Table of Contents

Title Page

Praise

Also by Mark Nepo

Epigraph

Dedication

Foreword

ABOUT JOY

LEFT IN THE OPEN

THREE FACES

FEELING THE OAR

IS THERE ANY OTHER QUESTION?

THE ART OF FACING THINGS

HEARTWOOD

COMING OUT

TO KNOW BY HEART

WAY OF THE DOLPHIN

ONE STRING

NEAR THE LIGHT

ON THE WAY TO WINDSOR

UNDER BIRDSONG

IN GETTING THERE

BEHIND THE THUNDER

SO MUCH IS CARRIED - (for Saba)

LOST IN OUR WAYS

EARLY

KISS EVERYTHING ON FIRE

COME TO LIFE

STAYING WARM

BEHIND THE THUNDER

ON EVERY CORNER - (for Saki & Rachmana)

FOR THE MOMENT

MADE FROM BONE

THE SUBLIME DISTURBANCE

YEARS FROM IT ALL

FOR JOEL AT 94

SENT ON MY WAY - (for my Great Grandmother)

TILL WE KNOW EACH OTHER

THE INDUSTRY OF NO

TO SPEAK OF STORMS

PIKE PLACE MARKET

HOW SPIRIT WORKS ON EARTH

RUNNING THE TABLE

RUMI GOES TO WASHINGTON

TRANSFORMATION

HER NAME MEANT LIGHT

WITHOUT KNOWING

WHAT OTHERS HAVE TOUCHED

WE’VE COME TO THIS

LEAVING

BETWEEN THE CITY AND THE SEA

THE THROAT OF DAWN

FROM NOW TO NOW

OVER TIME

CAUGHT IN TIME

ONE MORE TIME

THE STORY OF HEAT

BIRDS IN AIR, FISH IN WATER

AFTER

ON THE RIDGE

THE ELEVENTH COMMANDMENT

ANIMAL BEING

THE THING ABOUT FEAR

AHYO-OH’-OH-NI

FOR NINE-WEEK-OLD MIRA TOO EXCITED TO SLEEP

DISCERNMENT

QUIET, QUIET, THE SMALL CREATURES ARE TALKING

WRITTEN WHILE RUNNING

ANOTHER PATIENCE

TILL WE KNOW EACH OTHER

HOLDING THE GUN

REPEATEDLY WE ARE ASKED

AT THE END OF THE FIELD

EXPOSED

INSIDE WHY

THE WATER TAKES MANY FORMS

FALLING IN LOVE WITH THE WORLD

FALLING

SATURATED

BREAKING TRANCE

RESTORING CONFIDENCE

FALLING IN

WALKING TOGETHER

THE PROMISE OF THE INNER WORLD

BRAVERIES

WHAT SUSTAINS

FALLING IN THE WORLD

WHERE IS GOD?

STAYING CLOSE

REDUCED TO JOY

Acknowledgments

NOTES

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

TO OUR READERS

Copyright Page

Praise for Reduced to Joy

Reduced to Joy has many different kinds of poems, all of them clear, wise, beautifully put, spare. Mark Nepo has a great heart. His poems are good company.

—Coleman Barks,

translator of The Essential Rumi

Mark Nepo’s poems in his new book, Reduced to Joy, reduce me first to grateful silence, and then to tears, and then to laughter, and then to praise. He joins a long tradition of truth-seeking, wild-hearted poets—Rumi, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Mary Oliver—and deserves a place in the center of the circle with them.

—Elizabeth Lesser, cofounder of the Omega Institute,

author of Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow

Please, open this book. Begin anywhere. Take your time. But know this: Mark Nepo will make you fall in love with the world. Again.

—Wayne Muller,

author of A Life of Being, Having and Doing Enough and Sabbath

These poems touch the soul, reminding each of us what it means to be fully alive, to be surrounded by what is sacred. Allow them to reach under your skin, to where mystery is born into meaning.

—Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Ph.D.,

Sufi teacher and author of Prayer of the Heart

Oh! What a marvelous book. Mark Nepo’s generous, vast poems restore readers to joy even before we finish reading them—musing upon single lines, images, stanzas—we feel it rising up again, that precious sense of YES. And completing them—we feel the rich trove of thinking and living so heartened and restored.

—Naomi Shihab Nye,

author of Words Under the Words and 19 Varieties of Gazelle

Rumi would have described this book of poems as a crystal chandelier—so many jewels, each like a treasure God has placed in the heart of Mark Nepo. If you already know Mark’s work, you won’t want to miss this collection. And if you have never had the pleasure of experiencing the world through Mark Nepo’s eyes, begin with Reduced to Joy.

—Gayatri Naraine,

coauthor of Something Beyond Greatness

By having, as he puts it, nothing to say, Mark Nepo says everything in this new book of poems. By showing us again and again what happens when one person “works toward peace,” we witness what is possible when we are “reduced to joy” by an honest life, and by poetry itself.

—Phil Cousineau,

author of The Art of Pilgrimage and The Painted Word

Nepo’s voice, clear, resonant, and real, acts like the pointer on your heart’s compass and helps you navigate your most joyful life.

—Mary Anne Radmacher,

author of Lean Forward into Your Life and She

I am deeply moved by Mark Nepo’s work, especially the healing power of the writing process he brings through to us all. His new Reduced to Joy cuts close to the bone with passages of pure beauty and raw honesty. I felt the stillness he wrote of, followed by a sense of peace. For this, I am grateful.

—Nina Lesowitz,

coauthor of Living Life as a Thank You

In Reduced to Joy, Mark Nepo has written a love letter that speaks directly to the heart of the reader. He writes from the wisdom of experience—of having journeyed through two cancers. He gets to the essence of happiness, touching readers with his poetic passages and personal aha moments. He reminds us that in stillness, in embracing the mystery of life, and in embodying our birthright as mighty expressions of love, we are reduced to joy.

—Susyn Reeve,

author of The Inspired Life:

Unleashing Your Mind’s Capacity for Joy

Nepo makes simple, often overlooked things in life, meaningful—and the meaningful, but sometimes overly complex things, simple. This is a beautiful book of poems to deepen and nurture the soul with love and joy, even for those who have never read a poem in their life.

—Allen Klein,

author of The Art of Living Joyfully

In Reduced to Joy, Mark Nepo’s powerful and poignant collection of life poems, we are reminded again of what it is to be truly alive. His poems inspire, connect, and encourage us to breathe in our own truth so that we can rediscover the peace and joy that is also present in each moment of our lives.

—Polly Campbell,

author of Imperfect Spirituality:

Extraordinary Enlightenment for Ordinary People

Also by Mark Nepo

Nonfiction

Seven Thousand Ways to Listen

Finding Inner Courage

Unlearning Back to God

The Exquisite Risk

The Book of Awakening

Fiction

As Far As the Heart Can See

Poetry

Surviving Has Made Me Crazy

Suite for the Living

Inhabiting Wonder

Acre of Light

Fire Without Witness

God, the Maker of the Bed, and the Painter

Editor

Deepening the American Dream

Recordings

Seven Thousand Ways to Listen

Staying Awake

Holding Nothing Back

As Far As the Heart Can See

The Book of Awakening

Finding Inner Courage

Finding Our Way in the World

Inside the Miracle

I want nothing more than to speak simply,

to be granted this grace.

For we have burdened even our song with so much music

that it is slowly sinking

and we have embellished our art so much that the goldwork

has eaten away its face

and it is time to say our few words because tomorrow

our soul sets sail.

