Alexandersmap

    Category: Poetry

    • The Wind Always Speaks

      “If there seems to be no communication between you and the people around you, try to draw close to those things that will not ever leave you. The nights are still there and the winds that roam through the trees and over many lands.” — Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

      We’re often alone in this world, but alone doesn’t require loneliness. These days gifted to us are full of routine and ritual, from how we wake up in the morning to where we sit and what we eat. Who we interact with is often our choice, but alas, not always. How we react to everything and everyone we interact with—or don’t interact with—is always our choice.

      Stepping outside on a spring day in New Hampshire, the world is alive in chatter. Birds and squirrels debate nest design or which yard has the best feeders today. A light wind might stir the tree tops like a hand brushing over tall grass, while a heavier wind might offer a gusty, heartfelt shake. No, there is no loneliness outside—the world is always present.

      The garden begins to awaken. Rabbits have nibbled the tops off of some early bulbs, inspiring a silent curse and a fence resurrected to stake a claim for beauty. Days are longer now and there’s more to see, but for the stars as they concede more and more to the sun. Every day brings a new voice to the yard as the migration continues northward. Flashes of blue are a regular part of the days now as the Bluebirds, present all winter at the feeder, decided to make the birdhouse their own once again.

      Every day is a poem. Every day offers an embrace when you step out to greet it. Even on the quietest of days, the wind always speaks.

    • April Showers

      We are the first double-leaf sprout, two inches out of the ground.
      We need rain, or we may not grow more than this.
      — Rumi

      The rain rolled in right on schedule, really, timed to mask the Aurora Borealis thoroughly and keep my mind from wandering north. Quietly scheming to drop everything and drive as far north as necessary to be under the northern lights, it became a blessing when I saw there was no point in trying this time. Even as the geomagnetic activity caused a stir of excitement in the aurora community, Mother Nature mocked the audacity of those of us waiting for our turn in New Hampshire.

      April is the second month of the Roman calendar. Depending on the sources you believe, the name is derived from the Roman word Aprillis, for second, or aperio, which means to open up as a flower does. I’ll stick with the former, even as I recognize the world opening up around me. April showers help this process, even as it masks the magic in the universe.

      So be it. We need the rain. More importantly, I need to be present here and now, focused on things beyond my control. Let it rain. April showers wash away the last of winter and coax the earth to awaken in the gun-shy way annuals always approach April in New England. Stick your head up too quickly and you’ll end up freezing it off. Yet one day at a time the world begins to green once again.

      We asked the universe for clear skies, we received days of steady rain. These are the gifts we don’t always welcome in the moment, but come to appreciate some time down the path. For now we must be rooted, and using the stormy days for growth.

    • Centered

      The knight and the castle move jaggedly across the chessboard,
      but they are actually centered on the king. They circle.

      If love is your center, a ring gets put on your finger.
      Something inside the moth is made of fire.
      — Rumi, A Mystic and a Drunk

      We wrap our lives around certain customs and communities, we pursue certain career paths and devote ourselves to certain people. But what is it that centers us there? Are we attracted to comfort and familiarity, or is it something more? When we get a sense of place, from where inside of us do we hear the siren?

      If we are the average of the people we spend the most time with, what in turn draws them to us? What energy are we bringing to the universe aside from a refrigerator full of beer? When friends grow old and drift away, when family is busy and distracted by life and the days grow silent, how do you fill the void? What is your fire that warms you in the dark?

      Our center is not the frenzied world we surround ourselves with. The problem with finding purpose and identity in a world full of noise is that we don’t hear our own voice. For all the talk of finding a burning purpose and following your heart, most people keep looking the wrong way. Instead of throwing more wood on the fire sometimes you’ve got to let things burn down to their essence. Our answers lie deep in the embers.

    • Live in the Open-Mindedness

      I live in the open mindedness
      of not knowing enough
      about anything.
      — Mary Oliver, Luna

      There’s a liberation in knowing your limitations in this world. Understanding what you don’t know offers a fork in the road to either learn more or move on and embrace your ignorance. Which we choose is determined by who we want to be, or who we must be.

