Halfway to Silence

Today, I have learned

That to become

A great, cracked,

Wide-open door

Into nowhere

Is wisdom.

I sit at my desk under attack,

Trying to survive

Panic and guilt, the flu…

Outside

Even sunlight looks cold

Glancing off glare ice.

Inside,

Narcissus in bloom,

And a patch of sun on the pile

Of unanswered letters.

I lift my eyes

To the blue

Open-ended ocean.

Why worry?

Some things are always there.

I am not available

At the moment

Except to myself.

Here on this island I feel myself at home.

And because I am here, happy among the bees,

A donkey in the field, the crooked paths

That lead me always to some precipitous fall

And the sudden opening out of blue below,

Hope flows back into my crannies now.

I am ready to begin the long journey

Toward love, the mainland, perhaps not alone.

For it is just this being enclosed

In a small space within a huge space

That makes them feel both safe and free,

Tilling small fields under a huge sky.

I watch them, full of wonder and dismay,

Feeling the need to shape my life, be calm,

Like the untroubled pruners who, all day,

Cut back, are ruthless, and without a qualm.

While I, beleaguered, always conscience-torn,

Have let the thickets stifle peaceful growth

My gentle earth is barren now, or nearly.

Harden it well against the loss and change;

Prepare to hold the fastness, since I know

This open self must grow more harsh and strange

Before it meets the softness of the snow.

Withstand, endure, the worst is still to come.

The Geese
The geese honked overhead.

I ran to catch the skein

To watch them as they fled

In a long wavering line.

I caught my breath, alone,

Abandoned like a lover

With winter at the bone

To see the geese go over.

It happens every year

And every year some woman

Haunted by loss and fear

Must take it as an omen,

Must shiver as she stands

Watching the wild geese go,

With sudden empty hands

Before the cruel snow.

Some woman every year

Must catch her breath and weep

With so much wildness near

At all she cannot keep.

Late Autumn
On random wires the rows of summer swallows

Wait for their lift-off. They will soon be gone

Before All Saints and before All Hallows,

The changing time when we are most alone.

Disarmed, too vulnerable, full of dread,

And once again as naked as the trees

Before the dark, precarious days ahead,

And troubled skies over tumultuous seas.

When we are so transparent to the dead

There is no wall. We hear their voices speak,

And as the small birds wheel off overhead

We bend toward the earth suddenly weak.

How to believe that all will not be lost?

Our flowers, too, not perish in the blight?

Love, leave me your South against the frost.

Say “hush” to my fears, and warm the night.

No, only the rising tide and its slow progress

Opens the shell.