—George Seferis

…for Susan

whose laugh is to joy

as birds are to light…

FOREWORD

Mark may be the most quietly honest poet of our generation. He tends so fiercely to the simple truth of being alive. Precise and tender, he shows us where to look till we remember things precious or lost, things we forgot we knew.

Many people find reassuring comfort in Mark’s writing. His poetic prose touches our shared humanity in places intimate, painful, and beautiful. But I have for years watched people hear Mark’s poetry for the first time. I tell you, they are changed. One poem is sufficient; the world is never the same.

Please, open this book. Begin anywhere. Take your time. But know this: Mark Nepo will make you fall in love with the world.

Again.

—Wayne Muller, author of

A Life of Being, Having and Doing Enough

and Sabbath

ABOUT JOY

Often, what keeps us from joy is the menacing assumption that life is happening other than where we are. So we are always leaving, running from or running to. All the while, joy rises like summer wind, waiting for us to grow in the open, large as willows it can sing through. Yet failing to grow in the open, we can be worn to it. Though working with what we’re given till it wears us through seems to be the grace we resist. Like everyone, I’ve spent so much of my life fearing pain that I’ve seldom felt things all the way through. And falling through more than working through, I’ve learned that if we can stay true to our experience and to each other, and face the spirit that experience and love carry, we will eventually be reduced to joy. Like cliffs worn to their beauty by the pounding of the sea, if we can hold each other up, all that will be left will be wonder and joy.

—MN

LEFT IN THE OPEN

The longest journey you will

make in your life

is from your head to your heart.

—an old Sioux saying

THREE FACES

I have carried three faces

across my life, though from within,

it’s clear, they have carried me:

a woman who can stare through

the leaves of any tree, who names the

tree by the birds who sing in it

a man who works hard at

clearing paths in order to stop

where the path ends, and listen

and a small child with the heart

of a horse, eager to sniff out any

thing alive and run to it.

Together, they have led who I

thought I was through openings

wide enough for only

what is essential.

FEELING THE OAR

I was in the air, frustrated

that fog had delayed us. Now,

I would miss my flight to Dallas

where I was on my way to speak

about obstacles as teachers.

I was feeling pissed off

when I noticed my left hand

on the seat—it was my father’s

hand—the large knuckles, the

pronounced veins, the bark-like

wrinkles at the base of my thumb.

It was his hand as I had seen it

countless times: guiding a piece of

wood through a band saw or tapping

on an open book as he would

try to understand.

I opened and closed it like

someone waking from a long sleep.

It is the hand I write with. And it

is weathered, an immigrant hand,

rough from crossing many seas.

Had it not been for the fog and the

delay, I wouldn’t have noticed.

I touched it with my other hand;

trying to know my father,

trying to feel the oar,

trying to remember the sea.

IS THERE ANY OTHER QUESTION?

You ask, “Am I foolish to want her so badly?”

And I think of waiting in the rain to bump into

Susan on the corner of Robin and Myrtle. It was

a day that changed my life. I can still see her walking

back to work, my heart knowing in that moment—

I couldn’t never-see-her-again. So you’re

asking the wrong person. You lean forward,

rubbing the place she has broken, and say,

one more time, “I need to see if she’s changed.”

I only know that some are born to love one thing

and can’t escape it any more than the bee can escape

the flower it is born to enter. Or the flower escape

being chewed by a starving deer. And some, having

been entered or chewed, are worn to love everything

the way silence soothes every cry. The way water softens

every bit of life that falls into it. Do we take turns?

Is that it? Loving one thing, then everything?

I see your pain noosed by your hope. Oh if I could

keep you from your dream of being held and her

fear of being known, I’d turn you into a hawk in

glide who asks nothing of the sky. Only humans

suffer loss, drop their heads, and carve out why.

Have we loved well? Can anyone tell?

No, not a hawk, but a whale who mates for life,

who sings and circles unknown reefs, taking

mystery like water in through its teeth.

THE ART OF FACING THINGS

There have been times I’ve been hurtful or

forgotten who you are, times I’ve mistaken

you for one of the dark faces I’ve never put to

rest. Times you’ve done the same. Times we’ve

worked out our pain or fear, using each other

as the block of wood to carve our way to truth;

feeling awful when we remember that the one

we carve is the one who has loved us through

everything.

But this is the messy art of facing things:

knocking over what I love with what

I avoid; only to learn again that

this is not of our timing.

It doesn’t matter what thorns we carry

or how we squirm to avoid their pain.

We unfold as long as we love,

pried into blossom.

My love for you has outlasted my notions

of love, the way a redwood, allowed to stand

after many storms, grows from the inside,

forcing its bark to drop away.

HEARTWOOD

My friend has died and the grass is

growing as I watch the logs dry and

crack in the garage. Yesterday, I saw a

lone worm leave the heartwood as if

waiting till it was safe. I wonder what

lone secret left Steve’s heart after he

died before the medics arrived. Is it

hiding in his closet or in our grief?

Is this the relentless, resilient way,

that what survives moves from one

carrier to the next? There are buds

on the maple though it is October.

Even wet concrete seems beautiful.

If I knew the question, I’d ask it

of everyone.

COMING OUT

While there is much to do

we are not here to do.

Under the want to problem-solve

is the need to being-solve.

Often, with full being

the problem goes away.

The seed being-solves its

darkness by blossoming.

The heart being-solves its loneliness

by loving whatever it meets.

The tea being-solves the water

by becoming tea.

TO KNOW BY HEART

When I looked in your eye, the light was just right.

I could make out the markings behind your seeing,

through which you perceive everything. There was the

door you hid behind as a child, the wood through which

your father’s voice would raise. And the neighbor’s bird

feeder which you could see from your first apartment,

the one the goldfinch would dart in, that spring we

fell in love. And the photo of your Uncle Billy standing

with a mug of coffee, listening softly to everything you

ever wanted to say. Sometimes, when alone enough,

before you’re up, I stare into the mirror in the guest

room, reaching for the markings behind my eye. This

is harder but they are there. How I would wheeze as a

boy in the dark wondering about God. My first glimpse

of the Pacific after college. And Grandma’s thick open

palms that fed goats in Russia, that felt the ocean through

the hull of the ship that brought her to America, the hands

that rubbed her chest when her Nehemiah died. It’s hard to

say how, but I see life through the water of her palms. How

does this work? How does the heart like the bottom of a river

keep shifting its features? To graduate into the world, we are

required to memorize practical and odd things: the number

of feet in a mile, the year Henry VIII beheaded Anne Boleyn,

the degree at which clouds will freeze their rain. But since

death is the mirror we eventually move through, let’s stop

carrying the things we repeat and start holding things

with our eyes. To know by heart is to warm the

broken as they lay down in the sand of our eyes.

WAY OF THE DOLPHIN

Standing in the harbor, these slick

wonders slip their fins in and out

of early sun. I close my eyes and

remember being wheeled into surgery

all those years ago; believing my job

was to meet my surgeon at the

surface, so the rib he had to remove

would slip out, like a dolphin of

bone, as soon as he would cut me.

I’ve learned that everything that

matters goes the way of the dolphin:

drifting most of the time out of

view, breaking surface when

we least expect it.

And our job—in finding God, in

being God; in finding truth, in

being truth; in finding love, in

being love—is to meet the world

at the surface where Spirit slips

out through every cut.

ONE STRING

I am so busy at times

trying to make it all

worthwhile, that I am

stunned at how easily the

whole of life speaks to me,

when music I’ve never heard

or a truth I never understood

plucks the one string I carry

deep within.

