All that flows within me
Knows the direction of home…
Recognizing itself as visitor,
Passing ferns, and hollows, and stones.
With emerging faith in its currents,
Even when winter is bitter;
Even when water is ice…
Life’s simplicity doth suffice!
As flow pays homage to host,
By residing only for a while…
The brevity of the visit
Seems eternity’s elegant style.
A peculiar perspicuity has been placed…
Where forms by spring soon to be covered,
Now with clarity may be discovered…
Dispensation just for this season and its own particular reason…
For now is granted crystal clarity,
Placed in this in-between-moment,
Of lucidity bequeathed between
True winter and false spring’s unrelenting foment.
For that which we thought to be,
Was only our expectation…
And this season’s perspicacious advisor taught us instead…
The true form of wisdom’s exaltation!
Greet each season in the moment…
Like a stranger upon the path;
With a sense of humble unknowing,
You shall find wisdom’s freedom lasts.
The first and finest training I have received by a poet was from the poet David Whyte. A group of us had been brought together by Bob Anderson, at a resort in Texas. David had each of us stand in front of the opthers and practise “filling the room” with presence, and then to share a poem we had made (unwritten and spontaneous). I remember my legs shaking and trembling with energy as I struggled to bring my voice to the poem I shared. Out came a poem, “Dark Bed of the Lake”. It has been quite a while since then, and yet I hope that what I am doing now gives honor to that time with David Whyte.
In honor of David, here is a quote of his recent interview with Sounds True that says it all (italics are mine)!
“Poetry, in the way it’s been taught, has been so abstracted. As an actual living art form, poetry is human speech at the edge of revelation, at the edge of discovery. The rhythms and diction and imagery of poetry, at its best, are very close to the way that human beings speak when they are in extreme situations of loss, of love, of revelation, of expansion, and even of contraction and disappearance. Good poetry always uses images that belong to everyone”.
I hope that you find the images in my poetry belong to you.
Stephen W Emerick
Human Nature: The desire to be loved.
Written for my daughters. And Jim’s daughters.
A Parent’s Eyes
I have searched the old and yellowed scrolls,
And texts from far and wide.
You blessed the unwed mother
I have spoken to so many
Yet how is all this possible?
I have heard of Mary and her Joseph,
I then was
Far too long in darkness,
Blind with never ending digging–
Seeking Water in dark soil,
Hope…my ships only rigging.
I then saw
Digging towards me in earnest faith
Through faithlessness unfathomable,
And black-capped visions of despair…
The Sacred unimaginable!
I then felt
All that had kept me bound
Break away, and in peace alone,
I sailed through the open Portal,
To the Sea I now call home.
To be fall’s last leaf leaving,
No longer to tree am tied;
Will countenance then be covered…
Because it has fallen and died?
Will fellow’s of forest gather round…
With grief and sadness bereft?
Is all hope and longing lost,
Beneath winter’s covering cleft?
Or if on the family tree…
There is none left but me;
And I lie prostrate upon the ground…
Will I too with leaf’s laurel be crowned?
Perhaps then like the prodigal one,
After a long and laborious leave…
I will find I have not left, but arrived…
By the arms of home received.
Dark woods
Shrouded hoods…
Night eyes
See through lies…
Trembling alarm,
Immanent harm!
Pulse of night
Inner sight…
Faults, fears, and
Penitent tears…
Put to rest
On Angel’s breast!
Bestowing light,
And all is right.
I have been to the grand ball of the forest–
Enthralled by the sight of it all–
The doors of spring parted before me,
And what wonders I recall!
As summer entered gradly
On the extending arm of fall,
WINTER stood jealous by the window pane–
Ready to blanket it all!
More I would gladly tell you–
But the sacred leaves me mute!
Oh, when next will I hear the tune
Of the night wind’s hollow flute?
They say the blind are sighted
In ways we cannot see
Perhaps the eyes of forest
Are just the same as these
Where vision is held in presence
As contours are held by touch
Where glen and glade in-gather
For miracles are made of such
Paths take a turn toward the inward
What was outside resides within
As all we sense around us
Joins inscapes joyous hymns
Blind and sighted intermingle
And all are sighted by need
From every form of blindness
Each finds its freedom indeed
For there is found to be no partition
Between observer and observed
Belief of seperation in deep woods
Is found to be absurd
Spirit’s vision now reads by Braille
Of bark and bramble and brook
And as we leave the forest
This is the lesson we took
It is in the closing of eyes
In wonder’s stance of awe
That any kind of blindness
Is healed by what we saw
In forested new-found vision
There is no need for seeing
A new world is now upon us
For this is the season of Being
