Mark Nepo's Blog, page 30

My Own Path

I was born with the ability to see in metaphor. This has been my inborn way of relating to the one living sense. From the earliest age, the world has spoken to me in this way. The analogous relationship of things has called, not in words, but in a silent language that has somehow shown me, however briefly, the web of connection under everything. This gift is a function of presence; that is, when I am present enough, metaphors appear. They are my teachers. All of my poems are just notes from these teachers. Seeing how things go together sustains me. The moment of such grasping is like a synapse that is fired and life-force is released. Presence and time are servants of light. In this, enlightenment is an experience, no matter how brief, of the light within coinciding with the light in the world. In moments of enlightenment, like moments of poetry or love, we both lose who we are and sustain who we are. In such moments, we are sent back into ourselves illuminated.

The fact that I have lived a life as a poet is testament to my friendship with metaphor. That the life of poetry has exposed itself as a life of spirit is testament to my friendship with the connectedness of all things that metaphor exists to praise. Ultimately, it doesn't matter if we write it down or not. The true poetry happens the instant the metaphor is seen. The rest is blessed labor to make the invisible visible. So after a lifetime it's clear that the human form of light is love which only presence and time can comfort into being. The way immense sunshine and heat cause the light within a seed hidden in the earth to seek its own nature and somehow break ground.

So my own path of listening has led me here. For much of my life has been devoted to staying in conversation with everything around me—with the mystery, with God or Source, with the rivers of change, with you. As I get older, I long even more for the wisdom and companionship of other living things; to stay in conversation with all I love, with all I admire, with all who have suffered and given of themselves to stay alive and to keep life going. In many ways, our stories are part of one story. Our pain is part of one pain. Our surprise at the beauty and fragility of life is part of one chorus of awe. My passion now is to stay as close as possible to the pulse of what is kind and true; to stay in conversation with what happens there and to experience more and more ways to listen.

Over the years, the trail of these conversations has become the books I write. The further I go, the more of one water they are, as if each book is a different shaped bucket which I haul to the sea, scooping what I can. When it is full, well, that's the next book. And each book uncovers some learning that leads to the next. In this way, each book is a teacher, leading me more deeply into the many ways of being here.

Down Time

The days have been unseasonably muggy in the Rogue Valley for a week now, and I have felt sluggish, like being under water too long.

I had words to edit and write today, and galleys and books to read, but all I really felt like doing was sleeping. I did that for a couple of hours when my eyes wouldn't focus, then stay open during the reading. I slept soundly, awoke peacefully, and returned to the writing. But nothing came.

Earlier in my life, I would have toughed it out, staying in the chair, staring, writing words and sentences I knew were bad before they landed, grinding my teeth and urging the right words to come.

Instead, I put the writing away and went downtown to watch the new Woody Allen film, Midnight in Paris. It felt great to spend ninety minutes in Paris, and even better to know that I had listened to my body telling me, Hey, take a break! I listened, as I don't always do, and now I look forward to what tomorrow may bring. Mostly, though, I'm grateful for this quiet, subdued, Neptunian day. I'm thankful I tuned in.

May you hear and heed your inner guidance, too.

In the Back of the Eye

What the heart sees from under its break is

always true. When I had cancer and Grandma

died, that moment erupted, a silent explosion

that sent her away and deeper into me at the

same time. When the sun came up behind

that mountain on the way to Santa Fe, my

soul somehow knew it was safe to creep back

into the world. When I was afraid in every

direction, the only place my heart could chew

was in the meadow of now. It's as if we carry

a very soft emblem of the fire of life way inside

and we are hardened to keep it from going out.

Then one day a bird we've never seen pokes at

the window and we think nothing of it but every-

thing within us knows it's time. And the hard-

ened places start to crack and the heart stirs

from its waking sleep. And all the softness

we've carried since birth is suddenly at the

mercy of wind and rain. Now when I see you

rubbing your hand, I feel all the things you've

held. Now when I see the snow cover the trees,

I hear the story of every tree. Now I am forced

to stop on track 19 at Union Station, letting

everyone rush on by, feeling their filaments

of soul flicker.

Spring: A State of Mind

Spring in southern Oregon's Rogue Valley seems very elusive this year. We have had day after day of

rain and chill. And yet, the hills and gardens are wildly green. The bees are back, humming everywhere as I walk and walk.

The bees are lovely in their working music. Their motion and color dazzle and amuse me. Often, I lean in to honeysuckle or wisteria just to be with them. They go on about their business, paying me no mind, or at least none that leads to a sting, a natural world reproach.

And so writing this I consider: surely spring has come to my valley after all. Spring is an event of earth and sky, an emotion of weather. It is also a state of mind, an inner weather and emotion.

My spring may be wet and gray and chilly, but it is my spring just the same. It's thrilling to be here, in it, part of it. When the sun arrives, it will be just as thrilling to say hello, welcome back. It's enough that my mind is filling up with the season's colors—gray, green, blue, white, yellow. The word, yellow . . . it sounds so much like hello.

Hello, and blessings and happy spring to you wherever you are.

Waking Up to the Poetry of Your Practice: Discovering Your Soul-poem, with Robert McDowell

Robert McDowell returns to the Bay Area to lead a transformative workshop.