I only want that string plucked

and yet, it stays in a place

only suffering or surrender

can open.

Still, violins in minor keys

make me swallow my fear

and herons flying into

the end of a long day

make me wish I’d led

a more peaceful life.

NEAR THE LIGHT

I’m saved by what is timeless.

Can taste it though it fills no cup.

Can feel it though it can’t be seen.

Yesterday, an old brooding song was

sung low, making the afternoon drop

its shoulders. Even the wind circled

back. I dropped my napkin, glad to

feel that old ache waiting like a lucky

coin I rub but seldom look at. Everyone

broods and holds on to what they

think is lucky.

I’m saved by your laugh, which stops the

crows of pleasure and pain from pecking

at each other inside my head.

This morning I tried three times to read

something I’ve wanted to read for years.

But you were sick and the car broke

down. And waiting for the tow truck,

I stood in the shade of a locust tree.

The patches of sun reminded me

that we’ve already arrived.

ON THE WAY TO WINDSOR

By what road did you come?

I can tell by your eyes—

you lost something along the way.

Were you hurt or did you do the hurting?

Me? Both.

Did you drop anything willingly?

I know. That’s a hard one.

I seem to have lost everything

that identifies me.

My heart’s become a knapsack

with torn little holes.

I knew we’d meet like this.

Oh, there are those who keep to themselves.

When the wind sounds like a loved one,

they come out and squint.

But tell me, what does it mean

to dream on this side of suffering?

That we can rest more?

That we can hear small birds

unlace the dawn?

It seems very simple now.

We can finally talk when there isn’t

much to say. It’s quite beautiful,

isn’t it?

UNDER BIRDSONG

Over half a century of staying awake,

or trying, and what do I know, really?

That after falling, the sky seems brighter?

That after listening, love seems possible?

That after succumbing to silence, the

lone root inching under everything

needs to be held too?

All this and a thousand implications

surface as “I love you” or “I am afraid.”

We are just lone birds flushed out of

hiding, surprised so small a throat

can cough up a song.

IN GETTING THERE

As soon as I could walk, I was told of death

by those afraid of time. Others have warned

me of life. And some have said, forget all that,

we are here to live. A few have thrown them

all in the sky like wet stars, saying, in time

you will see the constellation they form.

It was an old woman losing her way

who called me close. She tapped my chest

with her crooked finger and said, stay

ultimately concerned, about everything.

In getting there, I’ve seen how life is

layered from the outside and vital from

within; beautifully designed to strip us

of our burden—if we can drop through

the layers or ride what is vital.

But here you are, and seeing you rub

your eyes as you shuffle in the light, I’m

bursting to offer a hand, to say something

helpful. Though as I reach for you, I

trip and, taking your hand, forget

what it might be.

BEHIND THE THUNDER

People say we’re all seeking a meaning for

life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really

seeking. I believe we’re seeking an

experience of being alive.

—Joseph Campbell

SO MUCH IS CARRIED

(for Saba)

When just a pup, I took her into winter.

While Paul photographed the heavy snow,

she, having never run free, circled wildly,

her little nose caked with white.

She slipped and broke the ice. I can still

see her puppy face underwater, looking

for a way out, her tiny paws swatting

at the thick clear deep.

With no thought, I was waist high and

wet, sweeping her into the air. She flew

a good twelve feet and landed with a thud.

She shook and started to shiver. We rubbed

her down for two hours, blowing her with

an old hair dryer. I held her in my shirt,

near my heart, the whole way home.

I’m fourteen years and seven states away

and she has died. My first dog. I close

my eyes and there she is, grown,

sniffing the air in an open field,

smelling things I couldn’t even sense.

How many times I’ve played that day

in the pond: her struggle underwater,

her drying on my chest.

How much that day has shaped my art:

always jumping in and sweeping what

has been baptized in the deep back

into the world, always holding it

near my heart. As if my life

depends on it.

LOST IN OUR WAYS

I can still taste lying with you

in the afternoon during the storm,

lost in your eyes. After all we know

about each other, I’m stopped by how

our fingers Braille each other’s face.

A few days ago, I held a friend

as he cried, could feel his pain

in my chest.

Some thirty years ago, I held my

brother when his best friend died

from spinal meningitis. I don’t think

he’s ever been the same. And last night

I dreamt about the death of my parents;

my father longing to hold me, my

mother turning away. None of us

able to find each other.

I don’t know where this is going.

None of us do. But I wake sometimes

like a humble gardener on a ladder, who

keeps discovering that the edge of the garden

is farther than he’d imagined. I wake with

this bag of red seed, each filled with light

from the beginning, and I keep spilling

them like tears.

EARLY

I woke today with a sadness.

I don’t know why. Perhaps one

of the lost crossed the morning sun

like a crow, just long enough to cast

a small shadow on my heart.

Now I feel hungry.

Sometimes we eat not to feel

our sadness. And not just food.

We eat books with our eyes, the

past with our memories, and

uncertainty with our schemes.

Sometimes, we make maps

and eat them, all to avoid

the fact that we will always

run out of time.

People I have loved have gone

missing or turned away. Some

in their sadness tried to eat me.

And so, I had to leave.

Perhaps that’s it. Though

we have to leave or be left,

The heart never leaves. And

standing in that shadow,

We feel sad.

KISS EVERYTHING ON FIRE

Everyone keeps stopping me with their urgency.

As if the secret of life was written in a corner

of their mind and before they could

read it, it burst aflame.

The first hundred times, I rushed to do their

bidding. Then one day, exhausted by my own

secrets burning, I stopped running and

kissed everything on fire.

And yes, it scarred my lip and now

I have trouble saying anything complicated,

but wind no longer gets trapped in my head.

I know you understand. I’ve seen you suffer

the secrets no one asked us to keep secret. I’ve

seen them burning up your mind. But today,

we can part the veils and let in whatever

it is we thought we had to keep out.

Today, urgency dies because the heart

has burned its excuses.

COME TO LIFE

I’m in the Sacramento zoo where they

specialize in vanishing animals. I’m staring

into a dusty yard where a Bongo from Africa

is sleeping in the heat, his dark mask and

white horns like a Picasso come to life.

He knows the world by his huge ears and

wet nose. He dreams of yams and cassavas.

He’s looking at me. Intensely at first, but he

can tell I’m no threat. He relaxes and simply

stares like a sage from another world. He’s

searching my face as he would a cave

for markings from long ago.

He seems to be reading what I’ve

carried but can’t decipher. His stare says,

Not much difference to which side of the fence

we look out from, is there? I wish I could

understand Bongo. He’s done with

me and looks away.

STAYING WARM

Now that my father can

barely walk, I send him

socks to keep him warm.

He’s overjoyed. Now that

he can’t go very far, he finally

has time to wonder what I do.

Now he travels backwards and

tells me of his first chisels,

his love of wood. We have

small conversations that rise

like smoke from the fire in

the mountain of fathers and

sons. After years of silence,

it’s more than enough.

BEHIND THE THUNDER

I keep looking for one more teacher,

only to find that fish learn from water

and birds learn from sky.

If you want to learn about the sea,

it helps to be at sea.

If you want to learn about compassion,

it helps to be in love.

If you want to learn about healing,

it helps to know of suffering.

The strong live in the storm

without worshipping the storm.

ON EVERY CORNER

(for Saki & Rachmana)

Sunday morning, the table scattered with

bagels, toast, ham and tea, breaded knives on

crumpled napkins, books on every corner—

Whitman, Doty, Jacques Prevert, Rumi on

the floor—each of us tossing another voice

into the air to see what’s folded way inside,

to see what lives between yesterday and the

sugar. Each of us knowing what it’s like to be

both turtle and hawk, and Hamlet, all in a day.

