Wedding Poems

There's been so much going on, joyful (our wedding) and hard (Mom being in the hospital and missing our wedding) that sitting down to write has been a far lower priority. I'll be getting back to it more since there's been a lot I've wanted to write about, but for now my return to posting is to share the three poems we had read during our wedding ceremony.

Oh, and a great picture taken by a friend after the ceremony!



CK's mother read this poem:

I Want Both of Us

by Hafiz

I want both of us

To start talking about this great love

As if you, I, and the Sun were all married

And living in a tiny room,

Helping each other to cook,

Do the wash,

Weave and sew,

Care for our beautiful

Animals.

We all leave each morning

To labor on the earth’s field.

No one does not lift a great pack.

I want both of us to start singing like two

Traveling minstrels

About this extraordinary existence

We share,

As if

You, I, and God were all married

And living in
a tiny

Room.

One of the Zen priests, a dear friend and inspiration to our practice, read this:

Entering the Shell
by Rumi

Love is alive, and someone borne
along by it is more alive than lions

roaring or men in their fierce courage.
Bandits ambush others on the road.

They get wealth, but they stay in one
place. Lovers keep moving, never

the same, not for a second! What
makes others grieve, they enjoy!

When they look angry, don’t believe
their faces. It’s spring lightning,

a joke before the rain. They chew
thorns thoughtfully along with pasture

grass. Gazelle and lioness, having
dinner. Love is invisible except

here, in us. Sometimes I praise love;
sometimes love praises me. Love,

a little shell somewhere on the ocean
floor, opens its mouth. You and I

and we, those imaginary beings, enter
that shell as a single sip of seawater.


Another friend from our Zen community read this:

The Plum Trees
by Mary Oliver

Such richness flowing
through the branches of summer and into

the body, carried inward on the five
rivers! Disorder and astonishment

rattle your thoughts and your heart
cries for rest but don't

succumb, there's nothing
so sensible as sensual inundation. Joy

is a taste before
it's anything else, and the body

can lounge for hours devouring
the important moments. Listen,

the only way
to tempt happiness into your mind is by taking it

into the body first, like small
wild plums.

Mom's Choice

I spent the 5th with Mom, her birthday. We didn't really do anything special at all, I just went on her shopping errands with her. Mom's always been a shopper, poking around looking at things is a fun day for her. I find it generally fatiguing, although we agree on thrift store shopping and both enjoy it.

I was feeling very anxious and down about things having only spoken with her for a few minutes when she told me about the cancer. Actually talking with her in person helped a lot to alleviate some of those uncomfortable feelings. I think seeing that she felt resolved and at peace with things, at least she did on Friday, was reassuring in a lot of ways.

Chemotherapy might be an option, as might surgery. Radiation isn't really an option since she's had it so much. What Mom really wants is to receive palliative care, just medication for pain and anxiety rather than trying to 'cure' the cancer. She also is interested in alternative medicine. She really doesn't want to go through any treatments to cure cancer again.

It is so sad. I do feel anger at this one last failure of my Mom's health. She corrected my belief on when she first had cancer, it was 1973 and I was four years old (I'd thought I was closer to 9 the first time). For 36 years I've watched my Mom fight cancer, have some time of health, fight heart disease, diabetes, and increasingly debilitating arthritis. It has been exhausting for both of us in its own way.

I don't blame her, not at all. Having watched what those cures have done to her over the years I think she's making a wise decision. Her health isn't that great to begin with, her heart is very weak, and she wants to really be able to enjoy what she can of the time she has remaining to her. I honestly think she's making the best decision.

We're taking her to the coast for a few days later this month. I'm really grateful I've got more time available to do things with her and have been trying to check in by phone with her more often.


We have some squirrel-gifted daffodils blooming in the front yard, but I'm loathe to pick them as they make the yard look so cheerful. Instead I bought some flowers - stock and daffodils. Purple and vivid yellow adorning the mantle. Today's poem is a quick haiku inspired by them.