      I was presented a wine list by a waiter during a team dinner at a high end restaurant. Scanning the list, I quickly found the familiar wines. And hundreds of wines I’d never heard of before, each categorized in general groupings based on the region of the world they came from. Determined to try something new, I welcomed the sommelier who quickly rattled off a few questions that brought us to a bottle. The sommelier and I each met that fork in the road at different points in time. Sometime in his past he embraced learning about each of those hundreds of bottles. When I reached that same fork he was right there to guide me. And every other name and region on that extensive list faded away from my mind.

      Not knowing enough about anything and knowing just enough about something aren’t so different. Being open-minded about experiencing what the world brings you offers opportunity. Experience develops the confidence to accept what you’ll never know.

    • Let Your Steps Dance Silently

      And if your feet are ever mobile
      Upon this ancient drum, the earth,
      O do not let your precious movements
      Come to naught.
      Let your steps dance silently
      To the rhythm of the Beloved’s Name!
      — Hafiz, A Wild, Holy Band

      It’s easy to slip into dark places in a world where insulin and baby formula cost more per gallon than gasoline or whiskey. It’s easy to slide sideways into despair watching the news or scrolling Twitter. To grow impatient and angry with all that is wrong in the world. For that is what they want of us. To divide and provoke for personal profit seems to be the growth model of the dark side of humanity.

      And yet we might dance across our time on earth as steady unifiers. We might tread softly in beautiful places and leave it as we found it as a quiet gift for those who follow us. In our silently determined way leave a message of hope for generations well beyond us to use as an anchor in their own time. Even in the darkest days we may still shine a light on something others might have missed, and offer a lifeline for those who are drowning in the stream of horror and outrage.

      Surely, we can’t dance lightly across time with a heavy heart, and the world offers plenty of reasons for us to despair. But at the very same moment, while we’re focused so intently on one bit of misery, the universe offers hope and love and a reason to carry on just beyond the corner of our eye. Which do we focus on? For that is what we become.

      We are Pilgrims for hope and love and spirituality. We dance across our time offering a lifeline for those who might otherwise drown in the dark. Don’t mistake the dance as blithe ignorance, but as silent vigilance. We’re here to hold it all together, not to run off the cliff waving our arms and screaming in despair. We’re here to dance with life and in our courage draw others out onto the dance floor with us. To use our dance across our time as an inspiration for others to rise.

    • To Shine, in Verse


      Let’s go, my poet,
      let’s dawn
      and sing
      in a gray tattered world.
      I shall pour forth my sun,
      and you—your own,
      in verse.”
      — Vladimir Mayakovsky, An Extraordinary Adventure Which Befell Vladimir Mayakovsky In A Summer Cottage

      We look at the world through our own lens. It’s relatively easy to be optimistic about the future when you aren’t facing a violent end, or the relentless oppression of an authoritarian government. Bullies tend to sap the creativity out of most poets and artists. But every now and then you run into one that stands up to the bully, puts their work out there and lets it speak for itself despite it all.

      Mayakovsky published this charming little poem about having tea with the sun in 1920. I visit it now not to celebrate the void of positive leadership in Russia since then, but rather the resilience of the poet in the face of darkness. Mayakovsky would eventually succumb to that darkness, committing suicide a decade or so after writing this dance with light. Humans aren’t meant to live in darkness. We must find a source of energy and hope to carry on.

      We choose to focus on the positive in this world, not because we’re delusional, but because the only hope for our collective future is in optimism and love. Mayakovsky’s poem ends with a radiance that illuminates us still. It offers an example to press on with our work, to fight for what is right and true. For not everything in the world slips into darkness. We still might shine.

      Always to shine,
      to shine everywhere,
      to the very deeps of the last days,
      to shine—
      and to hell with everything else!
      That is my motto—
      and the sun’s!

    • Playing At the Edges of Knowing

      I believe I will never quite know.
      Though I play at the edges of knowing,
      truly I know
      our part is not knowing, but looking, and touching, and loving,
      which is the way I walked on,
      softly,
      through the pale-pink morning light.
      — Mary Oliver, Bone

      Like the beach Mary Oliver walked in this poem, life ebbs and flows. We either surf the rip or get pulled under by it. This latest period of chaos could overwhelm us or strengthen our resolve to persevere in the face of it.

      We never quite know all that we seek to understand. Just when we think we’ve got it figured out the world throws another curveball at you. Coming out of a pandemic, thinking that things will finally get better and… they don’t. Not yet anyway. You know that this too shall pass, somehow. But life asks us to wait just a bit longer still. Or life tells you that your time has come, sooner than you expected it to. Just when you thought you’d arrived.