The dog sleeps on Kenyon, near Neruda, as we

reach for something not quite in reach and

land on each other, as if the one utterance

inside every voice can soften the onslaught

of time.

FOR THE MOMENT

It was in Vancouver

at breakfast, before my

second cup of coffee.

I had a moment, a long

moment, before the next

task showed its teeth,

before the meetings began,

and the clink of silverware

glistened slightly, and the

coffee warmed my throat,

and I fell into the well of

a silence that was there

before I was born.

For the moment, the

thing that waits behind

my tongue dropped way

down behind my heart,

like an iridescent fish

hovering under all that

water near the center

of the Earth.

Now the phone is

ringing. The emails are

flitting, and the voices

in the hive of which I

am a part are mounting.

But the coffee is

steaming and my mind

for now is clear and the

path between it and my

heart is open and I

finally have nothing

to say.

MADE FROM BONE

When I can be the truth,

it grows more and more clear

when it is necessary to tell the truth.

That is, when I have access to the place

within me that is lighted, I don’t have

to speak heatedly. I can just give away

warmth. When I am still enough to brush

quietly with eternity, I don’t have to

speak of God. I can just offer peace

to those around me.

A tree grows so it can convey wind.

It is not the wind. And a person grows

in order to convey spirit.

They say that animals recharge

their innocence each time they hoof

the earth. And we are reborn

each time we touch what matters.

THE SUBLIME DISTURBANCE

As the wind makes a different song

through the same tree as its branches

break, God makes finer and finer music

through the wearing down of our will.

YEARS FROM IT ALL

We loved so blindly,

each one of us meaning

to explore the other’s face

but knocking over

everything

in the way.

Now, we build

dark images of

what we think happened.

I heard a song today

that played when we

were young.

It made me ache

to have you all near

just for a long minute

in which none of us

could speak.

FOR JOEL AT 94

They say that miners in South America

strap small lamps around their chest, that

this works better than the light coming

from the center of your head.

They say the head can be fooled,

but the heart can’t turn without

the body. This makes me think of you

digging your way through your long life,

lighting everything with your heart.

It’s a good way to live. And when we

sit at the end of the day, our hearts

illumine the day and we see each other

in its radiance. I can tell, it reminds you

of many circles you’ve been a part of.

It’s a good way to measure time.

To make our way on Earth

by the light coming from our heart—

This is what you’ve taught us.

Is it any wonder that what you

touch, including us, glows.

SENT ON MY WAY

(for my Great Grandmother)

A small blurry figure appears at the

doorway of the home. It is Bella, my

Russian Jewess, on a ramp in a

wheelchair, waving her stick at me; a first

born of a first born of a first born.

She is beckoning, “Here. For you.

A lollipop.” I am 3. She, 105.

Darkly dressed relatives line the

ramp like pines waiting for wind.

She gloats on her spoked throne.

I’m her immigrant heir. The pines

rustle. Her bony hands are cold. She

grips me above my elbows.

She mouths something in a language

I don’t understand. The pines approve.

Her stick slips to the ramp. She runs

her fingers behind my ears. Her stiff

thumbs rub my temples.

She pulls me to her and the cold

footplates crease my ankles. She

whispers something in my ear.

Her breath is short and stale.

She picks up her stick and presses

it to my palm like a scepter. I give it

back. The tall pines sigh. She looks

skyward and rocks. I feel her breath

even now, fifty years on.

This is my first memory

and I wonder what she carried

from the beginning and where the

things that matter that we don’t

understand live.

Sometimes, when whispering in

snow to no one, I wonder if

the long search for poetry

has all been to find

what she said to me.

TILL WE KNOW EACH OTHER

And what if we’re meant to discover

that caring for another is the summit?

THE INDUSTRY OF NO

He was born in the river of yes

but looking for love wandered into

the industry of no, where the no-police

left warnings of don’t and the no-ministers

preached their morals of can’t. And soon,

he couldn’t help himself, he wanted to

try on no. So when his dog pawed his

shirt, he scolded her no, and when

two kids ran a shopping cart into his

parked car, he cuffed them no. And

when someone he liked started to come

close, he let her near but said he wasn’t

ready. Now he discovered there were

other ways to say no. When he was hired

as a no-engineer, he was sadly happy to work

alone. Steadily, he designed signs that said

stop and electronic guns that fired bullets

with a muffled no. The work of no kept

him very busy. If you called, you heard, “I

am the engineer of no and I am not here.

If you like, leave a no-message and I will

gladly send a no-reply.” He was flooded with

calls. The industry of no was so successful, it

had to hide its money from the government,

lest they say no. When he was promoted to

find other avenues of no, he rode no-planes

to no-cafes where inventors of no pleaded

for new no-funding. Soon, there were movies

that glorified no, and books that pondered

why the no-God was so insistent on no. And

seminars arose where no-scholars came vast

distances to say, “Yes, it has always been a

world of no.” And those specially invited

stroked their worried chins, whispering

to each other, “It is so. It is so,” as a no-

anthropologist traced the beginnings

of no. But they all went home and

dreamt of white geese flapping,

their wings parting

the ancient air.

TO SPEAK OF STORMS

On her porch, on the mesa, we’re sipping

tea, when Julie begins to speak of storms and

how the birds she feeds perch on her roof and

answer the thunder. Wayne sees how this hits me,

knows at once I will enter this poem. Because this

is the nature of all poems. This is what we long

for: to cry out with our little thunder to the big

thunder. To ask in our small way: how to love the

storm without getting struck. I wonder what the

thunder and birds talk about. I look at my friends

and confess that what I know has been split like a tree

by lightning. Julie’s dogs take off, chasing something

we can’t hear. And the birds circle as if to say, keep

talking. We move on to failed relationships and

pottery. Wayne slouches. I can see his heart peck

like a bird behind his eyes. Julie says that African

potters spend long days coiling their pots and when

they’re done, when the thing they’ve built around

the empty center is fired, they uncoil the air the

same number of times to free the spirit of the pot.

Westerners think it superstitious, but the old potters

believe it necessary to uncoil themselves like spirits

trapped in pots. Wayne nods. He feels all coiled

and says, “The heart grows tired of its reasons.”

After a long silence, the dogs lie down, the birds

vanish, the clouds travel to tempt others, and

we are left to face each other; unfiltered

through what we want or love.

PIKE PLACE MARKET

The bees are penetrating the small blue flowers.

The fiddler with dirty teeth just broke a string

but his banjo man keeps playing. The young

university girls are picking at their salads. In a

counter window, a squid is puckering in a tub of

ice while the Hispanic girl working there is leaning

on the tub reading a book. The Copper River salmon,

though dead on ice, are dreaming of their last turn

upstream. The ferns on the rooftop are feathered in

the salty wind. People crisscross the cobblestone

with their history and dreams in tow like cells in

the immune system looking for dark places to heal.

The mountains, snow covered across the bay,

resist it all. A young Asian couple ask a Black

woman to take their picture before the sea.

At the last second, a gull cuts through

the frame. They won’t notice till

they are far away at home.

HOW SPIRIT WORKS ON EARTH

I hiked the low mountains with a friend and

we stumbled on a snake, as frightened as I.

Somehow that led my friend to speak of her

father, ninety and going blind. After a day

of stumbles, of getting lost and falling

down, he said, his flint all chipped,

“I’ve learned how to love what is.”