REGISTRATION INFORMATION

Lisa VanderBoom

707.779.8224

events@noetic.org

Waking Up to the Poetry of Your Practice is a workshop led by Robert McDowell, poet and author of the bestselling Poetry as Spiritual Practice and the new The More We Get Together: The Sexual and Spiritual Language of Love (September 2011)

Each of us is born with an authentic voice, a soul-poem. As we swim in the womb, we listen to and absorb our first compelling poem, the beating of our mother's heart.

Born into a world that often disregards poetry, we must make our way back in spiritual practice to that unique, root language of devotion.

Whether you've been writing for a long time, or are just beginning, Waking Up to the Poetry of Your Practice will bring you home. Through meditation, Poem Talks, and playful individual and collaborative writing exercises, we'll reconnect with the sacred land and our important place on it. We'll embrace the joy of writing and make spiritual discoveries that will deepen our practices, whatever they may be.

Participants will be engaged through Poem Talks, featuring a range of poems from diverse cultures; through guided meditations and walking meditations; through recitation; through enjoyable individual and collaborative writing exercises; through deep listeningand one‐on‐one mentoring.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

• Reconnect with one's root wisdom language

• Engage deeply in the conversation‐through‐writing with oneself

• Enhance deep listening skills

• Learn more about the diverse forms of poetry

• Improve writing and communication skills

• Strengthen self‐confidence and spiritual practice

• Discover a compassionate community of fellow travelers

• Remember how to have fun in writing and practice

• Become a better storyteller

• Walk into the wide world on a poet's feet

Mark Nepo featured on "Finding Sarah" June 19

Watch Mark Nepo on "Finding Sarah" on June 19th on OWN.

The Better Way to Go

One at a time, they come off the plane:

looking for someone, arriving alone,

returning, beginning. They get off.

I wait to get on. Suddenly, it's not

just the 11:35 to Chicago. But the

immigrants leaving Europe. Or the

thousands filing in and out to see the

lost Buddhas of Cambodia. Or the box-

cars with no exit. They get off. I wait to

get on. It doesn't matter where we're going.

I want to stop the old man shuffling. He

seems to carry a secret. It weighs him

down. It makes him search the floor

for the crack to the underworld he

was told would be here. We are

coming and going. Born. Dying.

In and out of life. Only no one

knows whether getting on or getting

off is the better way to go. The old man

pushes through the revolving door. He's

looking for his baggage. Here's another

with a limp in her heart. It makes me

want to stand and simply hum the

one true thing I know, hum it till

it starts to ring. And what if I could

sing it till it undresses all our cries?

Would anyone recognize it, know

it as their own? Would some join

in? I'm asked to board. To get on

with it. She looks at my passport

to see if it's me. As if to say, Are

you you? I think she understands.

Her Name Meant Light

—Forgive me.

I loved a woman who loved the earth.

I met a man who was going there,

where you had lifted the faces of children.

He now works where you are buried.

He scratched his chin and said, "I know

someone is out there, beneath a tree,

but I don't know who she was."

When you were dying, your thin

wrist in my hand, I knew I'd be here,

in this day, busting with my sense of

you before people who never

heard your voice.

Forgive me. It is impossible

to keep your memory alive.

Even your father never sent me

the picture that split me with an ache,

the one with long brown hair

from years before we met.

He never sent it, though I asked

three times. And now like all memorials,

the spirit's gone, aerating the earth

and stone is stone, tree is tree

except your ash has fed its root.

Forgive me. I keep writing your name

but can't out-write the wave of life

that sweeps you from the sand.

No matter how I sing of you,

there's always someone who appears

just as I'm finished. I can't keep up.

Even when I stand before strangers

and say, I loved her so, my words rise

in the air above their hearts

and I can't stay the silence,

the merciless patient silence

which waits for every cry to fade

into that sea of God

that frees us

of our names.

For Jane, Branden & Eoghan on their graduations

Imagine being the players who

Five thousand years ago

Banged on the giant boulders

At Wadi Abu Dom

What were you playing

What message were you sending

Out of the mountains echoing

Through the foothills

Reverberating across the valley

Then there was water

In the valley and underground falls

Gushing out of the hills

There were people close knit

And carping keeping tabs around the fires

There was intrigue and unspeakable behavior

There was beauty and restorative grace

Your people lived, loved, and died

And the boulders kept saying and sounding

Until the last of you laid down

Going back to the mountain you came from

Imagine that mountain sleep the hills

And valley sleeping and always changing

The coming and going the casting

And remolding heroic deeds and dust

The desert covers every story when it's

Old enough the desert the preservationist

The desert remembers every player

Every season of drought and water

Every son and daughter gets the chance

To play in this the oldest of human stories

How to reach someone how to touch

And feel and hear so that it lasts

Even in the seasons of forgetting

Folded into the envelope of dust you become

Becoming is a long delicious story

And you are in it now so strike the rock

Signs of the One Essence

The tops of clouds that no one sees

illuminated by the sun.

The inside of the heart that no one sees

softened by the soul.

The warmth waiting at the center

of all silence.

The calm waiting at the center

of all feeling.

The coolness waiting at the bottom

of a lake.

The emptiness waiting at the bottom

of all ideas.

The first sign of light that stirs

small birds to sing.

The wordless beginning that awakens

those encumbered to sigh.

Understanding is only the movement

between seasons.