For today’s Growing in Place I explore how we keep growing and changing and how, often through great love and suffering, we usher in another form of self. As we grow, we sometimes need to repot ourselves. Just like a plant may need a new pot, sometimes we open to a new self and become a new being and we find we need a new form, a new pot, so we can continue to grow. Today’s poem, “Crossing Some Ocean in Myself” is from The Way Under the Way. I hope you are opening and listening to your heart. Many blessings!
Crossing Some Ocean in Myself
Half a century, and finally,
what I feel is what I say and
what I say is what I mean.
What I mean is that others, so used
to my gargantuan efforts to be good,
don’t understand my efforts to be real.
They find me coming up short.
I’m simply burning old masks.
And the next step takes me—
I don’t know where—
as it should be—
I don’t know—
just that I love who I love.
I listen with my heart.
I struggle with the reflexes of my mind.
I mean, the pains of life are sharper now
but disappear more clearly the way
knives are swallowed by the sea.
And the subtleties of being come on
like waves that cleanse but which,
when dry, I can’t seem to find.
So much like a gentle animal now,
unsure what I was fighting for,
except to breathe and sing, except
to call out the human names for God
that others have uttered when
hurt and confused.
So much like a love animal now
until the end of any day’s work
is the soft moment
when loving and being loved
are the same.
And all year round,
the birds and trees instruct,
make visible the wind
the way reaching without shame
makes visible the love.