The next day I felt lonely and settled

in the corner of a Spanish café where I

overheard a young widow miss her man.

Her friend kept rubbing her arm. After three

lattes, the widow dried her eyes with a brown

napkin and admitted that she kept meeting a

stray collie in the cemetery. She wasn’t sure,

but took the dog home. She swears her

man sent the dog to comfort her.

I called Paul and asked what he thought.

He sighed and told me how years ago, in

another life, a man appeared at his door

and said, “I lived in this house as a boy.”

The guy seemed strange. He asked to come

in, then looked about and nodded to himself,

“I’d like to plant some wildflowers out back.”

Paul hesitated, then agreed. They developed

an odd friendship. Paul learned that Will

was a janitor who played in a symphony,

who loved Handel and haiku, and read

a lot about alchemy. When the wildflowers

took root, Will vanished.

Paul shrugged, “You ask about Spirit?

I often think, I could have been Will. Or

the widow’s collie. Or the curb the old man

tripped on.” That night I dreamt that Will

and the collie were shuffling through a field

alight in sudden sun. Will kept tossing a stick—

it seemed golden in the air—and the collie kept

bringing it back. When I caught up with them,

the collie dropped the stick like a treasure at

my feet. Will smiled, “It all goes out and

comes back. Like this stick. That’s how it

works.” Before I could ask, Will threw

the stick further. The collie chased it.

And I woke back in my loneliness.

Now you call to tell me of a plaza in

Nicaragua where street musicians play

and the parrots sing along. But when the

musicians stop, the birds don’t come. This

is why you called. You are concerned and

in wonder. I love you for calling. I love

you for being so concerned. You are

stunned by this law of spirit, “When

we stop singing in the open, the birds

don’t come.” We both go silent. I close

my eyes, wishing you were here.

RUNNING THE TABLE

On certain Sundays in the late fifties,

my father’s four uncles would sweep into

our home like a tornado of laughter and

take us to the local pool hall. They were

weathered immigrants from Russia—Max,

Al, Norton, and Axi. They’d sharked their

way through the Depression, running the

table, throwing money in a jar. Once Axi,

hit by a car, broke his thumb, but cursed,

played and won, before having it set. That’s

how he got his name: Axi, for accident. My

father always opened up a little more around

them. I used to wake on Sundays and hope,

the way quiet children pray in secret for

gypsies to arrive. But what I remember

most is being knee-high, not quite able to

see the table, their laughter circling like the

gods of Olympus tossing their losses into the

sea. My brother and I would run through their

legs. We couldn’t make out all that was said.

But the smell of chalk, and swift strokes

scattering bright balls, the thunder of resilience

that parted life’s harshness—it made me feel

happy and safe. Sometimes I’d grab one of their

legs like the tree of life itself. Now, when beat

up and sad, I find myself drifting into some

bar, looking for a cue. Then I take the years

off like a coat, chalk up and sigh; leaning

over the felt table, waiting for their

laughter to swallow the world.

RUMI GOES TO WASHINGTON

He couldn’t find a place to tie his camel

when a quiet man in a uniform took the reins

and showed him inside. He sat for the longest

time on a sofa staring at the enormous chandelier.

So many jewels, he thought, each like a soul

God has placed on Earth and scattered. He felt

the chandelier was a messenger, saying without

saying, “When you can come together like this,

your love will conquer gravity and you will hover

like this enormous, glittering light.” Just then, a

pretty young woman asked if he wanted to register.

He wasn’t sure what that meant but he went along.

In the days that followed, he kept seeing the many

jewels scattered. Then others came and brought

him to meetings where he listened to men and

women carve up the resources of their great nation.

And beneath the noise of their benevolence, he

could see inside their chests, where each carried

a light that was throbbing below their proposals.

When it was his turn, he whirled around the room,

touching each jewel’s heart. Then he sat and stared

at his hand. Finally, the leader of the group leaned

over and gently asked, “What does this mean?”

Instead of talking, he took the leader’s hand

and put it on his heart. Well, the meeting was

no longer a meeting, and some wanted to get

closer, while others wanted to run. He was

driven back to the hotel where he spent the

afternoon listening to the chandelier.

TRANSFORMATION

It could be the letter never answered,

the one in which you declared your love

in such a tender way, admitting to everything.

Or when the shell you brought all

the way from the Philippines is dropped

by some loud stranger you never wanted

to show it to in the first place. It could all

unravel the moment the shell shatters on

your floor. Or on a summer bench, your

eyes closed, your fear about to vanish, the

heat bathing you as bees begin to fly.

It could happen anywhere you linger

too long, anywhere you stop hauling and

counting, when your mind spills its tangle

of lists. Often it comes with the relaxation

of great pain. When the hip finally mends

enough to step. Or your need to know

is broken by a bird lifting into light.

Or when succeeding in being something

you’re not. Being influential when you’re

shy. Or rugged when you’re tender.

Or while watching an old tree slip into

winter, like the one thing you won’t let

go of dropping all its leaves.

When the elements in all their beauty

reshape our eyes, it is God’s kiss: gentle

as erosion. When you could crumble in

an instant—all your pain, salt waiting

for a wave—you are close.

HER NAME MEANT LIGHT

—Forgive me.

I loved a woman who loved the Earth.

I met a man who was going there,

where you had lifted the faces of children.

He works where you are buried. He

scratched his chin and said, “I know

someone is out there, beneath a tree,

but I don’t know who she was.”

When you were dying, your thin

wrist in my hand, I knew I’d be here,

in this day, busting with my sense of

you before people who never

heard your voice.

Forgive me. It’s impossible

to keep your memory alive.

Even your father never sent me

the picture that split me with an ache,

the one with long brown hair

from years before we met.

He never sent it, though I asked

three times. And now like all memorials,

the spirit’s gone, aerating the earth

and stone is stone, tree is tree

except your ash has fed its root.

Forgive me. I keep writing your name

but can’t out-write the wave of life

that sweeps you from the sand.

No matter how I sing of you,

there’s always someone who appears

just as I’m finished. I can’t keep up.

Even when I stand before strangers

and say, I loved her so, my words rise

in the air above their hearts

and I can’t stay the silence,

the merciless patient silence

which waits for every cry to fade

into that sea of God

that frees us

of our names.

WITHOUT KNOWING

Lifting my second coffee to my lips,

I see a young couple near the window.

They’re falling in love. I can tell by the

way he brushes her hair aside, so he can

see her face. Before I can sip, there you

are, across from me, more than forty

years ago. I did the same thing. Parting

your auburn hair, I fell into your eyes.

It undid me, which meant I could no

longer follow the path others had set

for me. Isn’t this the purpose of love?

We only had a few years of opening

what we could in each other, before

you fell into another. You broke my

heart. It took a decade of poking at the

ashes to accept that we sent each other

on our way. Now, in my sixties, after

losing and finding what matters, enough

times to realize that the losing and finding

comes and goes like surf that shapes

the sand of our heart, I know I fell through

your eyes, so many years ago, into the sweet,

resilient place only opened by love, where

we get to see our own worth, unformed

like raw material. It takes years of

hammering and being hammered to see

what we can shape from what we’re

given. Strange to pick up this conversation

now. I take another sip, and

through the steam, can see the young

woman glimpse her worth briefly in her

jittery, young man. I sip and feel the gift

you were without your even knowing. I

don’t even know if you’re still alive. But

in this café, from another continent

of time, I can softly thank you.

