Chasms

Last month as I rode in the shuttle on my way to the airport, I glanced out my window and saw what I can only describe as a chasm in the clouds.  Just as the road began to curve away from the sky chasm, I snapped the photo below. Then at the airport, I wrote the first draft of a poem.  

Some background:

When I was an adolescent, I used to walk around the house holding a big square mirror in front of me, mirror side up.  Frameless, this mirror was the perfect tool for me to practice walking on the ceiling. When I looked down into the mirror, I saw ceiling as my floor, so as I moved around the house, I needed to avoid stepping on lights that were now growing out of the white painted drywall beneath me. I also had to step over high thresholds in order to go through doorways, and I enjoyed noting how low the windows hung. 

So, with lots of upside down walking under my belt, it wasn't a big stretch for me to fantasize about walking on clouds and falling through the chasms between them.  I invite you to turn your view upside down and explore chasms with me now.

Chasms

in earth

and sky.

between people, too,

              though the cold, human chasms

              aren’t quite as obvious…

or maybe they are.

if i miss-stepped

while walking

upside down

on puffy white

trails and shores,

would I fall

through the chasm

between clouds

into sky,

forever and ever?

there really is no such thing

as a bottomless pit

of dirt or depression

   but I am told

   that the sky, stretching

   into outer space

      and beyond

         might just be

bottomless,

     edgeless,

         endless

             wonder

i can’t remember

ever really knowing

no end -

              roads,

                           lazy afternoons,

toddlerhood

and

              time spent with you

                           all end, especially when

i’m not ready.

infinity, eternity...

surely they’re more

or maybe less

than just

continuous repeats

of what we know now,

not planets and suns and daily life

stretching out over and over

in ceaseless choruses

of human imagination.

i would call that hell.

this chasmic exploration

is quite an

undoing -

there’s nothing

to hold onto,

the parachute fails,

and

     i

       fall

            into

                azure

                     abyss

it’s quite peaceful here.  really.

Carol Barrow

January, 2016

Till the Moon and Stars are Gone

Michael and I are going through everything in the house, one closet or drawer at a time.  We are throwing away and donating.  It is amazing how much lighter things can be.

Right now I am sorting through a box that we found in the closet we visited yesterday.  I am having too much fun.  This is how I am (you may be this way, too):  I love being a little pack-ratty, because at some point, I will visit a box or a file or a coat pocket, and I will find FUN!

For instance, I just found a biography of ME written by my daughter when she was fourteen.  She wrote it for school.  It is bound in a stiff paper binder, and the front looks like this (but without the messy cross-outs I added for privacy's sake):

I have had so much fun reading this!  Noticing the spin from a fourteen-year-old's perspective.  So beautiful.

When Jamie mentioned her own birth, she didn't say a thing about how gorgeous she was, and she didn't mention the daffodils that were showing themselves in the park as we drove home from the hospital.  But she included a poem that I wrote for her shortly after her birth:

Jamie

You wake each day as

the sunshine rises,

Smiling to greet the dawn.

You laugh and sing with 

the birds outside,

Till the moon and stars are gone.

And I know each time

I look at you,

I see all that is and was

and will be.

The oceans and mountains,

the young and old,

are all within your eyes.

And this is what she wrote about me at the end of the biography:

The virtues she wants her children to have are kindness, self-esteem, and respect for others. 

She doesn't know what the future brings, but has high hopes.

Twenty-three years since this bio was written (wowzers!) and now I can take a look at a big piece of the future that young mother, Carol, was facing.  If time travel were an option, I would go back and tell her that her future will be interesting and challenging and rich and wonderful.  I would let her know that her children will truly grow to be kind, with sufficient self-esteem that continues to grow and, they have sincere respect for others. And all that is and was and will be - the oceans and mountains, the young and old - will always shine within her beautiful daughter's eyes.

Who Dies?*

This last week was a remembrance of David Bowie and his impact on music and on our lives.  His death brought up great memories for so many of us.  His songs.  And, for me, memories of an adventure which culminated in seeing him in concert.  

I had just moved into one side of a duplex, when my friend and I decided one evening to follow a new neighbor who I had heard was in a rock band.  Patti and I waited on my front porch until this neighbor left for, we assumed (correctly), his Saturday night gig, then we hopped in my car, and I followed him for miles.  One of my smartest moves was when, in order to avoid being obvious, I continued on past the parking lot where he had stopped and parked.  I planned to turn around and come back after Neighbor was in the bar setting up.  Then Patti and I could go in and listen to the band.  But as we drove past the parking lot where Neighbor was getting his guitar out of the back seat, he waved at us - he had known all along that we had followed him.  I would not make a good detective.

After we arrived at the dark, smoky bar, Patti and I sat at a small table immediately in front of the stage, and I drank my usual, bourbon and coke (this was another lifetime ago).  At some point, it was announced that I had won the door prize.  With the $50 I won, I bought beers for the band, then I told Patti that I was going to buy us tickets to David Bowie's Glass Spider Tour.  And that, my friends, is how I got to see David Bowie.  (I have no idea whatever happened to Neighbor.)

Many beautiful tributes to David Bowie have been shared. It has been fun to re-live younger days when Bowie songs were a bigger part of my life. I wasn't really a Bowie-aholic, and I can't add a thing to what has already been said about him.

But today I found out that Stephen Levine died, and I was/am a Stephen Levine-aholic.  I loved that man.  I consider him my first spiritual teacher.  I didn't know him personally - I only read his books (over and over), and I took a couple of workshops with him - but his writings and his presence changed my life.  He taught me how to "be with" life and death.  Because of him, I healed a lot of the pain and mistaken beliefs surrounding the loss of my baby.  I also owe Stephen Levine a deep bow for helping me to have the courage to volunteer at hospice for years. My family's legacy of "death is a failure" stopped with me because of what I learned from that beautiful man.