Daffodils open.
Spring flashes a wide smile from
Bright yellow faces.

two poems

It didn't seem to fit right adding the haiku I wound up writing last night onto the bottom of my post about marriage rights. There was a suggestion from Shinju that we write adopting the style of another poet. I've been incorporating Basho's haiku into my artwork, so I created a little haiku dedicated to him.


Basho Visiting

Visiting poet.
Words are precious nutrients
To cold weary mind.



Tonight I'm reflecting upon the day. The quiet in my mind as I attend to the chores of the house. At first there's some resistance - my mind is sure it wants to read or write one more thing, attend to an art project, read a novel. Then I just get up and start to tackle some chore. At the end my mind feels more clear, rested, and I really appreciate how I actually feel better. It is also gratifying to see the house in more order. It also makes me smile to hear CK sing the praises of the "Laundry Fairy" and know that it makes her days so much easier.

Simple Tasks

There is a rare
Stillness of mind
When the hands
Are set to
Simple tasks.
The folding,
Carrying,
Chopping,
Cleaning
Of everyday life.
Known actions.
The hands need
No reminders or
Helpful hints
From the mind.
They just attend
To the task
At hand.

Cooking Time

I'm feeling better after having spoken with Mom on Friday. It was good to hear her talk about her feelings around not wanting to seek major treatment (chemo, radiation, surgery), but rather to focus on keeping present and enjoying what time she is able to. Any of the traditional treatments would really lessen her ability to experience happiness and may not be successful either. She seemed lighter about the decision, more so than I've seen her about most anything.

Despite it having some reassurance this still is very hard and it felt like I was in a funk part of today. While making dinner I was particularly mindful and present. Letting the act of creating our meal be a mediation, letting my attention focus on the simple tasks, so rich in sound and scent, settle my mind. I was gratified that applying myself to cooking this way once more helped me feel grounded.

By 7pm I admitted that my tension headache had been with me since rising from the bed and the pinch on the right side of my neck & shoulder hadn't loosened up at all. Both were resistant to ibuprofen and revisiting how I felt about the stuff with Mom at at session with GM didn't help much at all.

I decided to stay home from the women's Dharma group but was mindful to sit at the same time I'd be sitting with them had I gone. Sitting wasn't quiet, my mind was all over the place in a familiar fashion. Zazen felt somewhat restful and I was able to be accepting toward the voices. I was eventually able to shift my focus from my breath to doing Metta practice for my Mom.

Cooking Time

Meal meditation,
Simple movements,
Rich with sound, scent.

Water rinsing.
Knife cutting.
Pan heating.
Food cooking.

Nothing more is
Necessary except
Breath,
Attention,
Gratitude.

Rain Returns

The sound of rain on the house, particularly the upstairs rooms that are built into the attic space, under the eaves, always makes me smile. Tonight's short haiku is inspired by it.

Rain Returns

After a welcome
Sojourn with the sun’s warm glow
March rains come again.

Saturday Connection

We rested in the morning, CK felt like she was coming down with something. We decided that hanging out at a movie with friends, as we'd planned the night before, was still something we both felt up to doing. We met up downtown to see Terry Gilliam's new movie. Afterward we got lunch from the Bombay Chaat House cart, enjoying it in the new park downtown. The day wound up at Powell's, mostly just to have coffee, and a quick shopping trip. We both really enjoyed connecting with some new friends even though we felt pretty tired as we headed home.

For today's poem I played around with the 3 line format of a 5-7-5 (syllables) haiku. Stringing several of these sets together to evoke the experience of lunch.

Saturday Lunch

The square was filled with
Sunlight streaming sideways and
The sound of water.
With conversations
Loud & sharp, punctuated
By impatient words,
Offset by laughter
And with appreciation.
A hum of voices.
The scent of rich food
Hung in the air, enticing,
Promising delight.

Mostly Haiku

Spent the day with Mom. It was a good day, I felt better after actually talking with her. After a lot of running around with Mom I rushed off to Beer & Blog to meet up with CK. Dinner at the carts and more hanging out - made for a really late night. I was really too burned out to write much about anything at all.