WHAT OTHERS HAVE TOUCHED

When his grandson was born, he

began collecting antique toys—a torn

doll, a wooden rabbit, a cloth bear.

He loves to see his little one touch

what others have touched.

When told it had to go, she refused

to cut the old apple tree, though its roots

are buckling the driveway. She doesn’t need

the apples. It’s the deer. Every fall she shakes

the upper branches from a ladder. She loves

the small thuds to the ground. She loves

early coffee as they soft-hoof and nibble.

When Jess and Laura were small, I

bought earrings in Florence. I’m saving

them till they turn sixteen. I love thinking

of the earrings waiting in my closet

for them to grow.

When in Amsterdam, he thought

the museums would grab him, but it

was a sloppy Newfoundland wading

in a reflecting pool; splashing patches

of water filled with sun, then trying

to bite the splashes. He loves to think

of the soul’s journey this way.

When Grandma made potato pancakes

on her small stove, it smelled like burnt

French toast. I’d sit on a stool in the corner

and she’d mat one on some napkins, blow

on it, and give it to me. She’s been gone

twenty years. But I love how she

cooks them for me in my dreams.

WE’VE COME TO THIS

We’ve known each other for 26 years,

across 18 states, through storms

we feared would never let up.

We held each other when marriages

failed, through accidents and cancers.

We held each other up when

our grandmothers died.

I’ve seen you in the rain

where words can’t reach you.

I’ve even seen the rain

that is yours alone.

And here, now, as if life has been

a climb to this view—the privilege of

asking again, as if for the first time,

who are you?

We’ve endured cold mothers

and absent fathers and the breakage

of belief which, snapped like a pole,

brought down our tents.

But here we are.

I look at you, after all these years,

without protection, and say,

I want to know you.

Whatever you’ve withheld,

whatever I’ve not been able to

hear, let’s sit in the clearing

and understand each other

like old birds whose wings

are used now

more to huddle

than to fly.

LEAVING

How hard it is to leave or be

left. Sending someone away

because violence is near. Or

selling all you have so a child

might have a ticket to a better

life. Or those torn from each

other because the ship could

hold no more. Or inexplicably

when the love is gone. Or some

strange need has awakened after

years and one of you must try

again to be what you failed to be.

Yet what if, when all alone, we

open a letter, addressed to who

we are under everything, that says:

beyond our pain, each gasp of

parting pollinates the world with

what the heart releases when it

feels the most. This sharp honey

keeps the world from falling.

It doesn’t make it easier. I

still can’t bear to think of

losing you. But nor can the

clouds bear to lose their rain.

BETWEEN THE CITY AND THE SEA

An old president died just hours after a young

man from Idaho was shot in his sleep in Iraq, and

now in the Sundarban east of the Himalayas, a tiger

licks the eyes of its newborn yet to see, and further east

in Vietnam, a young woman who has worked very hard

to learn how to read is reciting a sutra from Buddha,

in awe how presence moves through words across

the centuries. At the same time, an unwed mother

in Chicago thinks about stealing a blanket as

winter stiffens, and moments after this, a

manta ray in Ecuador wakes because of the

sun’s heat on its back and its sweep over coral

startles the moray back into its nook, and as the

old president’s body cools, a sergeant finds the

boy from Idaho. And just now, in Chile, a

tired couple re-see each other and make love

in the afternoon while clouds come in from the

Pacific. And just now, you stir, the dog stretches,

and far away, two stars collide, a new world forms,

and somewhere between the city and the sea, a child

is born with an untempered capacity to love. In time,

he or she will want to love us all. Remember their

face, though you have never seen it. Speak their

name, though you have never heard it. Mistake

everyone for them. Love everything in the way.

THE THROAT OF DAWN

What if I’m the son of a 92-year-old man

who can hardly walk from the kitchen to

the couch in the home where I grew up,

which is flooded by a storm whose wet arms

covered a thousand miles. What if I can’t

reach him because the phone he can’t find

is wet and has no power. What if a month

later I travel to Cambodia on a trip that took

five years to save for, and out of breath I stare

for an hour at a thousand-year-old face carved

at Angkor Wat. What if that eyeless face makes

me question what I’ve done with my life. What

if I can’t stop thinking of my father struggling

to pick up a spoon. What if on the plane home

the woman next to me dreams of her mother’s

mother picking lemons in Sicily. What if the

thousand angels, who never rest, work in each

of us, the way immune cells rush to the site of

a wound. What if all this keeps me from sleeping.

What if I fear that I will never sleep again.

What if, as the plane slips through the throat

of dawn, it comes to me that we’re not supposed

to find something new all the time,

but weave each truth we find into a strong,

beautiful rope that the next generation can

climb. What if I admit that I found nothing

to bring home to my father, except the heart

of a son carved out by time. What if everything

we do and everywhere we go is for this end.

What if the heart carved out is what

can shelter us from the storm.

FROM NOW TO NOW

To be poured into without becoming full

and to pour out without becoming empty,

without knowing how this is brought about…

—Chuang-Tzu

OVER TIME

I return by plane to read some poems.

There’s Linanne and Nancy, widows of

friends I tell strangers I knew—how John

liked shrimp and night skies, how Wally

would laugh while crushing his cigarettes.

There’s Father Malecki who dragged me

onto his raft of love when I was drowning

in cancer. And my former wife Ann—how

we struggled like fish flopping in the rapids.

And two students mature as oak, decades

into their lives; their reluctant husbands

dragged to see some relic from their past.

It all settles in this dizzy, small moment

I sometimes dream of but never expect.

Like those rare times as a boy when I’d

leap off the ground and throw the ball

cleanly through the net.

In this winded moment, we seem so

present that we rise above our wounds

and something drops through the net

of my heart, leaving me perfectly

empty and utterly complete.

CAUGHT IN TIME

Sometimes, our dog gets that look in her eye and

starts running full speed in circles and crazy-eights,

leaping over flowers and through the aging trees.

Sometimes, before I leave, Susan is under the covers,

her cheek showing, our dog curled in the crook of her

legs as close as she can get. I behold them, in the

dark, wondering how anything could be so at rest.

Sometimes, in their sleep, our dog twitches with

dreams of running and Susan smiles, as she

dreams of her garden growing.

As for me, I often do my best thinking as

the sun rises, like a giant eye brought alive

again by its first seeing.

What super-powers we’ve been given—

to ripple in motion and know the inside of air;

to stand in the dark and watch what we love;

to sleep with animals and simply dream; and

to see for the first time, more than once.

Sometimes, what seems ordinary exposes

its numinous bone, the way a man worn to love

can grow in the dark, just by aching for words.

ONE MORE TIME

When willful, we think

that truth moves from

our head to our heart

to our hands.

But bent by life,

it becomes clear that

love moves the other way:

from our hands to our

heart to our head.

Ask the burn survivor

with no hands who dreams

of chopping peppers and

onions on a spring day.

Or the eighty-year-old jazz

man who loses his hands

in a fog. He can feel them

but no longer entice them

to their magic.

Or the thousand-year-old

Buddha with no arms

whose empty eyes will

not stop bowing to the

unseeable center.

Truth flows from us,

or so we think, only

to be thrown back

as a surf of love.

Ask the aging painter

with a brush taped to his

crippled hand—wanting,

needing to praise it all

one more time.

THE STORY OF HEAT

After all this way,

I only want your questions.

The things you and I conclude

don’t matter much.

I don’t know why.

It just is so.

For all our talk of truth and God

won’t insure that you and I

are true or holy.

Just feed me your questions.

I need them to keep this

fire going.

