Lately Christy has been sharing some really beautiful things (read all of her March posts.  Seriously.) that have made me think again about what it means to suffer, what it means to grow when it really hurts to do so, what it means to feel really alone, even when supportive and/or well-intentioned others are around.  And also what it means to want to be gentle with yourself, even when you don’t exactly know how…to wish you could accept others’ love.

The darkest season I’ve experienced so far took place a few years ago.  It was just on its heels, when I was actually beginning to see life at the end of all that death, that I wrote a poem to try to understand what I was experiencing.  My life and faith and identity felt like “death-strewn shores,” and, having experienced a lot of hurt, it had become very, very difficult to trust.  Even those I knew in my gut to be trustworthy had become suspect.  Thankfully (the word feels now like an obscene understatement), a handful of people stuck it out with me, offering, as best they could, what presence and patience and compassion they had to give.

The stranger-friend in the poem is a prototype of this Compassion, this Presence.  Someone like Jesus may have been.  (I wonder what the poem would look like if he were female…)  He embodies the idea that resurrection sometimes cannot happen – in ourselves, or the ones we walk alongside – apart from us acknowledging our own suffering, and standing in solidarity (often wordlessly) with those we care for, not as “outsiders,” but as ones who know from personal experience what it’s like to be there, in the struggle.  Near the end I work with the idea that each of us, in the days and months and seasons of our lives, are at various places on this death/resurrection cycle, and we cannot expect even the most powerful of stranger-friends to escape the death part of it; they, too, (will) need presence and compassion.

Here’s the poem:

What Lives

Crushed boats and oars with severed limbs

Lay lifeless next to empty, haunted shells

Of creatures cast about by tempest’s fury,

Gripping life until the tempest won.

“Death lives,” the scene rasps coldly.

I, a lonely wanderer

Amidst the holy mess,

Assent:

“Death lives.”

And yet winds blow.

And clapping clouds hung low with rain obey:  “Depart.”

The tides that long lashed foaming claws turn gentle

‘Neath the moon that lights Ouranos’ sky.

Silence.

Silence but for lapping sea

That comforts by its ever presence

Even as it checks I don’t forget

Its lethal power.

“Remember” – swushhhhh.

“Remember” – swushhhhh.

I’m picking steps through scattered death

And this is what I hear?

As though I could forget.

The way is dark, and wet; unstable.

Moonlight pale.

Fearfully (for me) the sea is joined

By foreign sounds.

Sticks snap.

Thrown stones skip waves.

Soft notes from purséd lips depart

And fill the air with irony:

A harmony of sea’s “remember” mixed with blithe inflection.

Who is this,

Calmly whistling in my night?

Stop.

Close, because of darkness,

We catch each other’s sight,

Two shadows on this shore of waste, and shards

and swushhhhh, swushhhhh.

Neither of us move.

My thumping heart is torn inside ‘twixt wild hope

At finding life ‘midst death –

Another when I thought to be alone

…And terror at what harm could come

From meeting in such solitary space.

I know not what to do.

I wait.

He waits.

“Remember…remember,” sighs the sea.

And gradually, not quick enough to cause a start,

His hand extends,

Death-gray by light of constellation

Cold and like a vice (I’m sure).

Demure, I feign serene.

My outward voice is silent, but internally I shriek.

Run, soul!  Make time!

Retreating, I trip lamely back

On tangled nets and fractured boards

To find my clothing drenched

In captured sea.

The man remains.

His outstretched hand obtains.

“A covert trap disguised as help,” my thoughts.

I lurch away ‘cross more debris

And stumble to my feet

While backward glance finds hand now

Hanging loosely by his side.

Jumping, thumping, crashing, thrashing

Down the shore I move

The very distance I’ve just passed,

Silent, death-strewn calm again disturbed

By gasps for life and breath.

The night wears on.

How far I’ve gone, I cannot say.

Yet what I can is that my instinct knows.

It knows.

I’m only getting farther off from aid.

But as I tire, terror fades

(as does imagined ghost of doom’s pursuit)

And with it frantic steps now slow

To wait a new command.

“Turn, child.  Turn.”

Without fear’s buzz, I hear my psyche speak.

Breathless, nearly faint,

I turn.

Breath in…

Breath out.

The pattern checks its time

As anxious thoughts like shallow chatter silence

In the thought-less strength of something deeper

Pulsing me toward life.

Tired foot . . . before foot,

My steps and spills retrace, once more,

That endless path through ever night.

Like me, the sea laps on.

A form appears I’ve seen before,

Though veiled in darkness now as then;

I stand to face the man who rent my night.

I see his hand again extend.