I've decided to recycle a children's board book for ABCs into an artist journal for haiku. I'm not sure yet if I'll use all my own haiku or some of mine mixed in with work by other authors. Mindful of wanting to continue the 30 Poems in 30 Days challenge and the possibility of many haiku for the book, I wrote a short haiku inspired by the afternoon.

Hood Haiku

Grey sky, white mountain.
Late afternoon sun glowing
Against winter snow.

Present to Joy

Spent some time with a dear friend who's recovering from major surgery today. I took over a lot of my art supplies in case she wanted to be creative, but since she was feeling somewhat low, energy-wise, we just chatted and I made lunch.

GK devotes her energy to the cultivation of Love and Joy. She helps keep a small group I occasionally help facilitate called Loved Based Living to provide a place for people to nurture the Love in their life and then extend forward into the world from a place of Love. It felt very good to reconnect with her after many months.

Later I'd mindfully reflect upon the joyful moments of my day. There were many, there always are many moments of joy in each day. During this time I am especially mindful of the need to be really aware of those moments that fill my day rather than feel caught up in the worry and fear.

Present to Joy

Present to joy,
To beauty
Small and large,
That fills my
Small world.
I awake in health
Far better than
Many others,
Especially my Mother.
I arise in next to
My Beloved and
In our own home,
Roomy, filled with art.
I venture out unhindered,
Free to move about,
Pause in appreciation
Of the sun’s brilliant
Light breaking through
Clouds and illuminating
Fiercely bright blossoms.

Anxious Energy

Yesterday I awoke feeling anxious. Had a difficult time getting to sleep and then bugged by Puck once I got sleepy. I finally tossed him out of the bedroom and closed the door a little past 1AM. In the morning I awoke after another dream where I was trying to teach yoga to a large class and no one would pay attention to me.

I could feel the desire to just stay home. There was laundry to do, food to make, art projects to make for people. A softer side of my Inner Critic just wanting us to stay safe, warm, comforted. Instead I mindfully got ready and went to a yoga class. I felt better afterward, like I nearly always do.

Yesterday's poem reflected that pull of depression under the Inner Critic's sweeter enticements.

Siren Song

Stay home, she says.
It is safe here, warm,
There are so many
Things to do,
That need doing.

Softly, sweetly
She whispers
From inside me.
Wrapping up my
Anxiety tightly.
Encasing it in
Enticement.

Don’t go,
We are afraid.

Shattering the
Delusion of
Security I touch
The energy of effort
And leave the house.

Mom News & Poetry

My Mom called today to tell me I was off the hook for taking her to a 5PM doctor's appointment. I was relieved, it would have me driving from Gresham to rather near my house and back to Gresham, during some of the worst traffic. I didn't begrudge taking her at all and was glad I could, but I certainly was relieved to hear her doctor was needed in surgery.

Then she told me that the doctor was an oncologist who has treated her in the past.

It would seem that the stomach cancer she bested oh so many years ago is back. Or just a new cancer in the stomach. Either way, it is Very Bad News.

She's known for a few weeks now, from back when she was in the hospital the last time. They told her there. It had show up in her T cell counts, they'd looked there with some of the blood work they were doing.

She said she couldn't face telling anyone. She's only told her husband last week. I felt some anger that her great idea for telling me in person, because she'd wanted to avoid telling me over the phone, was to do so while on the way to an appointment with the oncologist. I'm glad she told me over the phone. I'm just glad she finally told me.

I've lived well over half my life, perhaps closer to two-thirds of my life under the shadow of my Mother's possible death. As a child it felt like icy darkness, dread of being forced to live the rest of my childhood with my aunt or my grandmother. I spent long hours sitting in waiting rooms, reading while she would get chemotherapy.

Cervical. Skin. Stomach. Breast cancer, twice. Who knows, there may be another cancer in there I'm not recalling right now. Additional problems too, angina & other heart problems, gall bladder, infections, cellulitis, and the list could go on. In and out of doctor's offices, clinics, hospitals. Always accompanied with dread.

The news hurt. It always hurts to hear she is sick, possibly hospital bound again. She doesn't want to go through another major surgery. I don't blame her. She's had radiation so many times they cannot really fall back to that. I don't recall her mentioning chemo. She said they've prescribed a lot of pain medication.

