Time to be the fine line of light

between the blind and the sill, nothing
really.  There are so many things

that destroy.  To think solely of them
is as foolish and expedient as not

thinking of them at all.  All I want
is to be the river though I return

again and again to the clouds.
All I want is to stop beginning sentences

with All I want.  No--no really all 
I want is this morning: my daughter

and my son saying "Da!" back and forth
over breakfast, cracking each other up

while eating peanut butter toast
and raspberries, making a place for

the two of them I will, eventually,
no longer be allowed to enter.  Time to be

the fine line.  Time to practice being
the fine line.  And then maybe the darkness.

​    - Carrie Fountain

There will come a time when you know
you cannot be understood.
And you will open your hands,
curled fingers sliding into grace,
and you will let the wind blow away every seed
that wanted to be good.

You will know that to speak up,
to own your preferences, silliness, brilliance and delight,
it will cost you everything
you've known so far.

This is sure.

Take heart,
you are becoming real.

The goal is no longer to make certain the boat doesn't take on water
because you've rocked it a bit too much.
You are the ocean, for god's sake.

There will come a time when you know
the vines grown around your throat must be cut,
when you must unbind your pelvis and thighs
and unleash your wild no.

You will know that your hair cannot be 
compliant and well behaved,
a feral mane moving in waves,
straight lines denying the holy ruckus inside.

Nice no longer works.

What have you said yes to in this lifetime?
What is yours to be?

Great Mother holds your warm, round face in her hands
and says, "Free."
And you know it has always been true.

There will come a time when fear will be a too-small shoe
and being misunderstood
right-sized.
All your gold-plated judgments will fly away,
birds that fathom nothing of bad or wrong.

You will know that slow, deep and in
is the unsung path, the only way left after all the
trying to be shiny.

This will turn everything to tears or fire. Mostly both.

The womb of the oak is down.
Roots and soil, blood and bone.
There is no mountain, no method, no modality.

This is the slow gestation of Love.

    - Jessica Browning

So I can’t save the world--
can’t save even myself,
can’t wrap my arms around
every frightened child, can’t
foster peace among nations,
can’t bring love to all who
feel unlovable.
So I practice opening my heart
right here in this room and being gentle
with my insufficiency. I practice
walking down the street heart first.
And if it is insufficient to share love,
I will practice loving anyway.
I want to converse about truth,
about trust. I want to invite compassion
into every interaction.
One willing heart can’t stop a war.
One willing heart can’t feed all the hungry.
And sometimes, daunted by a task too big,
I tell myself what’s the use of trying?
But today, the invitation is clear:
to be ridiculously courageous in love.
To open the heart like a lilac in May,
knowing freeze is possible
and opening anyway.
To take love seriously.
To give love wildly.
To race up to the world
as if I were a puppy,
adoring and unjaded,
stumbling on my own exuberance.
To feel the shock of indifference,
of anger, of cruelty, of fear,
and stay open. To love as if it matters,
as if the world depends on it.

    - Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

​Ma Kali, having You
Is like having a tiger
For a Mother. I don't
Mean the kind who
Pushes her child to
Become president,

Or an egomaniac, or
Both. There are tigers
And there are Tigers.
Your tongue could lick
The varnish off the world
With a single swipe.

It's not comfortable
Lying next to You
At night, but honestly
Where else could I go?
Who would lie elsewhere
When they've lain

With Kali Ma? Best not
Ask such questions
Anyway. There's no road
Back to the world
From Mother...when no one
​Wants to come back.

​    - Clark Strand

In an early morning vision, Mother
Carried me to the river that marks
The boundary between the worlds.

There I saw three women who faced
Away from me--respectfully, I thought--
For their backs were naked, and to gaze

Upon them when they turned carried
Certain inevitable obligations.
I would know things that could not

Be known, for these were not ordinary
Naked women a man might stumble upon
And remark later, "I saw these beauties,

Just there by the water!" To see them
Was to submit to something irrevocable.
But then one of them spoke and said,

"Only ask and we shall turn, and you may
Look upon us, but we would not force such
Knowledge upon the living." To Kali I said,

"Mother, what am I to do? I haven't even 
The sense to know what is being offered me."
Said Kali Ma: "They have offered the truth

In a false world. Would you presume
To come by that knowledge another way?"
It was enough. I gave my consent.

They turned, pale and silent and beautiful,
And led me with soft words and caresses
That pulled the flesh from my bones like

Well-cooked meat, and I left it there beside
The waters to come back for later, when I passed
Once more over the River of the Dead.

​    - Clark Strand

Mother, tonight I have taken my heart
From its cage and laid it at Your feet.
The rapture of this was indescribable.

For one thing, I didn't die as I thought.
I discovered that hearts were for giving
And not for having. This was the first

Lesson of the night. The second came
When I understood what it felt like
To lay one's heart upon the ground.

I wept to think how many years of life
I wasted not knowing where a heart
Belonged. Those were lessons enough,

But then You rested Your foot upon me
And I saw the Universe from the bottom up
The only way it could be witnessed.

That was as much as I could bear,
And there was no lesson in it, for it was
More than anyone could learn.

In the end I've decided to leave
This heart in Your keeping. Do with it just
What You do with the Universe,

And that will be good enough for me.

​    - Clark Strand

Rest, now.
Let the weight you run from every day
now draw you down.

Later there will be time to tend
to everything left undone.
Now, rest.

Fall
into your own bones
lying horizontal on this ground.

Come
into your dark corners.
Come into this

original nakedness
under all the layers.
Come where all your losses

split
you
open.

Don't rise,
yet--
Rest.

Be drawn deeper down
into the salt tide of tears.
Let grief wash you,

then drown you
beyond the name
you first were given,

when you reached to touch
your own mother's face for the very first time,
and she smiled her light down into you.

Now reach those same fingers
for the face of infinity--
so that, opening your eyes

you will know
the one dreaming you
is pleased with you,

that everything seen
is your self,
and that now is the time

to rise wholehearted into the work
aching to be animated
by precisely you.

    - Brooke McNamara