My soul meets his for one charged stare –

Casts looks toward hand

Like famine’s child

Illusions of a feast;

I long to take it,

Hand to hand.

But more than deeper strength just now

Is all the pow’r of wounds unhealed

And scars I wish not ever to repeat.

“Death lives,” I feel

And none can say for sure

This hand’s attached to life, not death.

The risk of harm in either choice I make

Is real:

In stay or flee.

“Remember, remember…”

It’s my decision finally breaks the stare:

I turn aside (now twice).

I sit on planks despairingly a pace or two away

And weep

Tears for tempests’ brutal strikes

And wrecks of life and lifeboats lifeless

But for mem’ries haunting their remains.

Tears for nights that stretch like endless deserts

Past what eye can trace.

‘s though Yahweh stilled the moon

And we’ve ‘come Amorites.

I grieve a world where battles won

Leave conquered scarred and fearful,

Ghosts of real and ‘magined harm

The motivation for their moves

…My moves.

A world where wolves are often cloaked as sheep,

The hands of one’s purported help

The same that strike

Or scold

Or stay in pockets as you gasp in sinking sand nearby.

Mine and others’ suffering have filled my screen.

And somehow psychic sensing knows in this,

just now,

I’m not alone.

I sit in sight the man whose hand I love and fear

And glance askance to see his hand

A pool reflecting stars…

His tears become its spring.

Two shadows grieving through the night:

Apart

Yet one in darkness

While our tears are spent.

A quiet fills my body,

Bound by frame,

Though vaster than the sea;

A deep, resounding quiet.

Fear, and grief, and isolation still.

I rise and turn to face the man.

Soul a newborn fawn with shaking steps

From long entombment ‘side a shielded heart,

Now moves with trust and poise increasing

Toward his hand’s extent.

And joins.

No frigid vice, the union;

Gentle warmth (though wet with tears)

And by it trembling soul is held

And helped to firmer ground.

Darkness melts to pale

As Aryan waves goodbye;

‘Neath sun’s scattering of ray-drops

Diamonds shine.

Night dies.

My endless, ever night.

And on that sigh, “Remember…”

Walking in the solid strength of

Inner silence

Grief enjoined

My psyche heard and honored

As my soul, by hand, is steadied in its stumbling

Is joy

It glows within my breast

Until a tingling

Lights my limbs with laughing fire

And I free my hand

To run and spin and dance

As though I fly

“Friend!  Friend, join the glee:

Day’s dawned!”

With wind and crashing waves

He joins

And for the moment all is light and life,

Reflected in our eyes.

A soaring seagull cries

And I hear song.

But to its notes

Companion turns an ashen ear

To hear a message far from my translation;

Sparks in eyes ‘fore diamond-sent,

Now shift to lightening strikes

Eye, to scene

I look between

And hardly now make sense in contradictions:

Day and light surround me

But in irises is night

Oh, friend,

Why do you stumble

As though walking without light? 

Friend, why now withdraw

As though a stranger?

Danger lurks in unseen shadows.

Hardly but a whisper trickling

Past my pressing questions

Is the sound of lapping water on the shore.

And I remember.

Whistling in my night.

Whistling, like my dancing now:

Expressing sight of something

Past my night

And fear

And lonely isolation.

Were you seeing, as did I,

A death-strewn shore

The night we met?

Or rather, as I now,

In light

Strong hints of troubled soul,

My eyes for you ‘come windows

Into sheol?

“Swushhhhh…”

On mem’ry’s screen

I watch a scene of

Stranger saunt’ring full content

‘Long shore with stable steps

And calm unfailing.

Up to flailing passerby

He walks then stops

To take me in

A knowing silence trailing his stare

Care with streaks of gravity

Cause hand extend to steady mine

‘Fore twice rejection

Beckons for a different kind of aid:

“Enter, love, through darkened door

The nights you’ve known and left behind;

The soul before you

Drowns in ‘lone despair.”

Thus enters he.

Our mourning joins

And with it

Resurrection dawns.

I stand before the man

Whose trust that day would finally come

Is that which caused for his choosed passage

Through death’s lintel into night

His night.

And my night, too.

The tide has turned,

The scene repeats

With each in different places;

I now confront a choice

Of which I’ve never dreamed.

Day and night

Are shared and separate spaces,

Haunted ‘times alone, and ‘times with faces

Of companions en’tring death’s despair

(Rememb’ring shackles past and their release)

That sun might rise again…and again

Lighting for a time

Joy’s paths

Through tempests’ darkened trails,

As we laugh and weep together. 

This, the cup of wine and blood,

I drink.

Death lives.

And life.

And I…

I live now, too.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 10th, 2005 at 10:26 am and is filed under Books and Art, Healing, Religion/Spirituality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.