The Growing Edge

 All around us worlds are dying and new worlds are being born; 

all around us life is dying and life is being born. 

The fruit ripens on the tree, the roots are silently at work 

in the darkness of the earth against a time when 

there shall be new lives, fresh blossoms, green fruit. 

Such is the growing edge! It is the extra breath 

from the exhausted lung, the one more thing to try 

when all else has failed, the upward reach of life 

when weariness closes in upon all endeavor. 

This is the basis of hope in moments of despair, 

the incentive to carry on when times are out of joint 

and men have lost their reason, the source of confidence 

when worlds crash and dreams whiten into ash. 

The birth of a child — life’s most dramatic answer to death — 

this is the growing edge incarnate. 

Look well to the growing edge!

—Howard Thurman

[Photo of Ella (2) meeting her baby sister, Harper Grace, our youngest grandchild.]

Blessing for the Longest Night

 

All throughout these months,

as the shadows

have lengthened,

this blessing has been

gathering itself,

making ready,

preparing for

this night.

It has practiced

walking in the dark,

traveling with

its eyes closed,

feeling its way

by memory,

by touch,

by the pull of the moon

even as it wanes.

So believe me

when I tell you

this blessing will

reach you,

even if you

have not light enough

to read it;

it will find you,

even though you cannot

see it coming.

You will know

the moment of its

arriving

by your release

of the breath

you have held

so long;

a loosening

of the clenching

in your hands,

of the clutch

around your heart;

a thinning

of the darkness

that had drawn itself

around you.

This blessing

does not mean

to take the night away,

but it knows

its hidden roads,

knows the resting spots

along the path,

knows what it means

to travel

in the company

of a friend.

So when

this blessing comes,

take its hand.

Get up.

Set out on the road

you cannot see.

This is the night

when you can trust

that any direction

you go,

you will be walking

toward the dawn.

—Jan Richardson

The Layers

 

I have walked through many lives, some of them my own,

and I am not who I was,

though some principle of being

abides, from which I struggle

not to stray.

When I look behind,

as I am compelled to look

before I can gather strength

to proceed on my journey,

I see the milestones dwindling

toward the horizon

and the slow fires trailing

from the abandoned camp-sites,

over which scavenger angels

wheel on heavy wings.

Oh, I have made myself a tribe

out of my true affections,

and my tribe is scattered!

How shall the heart be reconciled

to its feast of losses?

In a rising wind

the manic dust of my friends,

those who fell along the way,

bitterly stings my face.

Yet I turn, I turn,

exulting somewhat,

with my will intact to go

wherever I need to go,

and every stone on the road

precious to me.

In my darkest night,

when the moon was covered

and I roamed through wreckage,

a nimbus-clouded voice

directed me:

“Live in the layers,

not on the litter.”

Though I lack the art

to decipher it,

no doubt the next chapter

in my book of transformations

is already written.

I am not done with my changes.

--Stanley Kunitz

[Summer of 1978]

Between the Moon & Me

Sometimes the hour of sadness

Hovers like a cloud 

So fragile and so tender 

Too real to talk about

A finger to my lips

A silent reverie

Just between the moon and me

O how the words unspoken 

Linger on my tongue

Trying to convince me

That what is done is done

But I know what I wish for 

When I’m counting sheep

Just between the moon and me

It’s a minor bird

In a minor tree

The song I know by heart

The key of you and me

And now the past plays tricks

On my memory

Tries to make sense

Out of what will never be

But I am just the prose

She’s the poetry

That’s why she will always be

Just between the moon and me

—Tom Prasada-Rao

[Lyrics written by a talented high school friend].

Time

Time is a relentless river. It rages on, a respecter of no one. And this, this is the only way to slow time: 

When I fully enter time's swift current, enter into the current moment with the weight of all my attention, 

I slow the torrent with the weight of me all here. 

I can slow the torrent by being all here.

—Ann Voskamp (One Thousand Gifts)

[Baasch Family, E. Wallingford, VT, 1995] 

The Stillness of the World Before Bach

 

There must have been a world before
the Trio Sonata in D, a world before the A minor Partita,
but what kind of a world?
A Europe of vast empty spaces, unresounding,
everywhere unawakened instruments
where the Musical Offering, the Well-Tempered Clavier
never passed across the keys.
Isolated churches
where the soprano line of the Passion
never in helpless love twined round
the gentler movements of the flute,
broad soft landscapes
where nothing breaks the stillness
but old woodcutters' axes,
the healthy barking of strong dogs in winter
and, like a bell, skates biting into fresh ice;
the swallows whirring through summer air,
the shell resounding at the child's ear
and nowhere Bach nowhere Bach
the world in a skater's stillness before Bach.

--Lars Gustafsson
translated by Philip Martin

[Douglas performing Bach's Suite VI in D Major for Unaccompanied Cello]

Moon and Water

 

I wake and spend
the last hours
of darkness
with no one but the moon.
She listens
to my complaints

like the good

companion she is
and comforts me surely
with her light.
But she, like everyone,

has her own life.
So finally I understand
that she has turned away,
is no longer listening.

She wants me
to refold myself
into my own life.
And, bending close,

as we all dream of doing,
she rows with her white arms
through the dark water
which she adores.

    --Mary Oliver

[Lunar eclipse 11-8-22]