa self and feel the old things washed away, and me all new, fragile and yet available and alert. Available to new joys and pleasures, available to new adventures, available to deep wrestling and struggle, available to the future self of my being that is always drawing me forwards, through thick and thin, to her accomplishment.

The glimpse of the unseen is not a vision in the true sense; it is a sensation, a potency. It is where hope lies for the austerity of winter and the confusions of longings yet unfulfilled. It is a resonance of self that I inhabit when playing the piano, or listening to myself play; somehow this mood of self, this certain space, holds wonders for me; I can feel them, although I have no idea how to reach them, or how they will take form.

Sing

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You, faintly beating heart,
wounds louder than
your loves, your hopes
yet beating still, yes,
although your sounds are drowned in
work and fret

I hear your fleeting glimpse
I hear your leaping hope
I hear the strain of aching long ignored
I hear containment creak its last captivities

You, voice
in secret humming hopefulness, yet frail,
weak from your hiding places
convenience, old stories, loss,
the places you elude
a confrontation

You, whose voice, whose heart
I know has power,
I call you, whole,
to open up the gates of hell
unlock the brokenhearted
retrieve the lost and lonely

Sing with me, you of heart, of voice, sing!
Sing heart! announce the dawn!
Sing voice! stir the fires of hope!

Sing future into our beings, our fears, sing wonder!

Sing, sing, you, lover of humanity
lead us in your tender songs
Let our cries heal hearts,
our whispers mourn
our laughter triumph

We cannot live our sorrows alone
sing what you were made for
sing what you are made of

Note: this is a poem in progress. Sometimes when I am writing it is like the poem itself is struggling to be born through the still-existing layers of patriarchal culture, and postmodern ideology; the heart of the poem is there, doing its best to be born full and whole, but in fact by the time the heart makes it into the voice, it is bedraggled and bleeding, showing signs of struggle. So this is best seen then as a draft or pr/echo, and perhaps something more resonant and whole will come soon.

patient stars on a passion sea

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I am a sea for you, and all my
other realities, hang
longingly, waiting

an intensification of the waves, tender pink,
growing moody, faint mauve hues, rose absolue,
crimson interdit
almost red, almost dark, almost night, almost
dawn

roiling, I lurch another night
unknowing, other
to myself and to those who know me
daytime

a restless wakening, a dreamless
depth, a haunting utter knowing
beyond, beyond

the stars arrive,
intensification of light
patient, delighting
eternal, vanishing,
shine singing

vanquishing
the sea the sea, it wrestles
warm, hot, cool, chill within me,

I hope, I pray

Note: This poem was written in response to an abstract watercolour painted to a recording of myself playing Einaudi’s Divenire. I played this for the first time this morning having had no access to a piano for the previous three years. It was full of mistakes, hesitations and interruptions, but beautiful.

creaking

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Am I trying to 
inhabit a life
that no longer fits

Why do I creak?
Why do I fail to find the once familiar groove,
the seam in which all things
cohere?

I am displaced,
scattered and my senses
fail me.

Where am I trying to come home to?

I creak and hear my own 
groans escaping.
wild sounds that alarm
my younger self.

Am I becoming that?
Am I she who will
fail to meet imagination
with dignity?

I creak and now it is
a home-coming of sorts,

To my bones,
To parts of me long abandoned.

Have mercy.