Now the teacher is gone, and the Beloved which he pointed me to, over and over in so many loving ways, remains.  Really, the Beloved was all that was here all along. It has sometimes showed up as Stephen Levine - and as David Bowie, and as you and me and all of this amazing experience called life.  And, still, right now, my heart feels broken.

From Stephen Levine's Breaking the Drought:

The light has been left on for us, p. 61

[final verse]

I am the imaginary hero of my hopes

lost between verbs that require I know

who I am, but I am just a passing thought —

yet somehow, somehow — as close to a

miracle as we get — the nature

of the heart — the Beloved

has left the light on for us all night . . .

Lorca and Whitman deas as Basho, and just as alive p. 142

[final verse]

The sun follows the superstition of blue

across the arc of summer

and the world comes to an end

just the way it began yesterday.

There is a silence between breaths, p. 77

There is a silence between breaths

when the heart becomes a sacred flame

and the belly uncoils which reminds me

how remarkable it is to wake

beside you another day.

Between deaths we dreamed together

between breaths, in that stillness,

which has joined us ever since.

In that first breath

we step onto the dance floor,

and waltz unnoticed through the void.

The sacred everywhere we turn

and turn again, as form so generously dissolves

and only the Beloved remains.

In this moment which lasts a lifetime

there is nowhere to stand

where you are not beside me

where you do not accompany me within.

*Who Dies?: An Investigation of Conscious Living and Conscious Dying is a wonderful book by Stephen Levine

Death of What We Don't Want to See

Not my most uplifting piece, for sure.  I am feeling sadness at the destructive things that are happening all over the world - many of them the results of the lives we've lived for decades and centuries - and I'm noticing that, at best, we put band-aids on the problems, just like we often put on make-up and dye our hair, while our bodies suffer from lack of care.


Death of What We Don't Want to See

i'm sorry.  i can't help but noticing
   the news is not all that good.
your towns are burning, flooding; their
governments corrupting,
and the weather all crazy.

but who am I to say 
   that this is wrong?  the trajectory
        was launched so long ago.
        as sex will at some point hit
              the jackpot - then diapers, 
              rebellion, and empty nesting,...

we've dug and cut and thrown away, and
   it's natural that this trajectory
        launched so long ago 
        will at some point hit
             the jackpot - then hunger, 
              rebellion, refugees, and ???

is it too late?  i wonder why i
sometimes forget grief.  it's like my soles
        and the arch of my back 
        are dying, all that's hidden breaking
              down, while i paint my eyebrows, 
              dye my hair and smile.

Carol Barrow, 2015

Boogeyman

This poem, a series of dekaaz (dekaazes?), brings in experience from my recent solo retreat, along with experience in this world of violence and "other".

Boogeyman

I

Two weeks,
so alone,
list'ning to my heart,

peace, joy,
mosquitoes
my only neighbors.

But still,
nightly fear -
a scraggly old man,

lost teeth,
crooked thoughts,
on dark nights watches

through lit
windows and
freezes me in fright.

I sit
in darkness
dreading to be seen.

Go look
for that man,
my teacher nudges.

Bug bites
too itchy -
I can't fathom more.

A gift -
mosquito net -
erases excuse.

The moon
shines bright, full
I dance beneath it.

I see
no scraggles,
no crooked thoughts. Yet

still I
turn off lights,
stuck in scared beliefs.



II

Each day
we humans
listen to the news,

the world,
universe,
our only neighbors.

Eating
nightly fear -
guns, bombs, terrorists.

Confused,
crooked thoughts.
Why do they hate us?

We keep
our blinds drawn,
our eyes straight ahead.

Don't care
for others
who don't look like us.

Go look
in their eyes,
the wise ones nudge us.

We feel
so much fear.
We can't fathom more.

A gift -
The One Heart -
erases excuse.

The moon
shines bright, full
on all beneath it -

even
the scraggles,
bad, crooked thoughts.  Yet

still, we
dim our lights,
stuck in scared beliefs.


III

So much
compassion
is asked for, always.








Carol Barrow, 2015

Reflections

I have not forgotten you, dear, sweet blog.  But I have neglected you.  You are the last to get attention.  I can't say whether or not this will ever change, but I can tell you that there will be times when I hear your call, and find that I can't resist.  Today is one of those days.

The poem below is done in a pantoum form.  From Wikipedia:

The pantoum is a form of poetry similar to a villanelle in that there are repeating lines throughout the poem. It is composed of a series of quatrains; the second and fourth lines of each stanza are repeated as the first and third lines of the next.

 

Reflections

A Pantoum

Yellow sun watches aspen leaves quake and autumn crunching under boot.

Crisp air is still, except for a whisper of breeze

that loosens the hold on what has been.

This body, too, is changing into autumn age.

Crisp air is still, except for a whisper of breeze .

A golden leaf lets go and tumbles head over heels

onto this body who, too, is changing into autumn age

while still remembering spring's lightness and grace.

A golden leaf lets go and tumbles head over heels,

effortlessly surrendering to the season.

I still remember spring's lightness and grace,

my first date and April's bud unfurling.

Effortlessly surrendering to the season,

we are changed from green to gold, supple to serene.

My first date and April's bud unfurling

are memories fading while days grow short.

Yellow sun watches aspen leaves quake and autumn crunching under boot.

Mountain pond silently catches fallen dreams,

loosening the hold on what has been.

Life reflects itself reflects itself reflects itself reflects

~ Carol Barrow, 2015