BIRDS IN AIR, FISH IN WATER

A fish cannot drown in water.

A bird does not fall in air.

Each creature God made

must live in its own true nature.

—Mechthild of Magdeburg

AFTER

After the Iliad, the Odyssey,

after the break, the being broken,

after the bondage, the wandering in the desert,

after the softening loss, the trail back to the beginning,

after the inner Iliad, the inner Odyssey,

after the clouding, the clearing,

after the clearing, another clouding,

after the dark tumble, the light,

after the light, another darkness,

after the blindness, another blindness,

after holding on, the sweet letting go,

after narrowing, the fall,

after sinking, the rising,

after rising, another sinking,

after falling in, the surprise

after everything, nothing,

after nothing, everything,

after the crucible that is you,

the world.

ON THE RIDGE

We can grow by simply

listening, the way the tree on

that ridge listens its branches

to the sky, the way blood

listens its flow to the site

of a wound, the way you

listen like a basin when

my head so full of grief

can’t look you in the eye.

We can listen our way out

of anger, if we let the heart

soften the wolf we keep

inside. We can last by listening

deeply, the way roots reach for

the next inch of earth, the way

an old turtle listens all he hears

into the pattern of his shell.

THE ELEVENTH COMMANDMENT

There have been many misunderstandings

along the way. But all can be forgiven

except the want to have us suppress

who we are: to make nice, to go

along, to defer our song.

And though elephants trudge miles

by the scent of their mammoth

hearts to honor one of their kind,

no tree fells itself so another can rise.

All to say that we are hunters

and gatherers inside as well:

striking down the other for food

or planting each other so we can

eat from how we grow.

ANIMAL BEING

Because we dream and want and carry on,

we think we’re exempt. We think we’re

above working the Earth on all fours.

We often miss the point.

A bear may feel like a hummingbird

the moment he catches a salmon,

but his paws are still paws.

As for me, I feel like a horse chasing

birds that cross the sky. When they fly

out of view, I know I’m a hawk born as

a horse. All poets are. A tangle of wings

and hooves. Trying to run in the sky

and fly on Earth.

So it’s useless to pine for your lover

to be delicate, if she’s really a cheetah.

Or for your mother to see clearly,

if her path is that of a bat.

It doesn’t mean we can’t try.

Just that we work

with what we’re given.

THE THING ABOUT FEAR

We try to avoid it, distract ourselves,

even put others in the way. Because it

makes what is necessary seem monumental.

It makes what is needed seem uncrossable.

Yet when we stumble over the line, or are

loved over the line, or, in our exhaustion,

fall beyond our pain, what we feared

was a fall to our death turns out

to have been the next step.

AHYO-OH’-OH-NI

—from the Diné, to bring one

into harmony with everything.

When I open my tiny self,

I can almost hear the wood

growing inside the tree

and the love growing

inside your heart.

I can’t hear it for long,

for my own creaking

takes over.

But there is this rhythm

of how things grow that

we are privy to from

time to time.

Don’t give up

because your pain

sometimes drowns

out the Source.

FOR NINE-WEEK-OLD MIRA TOO EXCITED TO SLEEP

I know, I know. There’s bacon in the sink

and my slipper to shred. And that Shepherd

smell three houses down. But sleep, my puppy.

There will be other leaves to chase and sticks

to chew. You miss nothing when you sleep

but what it is to see you sleep: your lashes

twitting, your small eyes in dream, your

doggish yips, your belly in and out.

We watch you: pure eyes, pure run,

pure lick. Always needing to have

some part touch. Sleep, sweet puppy.

When you sleep, you stall us

into a softness we forget.

DISCERNMENT

The trouble with the mind

is that it sees like a bird

but walks like a man.

And things at the surface

move fast, needing to be

gathered. While things

at center move slow,

needing to be

perceived.

What I mean is

if you want to see the

many birds, you can

gather them in a cage

and wonder why

they won’t fly.

Or you can go to

the wetlands, birding

in silence before

the sun comes up.

It’s the same

with the things

we love or think.

We can frame them

in pretty cages or follow

them into the wild meadow

till they stun us with the

spread of their magnificent

wings.

QUIET, QUIET, THE SMALL CREATURES ARE TALKING

It was calculated that if you yell

for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days,

you will generate enough energy

to heat a cup of coffee.

Yet an ostrich has an eye bigger

than its brain and starfish have no

brains at all and the silky butterflies

taste with their feet.

So we have these choices: We can

yell and heat up. Or be still till our

eye perceives more than our brain.

Or spread like a star and give over

to the deep. Or open our pain till

we discover that the inside of the

heart is a kind of butterfly.

Then, we too can

taste with our feet.

To still all thought into a

seeing, to be carried by the

deep, to taste with our feet—

these are fates the saints

of all traditions fell into.

In here, the tongue is our

strongest muscle and

compassion

is its yoga.

WRITTEN WHILE RUNNING

Sometimes I move so fast it hurts.

Though the things coming at me

are not moving at all.

They are soft and inviting. It’s

approaching them as if they will

vanish that makes them sharp.

Running into any point

makes it a knife.

ANOTHER PATIENCE

I wonder if flowers know fear,

if they sense a storm is coming

or if the deer will eat them? Or

if like a sage having exhausted

his humanity, the flower knows

that either way, broken or eaten,

the glow released is the same.

But I’m not a sage or a flower.

Teach me.

TILL WE KNOW EACH OTHER

Butchers will tell you, if you don’t

calm animals before slaughter,

the meat will be tough.

Yet zookeepers speak of the weight

of captivity: how if the beast gives in,

they’re done; not worth showing

and not strong enough to set free.

Calm or tough, obedient or free,

it seems a mess: as if life throws us into

each other; one long outbreak of small

beings crying for power

because we feel so powerless.

So much depends on the drumming of soul

that opens the heart, the quieting of mind

that opens the eye, the acceptance of

others that softens the truth.

HOLDING THE GUN

No one wants to admit

it is our suffering that awakens us

to the many ways we hold the gun.

If blessed, we return in the middle

of an argument, undone by the light

on our enemy’s lip. Or while sharpening

a knife we cut ourselves and the trickle

of blood stains our list of grievances.

What if pain, the kind that opens a

fist, is really the tap of an angel

saving us from ourselves?

REPEATEDLY WE ARE ASKED

to embody or consume;

to be in kinship with everything larger

or to order and manage everything smaller.

We are asked, every day, to align or separate;

to coordinate our will with everything living

or to impose our will on everything we meet.

And not choosing is a choice. Acquiescence

is different from patience or surrender.

All this leaves us needing to know:

whether to better the song through practice

or to better ourselves through singing.

AT THE END OF THE FIELD

Side by side, two horses

work the same field for so long

that the plow that binds them

falls apart. For some time, they

drag the harness that has

tamed them.

One still feels the weight of the

plow, while the other knows

it is suddenly free.

They look at each other

as mirrors they fear. One keeps

plowing, even without a plow,

while the other, not knowing

where to go, leaves.

EXPOSED

Like a mountain

exposed for years,

the more worn I am,

the less there is

for climbers

to hold on to.

This doesn’t mean

I’m untouchable,

just no longer

easy to cling to.

Like an inlet worn

by unceasing depths,

I can no longer decide

what belongs in or out.

This doesn’t mean

I’m indecisive, just

flushed by experience

into a greater acceptance

of what life brings.

Like lilies set aflame,

I’m unable to hold

anything back.

INSIDE WHY

Violins are falling

from the sky. As they

tumble the wind releases

deep music. This is how

love sounds to itself. This

is what it’s like to love

you. It’s a music that

can’t always be heard.