I remembered the last time she was sick and I mentioned it to Hogen. He reminded me that I know how to face this. I've had an enormous amount of practice facing the grave health of my Mother. How to keep moving forward in the face of fear.

So I moved forward. Running a number of errands we normally would have to cram into a weekend. Tasks made easier since I wasn't at work any more. The fear subsided. In it's place remains an ache, anticipatory grief for the loss that may possibly come sooner than anyone would like. Grief for myself, for bearing the burden of her fear of death throughout so much of my life. Deep grief for all the loss she's experienced, a whole lifetime of loss and very little joy.

Unsurprisingly the news has deeply touched my offering in the Poetry Challenge.

The Loss That Comes

The fear of
My Mother’s Death
Has shadowed
Most of my life.
I’ve grown older
Immersed within it.

I easily touch
My child-self’s
Icy, dark fear of
Being left alone.

I feel the grasping after
What was lost.
What never was.
What will never be.

I become aware of myself
Endlessly spinning around
The same mythology of
Fairness.
Justice.

There is a certainty we
Wish to avoid.

We are dying.
From moment to moment.
First breath to
Last breath.
Every last
One of us.

The news comes
And the shock is
Still as startling and
Painful as it always is.
It subsides more
Quickly than when
I was a child.
Left behind is a
Dull, hollow ache of
Anticipatory grief
For the loss that comes.

The End of a Chapter

Today feels like my first "Official" day of being unemployed. Something about not making the 8AM status call. I also noted that for some reason it doesn't feel like I'm on vacation. Maybe it was because CK was busy getting ready for work herself?

In my usual style I've filled this first week out of work with projects and appointments. I am having lunch with people 3 days this week, taking my Mom to the doctor late tomorrow afternoon (amazed that she has a 5PM appointment), Portland Ignite on Wednesday night, a cohort meeting & zazen with my Zen community on Thursday. Tuesday is my official "good-bye" lunch with my team - some folks were on vacation last week and I was really too swamped to do it with trying to wrap things up.

Saturday I felt kind of extra burnt out from staying up late with a friend from our Sangha who is going to be relocating to New York indefinitely. We went and did another walk through at the venue for Open Source Bridge in June followed by lunch with a couple of the other organizers. We ended up napping in the late afternoon which felt very disorienting. In the evening we finally watched Amongst White Clouds, which was just stunning.

Sunday I think I'd finally rested enough to suddenly be hit with the reality of my unemployment. The anxiety I'd managed to push off with the huge task list finally manifest. Big waves of uncertainty and groundlessness. My Inner Critic, Lovey, wailing, "What have you done!"

What really struck me is just how much of my sense of self has been wrapped up in the job I held, in teaching yoga. Letting go of my regular class at Dishman was bad enough, but at least I still had my job to give the impression of stability, of knowing. I think I was really quite unaware of just how much I measured my self worth, my idea of who I am, by those titles and those paychecks.

Today starts a new chapter where I practice with letting go of more of the idea of "Self" as some construct of all the memories I have, titles I've held, places I've been. Another reminder that I am not my job, not my paycheck, not comprised of the entries on my resume. All of that stuff is mind chatter, part of the noise that separates us from the Essential Self, the No-Self Self.


And it is poetry challenge time in the Zen Community of Oregon. What is now becoming an annual tradition of writing 30 poems in 30 days. To start off, prime the pump as it were, a rather smallish poem:

Home

Scent rising up from the kitchen.
Grain steaming. Roots roasting.
Cats sleeping peacefully.

The simple gifts of home.

Random Poetry Recieved

Earlier this month I posted a poem I'd written for a little project. A random poem created out of 15 words taken from a book I was reading. I sent that random poem off on postcards to 3 different people. Yesterday I received the last of the 3 poems sent to me an thought I'd post them here - I've tried to keep true to the alignment & spacing that the authors used.

Words taken from How to Make a Journal of Your Life, poem by Beth Bendickson

As photography is
to years discoveries,
tell! Books, pens -
forget machine.
Totally, forcefully,
Completely
be.

