When Gravity Comes Up To Meet You

Strange though it may seem, when gravity comes up to meet you there is a floating sensation.  There’s a buoyancy in the way one’s bones sink into the support of the ground, floor, earth.  A buoyancy not unlike the one found in water with a high concentration of salt.  There is lightness contained in heaviness.

As in nature’s sanctuary, when gravity comes up to meet you, you return to your center and your actions take root there.  The microcosm of You comes more fully into alignment with the macrocosm of the Cosmic Mystery.

When gravity comes up to meet you, you locate yourself as if by compass.  Where does the needle point?  Which way is true north?  What might it mean to take a particular path in a particular direction? 

You hear the universal orchestra tuning up to play a symphony of eternity, spaciousness, presence, love – always improvised, never rehearsed.

How gently down the stream one might row one’s boat, if allowed to wander.

No Fixed Course

So there is the dog, the cat, the table and chair, books, photographs, keepsakes.  The peel of an onion and a bit of parsley on a wooden cutting board.  There is the hedgehog-like orange studded with cloves, the calendar on the wall, each week’s same seven days named after the planets of our milky galaxy.  There is each day, this day, the only day, ever always and once again setting this task before you: break open your heart.  Do your work, and let it be a work in progress.  Let there be no fixed course.  

There are the organs working their magic inside of you, the longed-for renunciation of all your desires.  There is the routine each day, to some the subject of fervent dedication.  And yet the routine exists within the construct of an erratic life whose days are lived out in a world ruled by impermanence. 

There is Nature, the greatest teacher.  Here are the qualities that show us how to live in this world.  Here is the music to be revered, the architecture to be contemplated.  Let it be softly observed, gently noticed.  Not studied wildly like some mad scientist yearning for discovery.

The Only Number I Still Remember

873-8480 you were an awful lot of eights on a rotary phone.  873-8480 I recite you over and over as if you were a chant, a mantra, a line from the movie Rain Man.

873-8480 I dialed you my whole boyhood to talk to Grandma Ruth.  I loved to talk to Grandma Ruth.  873-8480 restore my heart, deliver me, heal me, save me.

873-8480 you are the only number I still remember in this strange new world of the mind handing over information to technology.  If the global server crashed tomorrow, would we know who we are anymore?  Would our minds begin to strengthen again?  Photo albums, cameras, address books – sales would skyrocket.

873-8480 you lived on the truck route corner, the clatter and grind of jake-brakes vibrating the roof of the double-wide trailer home, moving the blades of the Dutch windmill pumphouse half a degree clockwise.  

873-8480 the covered porch where she taught me how to shoot pool, played the old 45’s, had a martini and talked about Paul Newman.  873-8480 the carport with her little yellow Porsche near her garden with the climbing string beans, the crystal bowl with peanut M and M’s beneath the lid, the little animal figurines along a ledge near the front-room ceiling: duck, whale, llama.  “Isn’t he the darndest thing?”

873-8480 the carved wood shapes of naked girls set into cupboard doors in the bathroom, made for her by a retired Army man, an ex-boyfriend who lived in an RV, Carl I think his name was.

873-8480 do you remember how she always kept Neapolitan ice cream in the freezer?  It explains her way of being in the world, how she lived: “a little bit of everything, kiddo”.    

873-8480 she called the couch a Davenport.  She called bratwurst Oktoberfest Sausage.  She read me Dr. Seuss.  She loved braunschweiger sandwiches with mustard and sliced raw red onion.  She called Richard Dawson the kissing bandit, wished bankruptcy on Wheel of Fortune contestants when they got greedy, went skydiving at age 72, called me on my birthday to tell me she had decided to commit assisted suicide through the Death With Dignity Act.

873-8480 hand me that box of tissue I can’t take it I’m vulnerable my heart might give out.  You’re a seven-number combination key on the lock-box in my memory bank.

 

 

Stephen Levine’s Definition of Death

“It is the ultimate in natural conservation in which the container is discarded but the contents are recycled.”   – Stephen Levine

Gardening

To be not who I thought I was, but who I became.

Worldly life, keen-edged chisel.  And I, the chiseled,

a garden tended by a master gardener.

How much lovelier now than it was

before the passing of fire and flood, before the pruning.

 

Mother’s Day

C.M. Rivers

With Mother’s Day approaching, I’ve been thinking about my mom even more than usual.  I can’t believe she flew from the world 25 years ago.  To all those who still have their mother: love her, forgive her, tell her how you feel, ask her to tell you something you don’t already know about her life.

This poem first appeared in 2014, in The Wayfarer Journal of Contemplative Literature.  Love you mom.

Knapsack

It’s a shame

I don’t have the patience to garden,

my mother being who she was,

doing what she did with sunflowers

and lemon balm.

And with me being who I am-

a fine cook responsible

for so many glowing embers,

so many bubbling broths.

The memory of her is light enough

to take with me wherever I go,

propelled by the sea breeze,

pushed along by intimate hands,

drawn down muddy roads

slashed with the watercolors

of…

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Many Rhythms

You have known many takers, known many givers, walked many pathways, crossed many rivers.

You have known many husbands, lovers and wives.  You have died many deaths, lived many lives.

You have been a seeker, you have been a finder, you have found the forgotten and remained a reminder.

You have worn many costumes and fanned a few fires.  You’ve tidied the mess and untangled the wires.

You have been the wild, been the idle, swung up in the saddle and borne the bridle.

You are the gardener as well as the flower.  You are eternity and also the hour.

You have written the song, invented the singer.  You are a happiness giver, sadness bringer.

You have climbed the wall, slept on the floor.  All this you have done, and more.

All these things, I too may be.  All these things, I too might see,

though it’s true we come from different places, though we look through eyes on different faces.

Many roads, one destination.  Many rhythms, one vibration.