      Our part is not meant to be easy. Our part is not knowing, but staying with it anyway. Our part is to support one another in the face of uncertainty.

      Amor Fati, or “love of fate”, is the stoic’s answer to these times. Amor is not quite right. We don’t have to love our fate. But accepting it frees us to focus on the moments we have together. While there’s still time.

    • Enough

      You try to accomplish things, to win, to reach goals.
      This is not the true situation.
      Put the whole world in ambition’s stomach,
      it will never be enough.
      — Rumi, I Met One Traveling

      I’ve been mentally stacking mountaintops, places to summit in my short time here. You tend to feel you’re falling behind when you’re always chasing something more. Maybe each blog post, such that it is, is my summit for the day. But I wonder, sometimes, is this the right mountain to climb at all?

      Maybe for one more day.

    • Make the Ordinary Come Alive

      Do not ask your children
      to strive for extraordinary lives.
      Such striving may seem admirable,
      but it is the way of foolishness.
      Help them instead to find the wonder
      and the marvel of an ordinary life.
      Show them the joy of tasting
      tomatoes, apples and pears.
      Show them how to cry
      when pets and people die.
      Show them the infinite pleasure
      in the touch of a hand.
      And make the ordinary come alive for them.
      The extraordinary will take care of itself.
      William Martin, Do not ask your children to strive

      Sleet and freezing rain tap against the windows. It’s not a day to be outside in the elements, and yet I consider the consequences of a walk. We take the world as it comes to us, make of it what we can, celebrate the ordinary and find the magic where we may.

      Celebrating ordinary isn’t what the world highlights. Everyone is hyper-focused on placing themselves in the most extraordinary places, doing the most extraordinary things, living their “best life” (whatever that means when you stop to think about it). Perhaps our focus should be on the moment at hand, wherever we might be.

      I celebrate waking up this morning, hearing that tap, tap, tap of the rain and sleet and the roof over my head that makes it all seem so far away. I celebrate the conversations I’ve had with those I love, listening to how their day went, and celebrating with them the moments that made their ordinary more alive. I celebrate the quiet in an often chaotic world, removing myself from the noise but listening for the voice of those in need.

      Life is infinite pleasure when you focus on the small joys. Life is more realized when we wrestle with our pain and loss and setbacks. Each moment informs, when we are taught to see. Learning to savor our ordinary vitality is the path to a magical life. A life worthy of our short dose of days.

    • A Wednesday Walk in the Woods

      “Listen! Let the high branches go on with their opera, it’s the song of the fields I wait for, when the sky turns orange and the wind arrives, waving his thousand arms.” — Mary Oliver, Wind

      The woods were quiet save for the steady clump, swish, click of this clydesdale making his way through the fields and woods on snowshoes. The snow had transformed from powdery bliss Sunday to snowball clingy in the warm sun. In New England you work with whatever Mother Nature gives you, and a lunch walk on a warmish day brought isolation from humanity and companionship from thousands of naked old friends biding their time to bud in Spring.

      Steadily I make my way through the forest to revisit favorite spots. I have memories of who I once was in certain places, for the trail whispers. Why do we settle on the familiar so often, when the world offers so much to discover? The trick when walking in familiar woods is to look for the different. The most obvious tell was the snow itself, tracks and consistency completely transformed in a few days, and it will be again on every visit.

      Autumn leaves lay scattered near a dug-up clump of snow. Deer tracks? No… Canine. The tracks and leaves tell the rest of the story. I realize I’m telling my own story with every step. I wonder who might read it? The trees stand stoic and unmoved.

      I climb up a small rise on virgin snow. Something catches my eye and I walk closer for a look. Someone built a lean-to between two oak trees, with netting and fallen tree branches making up the roof. This wasn’t new, just unnoticed on prior walks. They’d wanted it that way, of course, building it up away from the trail. I wondered at the builder for a moment, and left the mystery unsolved. The world is full of questions, I don’t feel compelled to answer every one of them.

      Turning back, I recalled this line of poetry from Mary Oliver about tree branches waving in the breeze. We know this song, the woods and I. Looking around one last time I look for an excuse to linger. They stand in cold indifference and show me the way home.

      Biding their time