Staying Close

Read Mark’s weekly reflections on The Huffington Post and VividLife.

My new book of poems, Reduced to Joy, has just been published. The book contains seventy-three poems, retrieved and shaped over the last thirteen years, about the nature of working with what we’re given till it wears us through to joy. For the next few months, I’d like to share poems from the new book with you.

Once we are blessed to have a sense of what it means to be fully awake and alive, we are challenged to return there, when we stray. And we will all stray, because we’re human and this is what humans do. Often, the smallest moment will catch our heart’s eye, like a small angel calling us to return to what matters. How? By simply lingering long enough to have the moment enter us. This poem speaks to moments that have opened me.

 

STAYING CLOSE

Putting

a child on a horse.

 

Hanging

silk to dry.

 

Watching

snow fill the crack

in a bridge.

 

Waiting

in the shadow of a bird.

 

Touching

the shoulder of the moon.

 

Wetting

the lips of one

who has given up.

 

Letting

the stone

in your heart crumble.

 

Placing

a flower over a blade.

 

Sitting

in a boat till

there is no ripple.

 

A Question to Walk With: Discuss this notion of small moments returning us to what matters with a friend. Have each of you tell the story of such a moment and how it has impacted you.