Looking Out the Same Window

For nearly twenty years, I've sat at my writing table mornings writing poems, and looking out the same window day after day. Some of the poems are included in books, some are published in literary journals, while others are displayed in the poetry box at the end of my wheelchair ramp. Many are filed away to be shared if or when the appropriate occasion arises. After the stroke that paralyzed my left side, I wrote poems focused on the stroke and my work recovering from that stroke. Many of those poems became part of the collection that made up my book Stroke, a book I'm happy to say has contributed to the understanding of the stroke experience for many stroke survivors and their families, friends, physicians, and occupational, physical, and speech therapists.

I continue writing poems at the same table, facing the same window. Looking out, I observe the changing seasons, the Deerfield River flowing past, or its surface frozen and piled high with snow, patterns in the snow changing by cold wind sweeping through the valley. I watch birds at my feeder and ducks floating on the water. Sometimes sea gulls soar over the river and hawks glide over the hill that rises across from it. There's no end to the activity, whether it's a single dry leaf trembling in a fall breeze, or clouds changing their shapes as I watch. Every day I see new things, or I see old things in new ways. I don't always write about what I see, but what I observe in nature always helps connect me to the deep places in my heart from which my poetry comes. Often I think of the scripture: “Be still and know that I am God.”

When not writing poetry or recording dreams and thoughts in my journal, I work on the memoir that I began to write over ten years ago. Each time I return to it, I find myself looking at my past in the context of the evolution of my consciousness that continues to change the way I look at everything including that past. What never changes-except to grow stronger in my heart and clearer in my mind-is the love that infuses all creation.


What We Know

The hill across the river
Has disappeared in fog.
By simply looking
I can't even tell that it's there.
Occasionally small clumps of ice
Piled with snow
Float down river.
Slowly.
Without my glasses
I could mistake each
For a splendid white duck.
Or a snow goose
That has lost its way
To grace me
With its brief appearance.

A car just passed out front.
Its tires splashed in the slush.
The snow is melting rapidly.
Though it's still deep.
And we have weeks of winter
Before spring comes.
But what we know that our senses
Or facts don't tell us!
Like the loving warmth I feel enfold me
In response
To the insistent longing in my heart-
Something inexpressible
But absolute
Sensed in my soul as I sit
In stillness and silence
This grey morning
Before the sun breaks through.

©2008Margaret Robison


A New Song

Islands of thin ice float
Down the river
While wisps of fog
Hang over them
Like so many angels
Accompanying each
On its journey.
I too am on a journey-
The journey of my awakening.
“Sing unto the Lord a new song,”
The Bible says. And I do.
I open my mouth and syllables
Of whispered praise pour forth
During this quiet time
Before the sun rises like laughter
To bless the hill with its gold.
“Sing unto the Lord a new song,”
The Bible repeats and morning
Repeats itself too-each day new
As a baby's first breath,
While more words of praise
Form in the my bones' marrow,
In my heart's most secret places,
And in the deep knowing
That tells me who I am.
“Sing unto the Lord a new song,”
The Bible says. And I do.
Mother, Father, God,
I could not do otherwise,
Being your daughter
Born anew each sunrise
With a burst of joy at the waking.

©2008Margaret Robison