My most beautiful thing

Once, in the blackness of night,
I would gently lay my hand
upon your doll sized chest, 
place my ear against the red ripeness
of your lips, and listen

to the sound of the soft whispering 
– in and out, a tiny pause,
and it begins again –
of the beauty that is
your breath.

You’re bigger now, 
but somehow it remains 
my most beautiful thing.
Like an invisible heart-line

between your breath and mine,
its rhythmic flow, a soothing meditation,
a peace-filled reminder of all that is, 
of all that is possible,
and of all that matters.

Fiona Robyn, of Writing Our Way Home, has recently published a novel titled My most beautiful thing, which you can find out more about by clicking on the link below. Right now she is offering it free for kindle on amazon.

http://www.writingourwayhome.com/2012/04/my-most-beautiful-thing-blogsplash.html

As part of this, she has also invited people to write about their own ‘most beautiful thing’, which I have done above. I wonder what you would choose?

Choose

Choose each day what you love
for that is all there is.
Practice being 
right where you are
in the midst of your life
for that is all there is.
Sweep the floors, pay the bills
earn the cash.
Be with the mundane and uninspiring
they need you right now.
And then, choose 
and choose again
to give yourself
wide open,
like a soaring eagle
on the edge of the sky,
to what is in your blood.
Until you are surprised
when perhaps one day
you find yourself 
in love.
And that is all there is.

The gap

She felt like she was living somebody else’s life. Or maybe somebody else was living hers.  Or maybe her life was still caught between the two worlds, presuming there were only two.  

Was it everyone’s story at some time, or all times, in their lives? Or was it simply some diagnosable condition, treatable with a little white pill, that every second person seemed to be taking these days? 

Was it the story of her time, the ‘having it all but really having none of it’?  It sounded more likely to be the story of an earlier time when women could only dream of a different life.  

So where did she fit, in this forever dreaming, straining, for some kind of life that didn’t seem to exist, anywhere in her vicinity?  Even as she thought it, dreamt of it, imagined it, even only just a shade of it, she asked herself, instead of reaching for it, toward it, into it, shouldn’t she just be happy with what she had? Because she had a lot.  A lot.  And it wasn’t that she wasn’t grateful for that, she was. And sometimes she felt it, how truly blessed she was, and for a moment, even moments, that was enough.  

And then it would come again, creep in, sneak up, like wind blowing through a tunnel, invisible, until all of a sudden it would chill her to the bone, and she couldn’t remember what it was like to have been warm, or how she ever would be again.

She knew what she wanted, one minute, but the wanting it, and the picture of it, of this longed for life was too much for her, too much to truly contemplate the possibility becoming a reality.  That life, that creation, was for clever people, people who had worked at it their whole lives, had a gift, could remember, and recite even, their first poem or story written at age 6.

It was too late, even though it wasn’t at all. 

Sometimes it hurt, physically, in her chest, the ache for it, the ache of not having it, the gap, like being on one side of the ocean, and her lover, her love, was on the other. But in this case she’d never had the love, only longed for it. She felt like a piece of her was missing, like a puzzle half completed, yet the pieces are lost and she’s looking in all the wrong places. 

So, she leaves it, well she thinks she does, to do what she knows, what she’s good at, so she’s told, what she thinks she enjoys, likes, can call a worthwhile life.  But secretly she worries, all the while, maybe its sucking the life out of her. 

And then she wonders if maybe there’s still time, and a way, to find her life, to push through this world, into the gap, where it’s waiting, this other life, sitting, waiting, for her. Or maybe she’ll spend this life pushing, only to realize, it was here all along.

Mother, mother

Through a paper thin mirror-image
I glimpse this mother-ness
as if for the first time

I thought I should know her 
intimately, yet I am startled 
by that unfamiliar gaze
in picture perfect focus

She dwells in the unsaid
of the amorphous space between
us.  She cloaks her impalpable
web of connection around
our threadbare shoulders

I was not cognizant of her truth
or beauty, she lay 
obscured from my sight 
as I yielded to you
and other worthy distractions

Now, I pass by that chaotic collage
of our daily lives, where 
this mother image confronts
and confounds me
like a once familiar stranger

In my looking
a subtle shift takes me
from inner preoccupations 
sodden with guilt and 
laid bare by a history 
of which you were not a part

         to seeing

the gently sloping lean of your tender body
      falling into mine

the careless fall of your golden-brown hair
        merging into mine

     hand upon hand

that speaks of the dawn of another story
of mother, that is only mine to be
and yours to one day claim.

We should have been

We should have been grey haired, 

like the rest, beyond eighty even

Instead we were fair haired

and barely forty

 

We should have been pushing our children 

on swings in the park

Instead I was pushing you 

around bleak and solemn corridors 

where people go to die

 

You could have been bitter, mad as hell

or as sad as we would become

Instead you were grateful for all you 

still lived, as we ate cake and sang 

happy 2nd birthday to your girls

 

I should have, could have, said more, done more

loved more openly, less self-consciously

Instead I sat by your side, for as long as I could

feeding you ice, soothing your forehead, touching

your skin, ’til after your last breath was gone

daughter of mine

Woman and child pause
to rest on a flat, seat-like rock
that peers out to sea
A small and delicate waist
cupped by the large and pendulous arm,
a well-rehearsed coming together,
as if separation
was only ever
a painful illusion.

22 February

Today, a city remembers.
Solitary flowers rise
from old road-worthy vases,
a sign now of hope, or
new direction, perhaps,
like a Phoenix rising
from the ashes.

Today, a city remembers,
enveloped in a sombre shadow,
like the choking dust
of that fateful day
one year ago.

Today, a city remembers,
it is as if time has stood still,
or the year that has been
is rewound, like a clock.
To return us
(as only anniversaries can)
to the place,
and the time where we stood,
when the earth shook
us into terror
and despair.

Today a city remembers
185 departed souls.
The cicadas shrill
their song, while the shrouded sun
is in mourning, too.
Balloons and butterflies,
red, black, and orange,
are surrendered skyward,
released,
from one place
into the forever unknown.

Sunflower, again

The yellow leaves 
of the tallest sunflower
glow their brightest 
against the fading backdrop
of a setting sun.

How is it, as the light retreats,
and darkness approaches, 
this twilight canvas
gives rise 
to the most perfect hue of all?

Are we like the sunflower,
to be truly seen, made visible, 
only in the crack
where light greets the dark?

Pop-up mall

Pretty pop-ups belie
battered buildings beyond
the wire mesh.

Cracked pavement stones
offer new homes to flourishing weeds.

Sweet aromas of coffee, souvlaki, and life
almost obscure the pungent stench
of dust, grit and death.

Jumping back in the river

“Poetry calls us to pause.  There is so much we overlook, while the abundance around us continues to shimmer, on it’s own.”
Naomi Shihab Nye

I was struck by this quote upon reading it yesterday and realized how much I was missing ‘pausing’ to write my daily small stone.  Since finishing the River of Stones challenge for the month of January, life has taken over again and I have neglected to pause, notice and write the ‘shimmer of abundance’ that is all around.  I can’t guarantee a stone a day, but I aim to step back in the river and watch where it winds.  

Little boy snoring
fights for ear space
over the bang, whistle, bang
of the far-off festival finishing.