Words taken from Spiritual Housekeeping, poem by Judith Alkema

Can you
clutter your honor,
smother your soul,
weary your body,
with all these
half-hearted treasures?
Or is it something else
that you designated
so ultimately important
to your collector's heart
that you can not lt go
and freely as a bird
flies from its nest
let those feathers drift?
Let go.
Let be.
Be.

Words from The Shadow of the Wind, poem by Carol Gibson

an order
all watched
a family remembered
beneath comfortable desk
and papers
room with rows.

Random Poetry

I am participating in a swap of poems with people. The goal is to take a book you are reading and take every tenth word from a page until you have 15 words. Then take those 15 words and somehow assemble them into a poem.

I'll be posting poems I receive in the mail as they show up. The first one I've received so far, from another Oregonian, is very cool!

The women's Dharma group I'm participating in is embarking on a deep study of Pema Chodron's book 'When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times
' so I picked my words from the first page of the first chapter. My words, in order selected from book, are:

1. to
2. journey
3. setting
4. with
5. will
6. get
7. the
8. drawn
9. if
10. become
11. it
12. different
13. we
14. activities
15. emptiness
    

The poem I assembled out of these words:

If

Setting the activities.
drawn to will.
Get with it.
Different journey.

We become emptiness.

Prescription & Poety

Last Friday I was diagnosed with what may be the same sinus infection I was fighting in the spring. This was my doctor's thoughts on why I've also been having hives occasionally as well as some distortion happening in my left eye. Bacterial infections can start to cause systemic allergic reactions - this explains the hives. The visual distortion may be migraine being tiggered by having had a sinus infection for this long.

Ugh. I'm on a second round of antibiotics now, much stronger ones. Hopefully this really knocks this out. The nearly constant head ache combined with the usual 3-7 level of pain my hips & back has me feeling worn out. I've even been napping, which I don't do unless truly sick.

Enough kvetching about being ill and on to the poetry!

I had an Amazon gift certificate and today my "prizes" arrived. I haven't been writing much poetry, but it really seems to be what I've been reading lately. I think the books of poetry have been edging out the fiction and non-fiction on my nightstand. Today, I added 3 more poetry books: New and Selected Poems (volumes One & Two) by Mary Oliver and The Gift
by Hafiz (which CK nearly purchased for me for my birthday but instead choose two marvelous editions of Rumi's writing).

And on that note I am off to lay around with a bag of hot flax seeds on my head and hopefully dream peaceful dreams. Here is some Hafiz:

And For No Reason

And
For no reason
I start skipping like a child.

And
For no reason
I turn into a leaf
That is carried so high
I kiss the Sun's mouth
And dissolve.

And
For no reason
A thousand birds
Choose my head for a conference table,
Start passing their cups of wine
And their wild songbooks all around.

And
For every reason in existence
I begin to eternally,
To eternally laugh and love!

When I turn itno a leaf
And start dancing,
I run to kiss our beautiful Friend
And I dissolve in the Truth
That I am.

Bus Poem

Something I like about Tri-Met are the bits of poetry hanging in the buses & trains. It is part of a project called Poetry in Motion. Up between signs reminding you to wear headphones, give up your seat for someone who needs it, maps, advertising, etc. there's poetry. Pretty simple and it certainly falls into the category of "Small Happinesses" in my life.

Right before leaving for Hawaii I spotted this one on the way home from the office on the Number 4 bus.

Thirst

Your eyes must stay open
To the color of flowers.
wherever their bright flash
Catches your gaze, water flows.

You see rain
Days after it stopped raining.
in your breath you taste
The river running underground.

Paulann Petersen
from A Bride of Narrow Escape

Is weeping speech?

I've been thinking on the poem I Have Five Things to Say from Rumi, (translated by Coleman Barks, down at the bottom of the post). So many of Rumi's poems leave me feeling as though I've been struck in the heart and this one is no exception. I've only recently been reading some poems from Hafiz and find they too have such depth and such ability to touch the tender places.

