Unmoved
The solitary bird loves the wood;
your heart also not of the world.
~ Chia Tao
Unmoved by loss I sit,
liquid ghosts rain down
from the heavens, coyote winds
shriek and threaten,
but an impassive I stares blankly
at the candle-dance of loss
seeking to seduce me
with her charms.
I know this scene, have tasted
its sweet agony, nearly drowned
in the shallow hope
that its elemental desire
would steal my last breath.
Simple silliness, a child's need
to be saved, for the loving hand
of god to reach down and pull me,
screaming and wet as a newborn,
from my pain, the invisible touch
like feathers brushing my cheek.
I know better. So I sit, unmoved,
moths circling around me as though
I am radiant, and a raven
swoops down to feast on the flying
insects, nearly knocking me
from my isolated seat, disrupting
this ritual of detachment, this fear
of embracing the piercing caw of my life.
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As I sat in my cubicule during a recent 10-day Vipassana retreat, supposedly meditating, it came to me that that thrill, that illusory peace, that luscious identity of being "one of two," that feeling I was certain was love which had all come to me from my failed love affair, were in some sense "stolen." Hope, dreams, identity--all that emotional investment and attachment, I'd taken the energy of it from somewhere and now, with my sweeter half gone for good, the awesome burdensomeness of its stolen nature was stripped bare and made agonizingly plain. The baggage had to be unpacked; hope, dreams, and identity had to be put back where I got them. The phrase that came to me was, "All the hopes, all the dreams: I give them back." There was a sensation like steam rising from my flesh, a sensation like heavy wooden stakes being dislodged from my body (I was going to write "soul" but, really, there was nothing metaphysical about the feeling!) I might be the most affectless, coolest customer I know, but I sobbed then. Boy, did I. But it all had to go. It all has to go.
ReplyDeleteKai in NYC
Do you write poetry, Kai? If not, you might want to try some day.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing that -- it's a variation on what I was feeling last night. I had lunch with a friend yesterday and talking about things made me realize that I had detached too soon from the mourning process, that there is some of what you so clearly described above that needs to happen.
So I sit, a little less unmoved.
Peace,
Bill