Nothing Gold / Marilyn Chandler McEntyre

Kat posted this recently, a favorite of mine too, and it is too good not to share:

The road not taken is taken. Beyond the bend
it stretches on in the mind, well-traveled
as the one on which we set our feet.

An untold, imagined story
mingles with memory; actual
and possible paths cross and at each crossing
we pause, not to regret, but to remember
that to choose is to keep choosing.

The after-image of a face beyond a half-open door,
the felt warmth of a room beyond an uncrossed threshold,
the lingering sounds of a conversation that never happened,
leave their record, too, on the heart and in the bones:
fourth dimension of the life we choose and live.

You can lose what you never had—
mourn the unborn child,
the unspoken confession,
the friendship foreshadowed
that drifted away on the next tide.

You can lose what you only imagined having:
evening hours sipping wine over an open book;
walks that wind beyond the routes of responsibility,
the luxury of dailiness: “Oh, it’s you again—
I wondered when you’d come.”

The good-bye hard upon hello,
the embrace that renounces even as it receives,
the same breath caught in anticipation released
in resignation, confuse the opening heart.

By a strange mercy we are allowed
to practice the final paradox—to love and let go,
learning in each release to listen to the voice
that asks, “Do you see yet?” Do you see
how to love the wave already breaking
because it is a wave?
because it breaks?

words for the Equinox

''Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.

I have found the paradox that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.

If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.''

-Mother Teresa

Stand still broken bones, you cannot heal yourselves
face the Blue Mountains & Palouse sky with courage in your veins,
following a path of peace, not fear.
Buenas dias, sun on my back, wildflowers and weeds,
women grown in the same forest:
take your September slowly.

I am not as sad as I was,
or even quite as old;
I am also still on the journey
learning that my own vineyard is mine to give
and yet my heart is not my own.

Exploring each new address by its street names and hiking trails,
its coffee shops and rivers
How many little ones and sisters can you love?
How many places can a body hold?
These are finite numbers, I am learning,
but a pilgrim life either expands your heart,
or breaks it.

So again I will pitch my tent
believing the Spirit is with me
and I am not alone.

should i resist the desert place?

In the Hiawatha Caves, on the trail of the Couer d'Alenes, we traveled in darkness
Pitch darkness I mean, where you can't even see your own hand held inches from your eyes.
Apparently there are creatures who live in caves so long, they lose their sight
generations later, their eyes themselves are also lost
they forget all light.

I pedaled fearful and exhilarated at once, praising a journey that can survive such darkness,
triply grateful for every ray of liquid gold on my skin, shining intervals between the deep
brownness that won't last.

Now in fuller sleep than I've had in months, piecemeal dreams still hover, uninterpretable:
Central American highways and roadside carcasses,
old pick-up trucks and exotic vines,
thousands of miles away from you
dry leaves of a thin reconciliation blown by dusty wind,
but mostly the heavy separation.

Riding through ghost towns, worn brick buildings, decaying into alpine fir,
I listened to the stories of the 1910 forest fire--the one that started in Montana and burned so far west
of train passengers waiting in tunnels for weeks,
water dripping down in the cool blackness
Of animals running to the caves,
a mama bird roasted with her wings spread over her babies,
found still crying and alive:
Love's recognizable silver paint.

There are a hundred pairs of thirsty eyes,
but yours are the ones that haunt my life.

w.w.w.

Pues, yo resolvé gustar mi lugar nuevo antes de mudando, pero la verdad es, !me encanta!

Así, una lista corta de las cosas me gustan hasta este momento:

-yoga classes! and dance! and a free Y membership for the month
-biking to get around!
-biking to the reservoir. running and hiking on the trails there.
-new people, new friends.
-seeing guys in their 20s. everywhere. unreal. and women too. come on!
-frozen yogurt. duh.
-farmers market, of course.
-hearing spanish. speaking spanish. latinos.
-tres universidades!

there really is only so much you can teach your parents

(and still so much you have to learn yourself).

So I am learning to pray more simply. To unclench worried hands. To stomach highway carcasses and pause at signs betraying the truth.

Enseñame tu camino propio
Enseñame tu caminata
Enseñame tu cara.