I have a lot of internal struggle around crying and have been actively working with it since 2008. One thing I remind myself over and over is that Kwan Yin's response to the cries of the world is to weep. The vessel she is often depicted with contains her tears, which have become a healing elixir. I remember this when my Inner Critic is beating me up for crying, for looking silly because I'm crying, for causing me to worry that I'll be caught crying and punished...

Ugh! I spend a pretty ridiculous amount of time worrying about crying. "Just cry!" is pretty much what all my teachers say to me in one form or another. All of them. It is damn hard to relearn this stuff and some days I feel loads of Bad Student Guilt over seeming to need to hear the same message over and over again.

When I read the line in the poem, "Is weeping speech?" I thought of Kwan Yin, She Who Hears the Cries of the World, and her wordless response, suffused with compassion for all the suffering of the world. Her act to hear terrible suffering and respond with the open vulnerability of crying reminds me of the very positive quality to tears and how they are a way of speaking when words utterly fail us.

I HAVE FIVE THINGS TO SAY

The wakened lover speaks directly to the beloved,
"You are the sky my spirit circles in,
the love inside love, the resurrection place.

Let this window be your ear.
I have lost consciousness many times
with longing for your listening silence,
and your life-quickening smile.

You give attention to the smallest matters,
my suspicious doubts, and to the greatest.

You know my coins are counterfeit,
but you accept them anyway,
my impudence and my pretending!

I have five things to say,
five fingers to give
into your grace.

First, when I was apart from you,
this world did not exist,
nor any other.

Second, whatever I was looking for
was always you.

Third, why did I ever learn to count to three?

Fourth, my cornfield is burning!

Fifth, this finger stands for Rabia,
and this is for someone else.
Is there a difference?

Are these words or tears?
Is weeping speech?
What shall I do, my love?"

So he speaks, and everyone around
begins to cry with him, laughing crazily,
moaning in the spreading union
of lover and beloved.

This is the true religion. All others
are thrown-away bandages beside it.

This is the sema of slavery and mastery
dancing together. This is not-being.

Neither words, nor any natural fact
can express this.

I know these dancers.
Day and night I sing their songs
in this phenomenal cage.

My soul, don't try to answer now!
Find a friend, and hide.

But what can stay hidden?
Love's secret is always lifting its head
out from under the covers,
"Here I am!"

A Tiny Room

Portland has been baking in unusually hot weather. It was over 100 degrees (37.7+ C) here today, for the second day in a row. Tomorrow will be the same. We'll "cool down" to the mid 90s on Thursday. It has been humid as well, 43% humidity at this moment.

I am trying to meet the heat with equanimity and curiosity, but right now my head aches and I feel a little sticky. The upstairs, particularly the bedroom, feels as though it has been transported to India or SE Asia. Tonight sleeping up there will give us practice for visiting those places!

We're trying not to use the small air conditioner units which sit in the window. Cooling the house by opening it up and using fans. We're also spending time down in the basement. I'm practicing gratitude for our spacious home that has a comfortable basement. If it is too unbearable up in the bedroom we can set up to sleep down here, another thing to be grateful for.

The heat affects the air quality which makes my sinuses ache. Between that, the jaw pain (which has improved since my massage therapist worked on it, but is still there), and the allergies irritated by all the dust from moving at the office, my head has had a constant, dull, ache for days now. It does ebb and flow a bit, but there always seems to be some level of headache. It doesn't leave me feeling very focused or productive.

I'll leave off the complaints about the weather & my head and instead post this poem by Hafiz. Chozen read this to us during the Loving-Kindness sesshin in April and it has remained in my mind since.

I Want Both of Us

I want both of us
To start talking about this Great Love

As if You, I and the Sun were all married
And living in a tiny room.
Helping each other to cook,
Do the wash,
Weave and sew
Care for our beautiful
Animals.

We all leave each morning
To labor on the earth’s field.
No one does not lift a great pack.

I want both of us to start singing like two
Traveling minstrels
About this Extraordinary Existence
We Share,

As If,

You, I, and God were all married

And living in
A Tiny
Room