Instead, I run my hands

through your hair.

THE WATER TAKES MANY FORMS

When people are at a loss, the guide ferries them over.

When one is (awake), one ferries oneself.

—Hui-Neng

Listen for guides, but use their wisdom as you

would a lamp to read your own heart. If someone

dissuades you from your heart, they are not

a guide. A guide, like a ferryman, brings you

close to the water, will even help you cross,

but it’s your own thirst that makes you cry

stop, wait—so you can drink.

When drinking of that water, it’s clear:

the taste of birth we long to keep alive grows

inside everything. In the sheerness of the

water once it stops moving. In the surrender

of exhaustion that loosens every grip. In the

peace within our loneliness once we stop

gnawing at what might have been.

When drinking of that peace, it’s clear:

doubt leads to humility, the way thirst makes

us drink. And pain drops into Oneness, the

way hunger makes us eat.

When finding a guide, listen, if you must, to

what they have to say, but look for the water

in their eyes and the wind that rims their

voice. Let your self be scoured back to the

beginning which is not behind us,

but about to crack open within us.

FALLING IN LOVE WITH THE WORLD

If we stay luminous in the whirl of existence,

who’s to say we can’t be stars for each other?

FALLING

SATURATED

Heavy drops, carrying more

than they can bear, fall from

nowhere, bending leaves already

sagging, and one by one,

the leaves let go.

They drift to the earth,

each quiet as a master

juggler missing everything so

completely that he realizes

he is being juggled.

Surrender is like this.

Not giving up, but

missing and letting go.

BREAKING TRANCE

It’s raining lightly and the sheep

are standing in the wet field, stopped

by beads of water from the sky on their

ears, their eyes, their mouths. They look

like statues breaking their trance. Alive

for the first time, they wonder, what is

this magical place where the very air

kisses you everywhere. Falling in

love with the world is like this.

RESTORING CONFIDENCE

Help me resist the urge

to dispute whether things

are true or false

which is like

arguing whether

it is day or night.

It is always

one or the other

somewhere in the world.

Together, we can penetrate

a higher truth which

like the sun is always

being conveyed.

FALLING IN

WALKING TOGETHER

I don’t spend time with the broken

because I like pain, but because

I need to feel life

from inside its shell.

Everywhere I turn, I witness

such resilience breaking out of

ordinary people: the fourteen year

old who was burned saving her

grandmother; the Black sergeant carrying his

white lieutenant out of live fire and how

they fell in the sand and cried in each

other’s arms; and the one with no arms

who keeps asking what she can carry.

I’m watching a hummingbird now

work so hard, its wings seem not

to be moving at all. Is this what

happens when we love?

I’ll tell you a secret. I ran a comb

through Grandma’s hair minutes after

she died. She was still warm, her Spirit

on its way. I still have the comb. And

when in doubt or awe, I get by myself

and finger the spaces in

that comb.

How can I say this properly:

We can cheat death for a while

by feeding it things that are false.

And we can draw life out

by giving when we think

there’s nothing left.

THE PROMISE OF THE INNER WORLD

If you take away all a person knows,

you are left with the mouth of a fish

gulping water as fast as it can. If you

take away a person’s coverings, you are

left with the naked freedom of a star.

If you take away all a person has done,

you are left with a soul eager to build.

And if you take away what a person has

saved, you are left with a life that

has to live now.

Stripped of too many thoughts, we

grow wise as a stone. Stripped of too

many accomplishments, we grow

possible like the sun. And stripped

of what we hoard, we grow immediate.

So taking away is not just about loss.

Like it or not, we are forced, again

and again, to the nakedness of freedom,

to the eagerness that wants to build its

way out of nothing, and to the poverty

of time that has to live now. If blessed,

we wake, one more time, gulping

our way into tomorrow.

BRAVERIES

What if love is the blood of God,

and only when carried in that river

are we touched by what is holy?

What if truth is carried in the

conversation of birds winging

through our silence, the way

quiet souls brave their way

through the lies we all agree to?

What if beauty is what’s left

when the illusions are scoured away?

Air. Snow. Light on a fence that

kept out nothing anyway.

And running through it all,

the invisible river in which we

can barely speak except to say

thank you, I have been, I am,

like water or light, able

to help things grow.

WHAT SUSTAINS

The more I am hollowed

by the fire, the more my ribs

spread like the tree of life.

The more I am washed

by the tears of others, the more

my heart rounds like an ocean shell.

The more stories I tell

of how one picks up another,

the more my hands open

like scoops for grain.

To be what others drink,

to be what others stand on

to reach what they love—

we should be so lucky

to be worn to this.

FALLING IN THE WORLD

WHERE IS GOD?

It’s as if what is unbreakable—

the very pulse of life—waits for

everything else to be torn away,

and then in the bareness that

only silence and suffering and

great love can expose, it dares

to speak through us and to us.

It seems to say, if you want to last,

hold on to nothing. If you want

to know love, let in everything.

If you want to feel the presence

of everything, stop counting the

things that break along the way.

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.

REDUCED TO JOY

I was sipping coffee on the way to work,

the back road under a canopy of maples

turning orange. In the dip of woods, a small

doe gently leaping. I pulled over, for there

was no where else to go. She paused as if

she knew I was watching. A few orange

leaves fell around her like blessings no

one can seem to find. I sipped some

coffee, completely at peace, knowing

it wouldn’t last. But that’s alright.

We never know when we will blossom

into what we’re supposed to be. It might

be early. It might be late. It might be after

thirty years of failing at a misguided way.

Or the very first time we dare to shed

our mental skin and touch the world.

They say, if real enough, some see God

at the moment of their death. But isn’t

every fall and letting go a death? Isn’t God

waiting right now in the chill between the

small doe’s hoof and those fallen leaves?

GRATITUDES

I began the long list of those I’m indebted to, but something in the nameless quality that this book rests on keeps deflecting such naming. Let me say plainly that gratitude and humility swell when thinking of those who’ve held me up, who’ve helped me endure the many ways I’ve been reduced and worn of my falsehoods through the years. I smile deeply when thinking of those who’ve opened me to the joy of simply being here. I would be less without these friendships. I love you all. I keep telling strangers: to be in the presence of those who can both share pain and celebrate just waking up, this is the answer to loneliness. Such friendship makes sharing pizza in a noisy pub and standing in silence as the old oak creaks all one could ask for. In truth, this process, of being worn to only what is raw and essential, never ends. It’s as if a great bird lives inside the stone of our days and since no sculptor can free it, it has to wait for the elements to wear us down, till it is free to fly. Thank you for holding me up to the elements, and for freeing yourselves, and for the joy of these unexpected moments together.

NOTES

p. vii, epigraph: “I want nothing more…” George Seferis, from “An Old Man on the River Bank,” in George Seferis: Collected Poems, translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967, p. 291. © 1967 Princeton University Press, 1995 renewed PUP/1995 revised edition. Reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press.

p. 27, epigraph: “People say we’re all seeking…” Joseph Campbell, from The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers, edited by Betty Sue Flowers. NY: Doubleday, 1988, p. 5. Based on interviews with Bill Moyers in 1985-86.

pp. 40, 44: Earlier prose versions of these two poems originally appeared in my nonfiction book Finding Inner Courage: an excerpt from “Beginning Again” (appears here as “Behind the Thunder,” p. 40) and an excerpt from “The Heart’s Blossom” (appears here as “Made from Bone,” p. 44). Excerpted from Finding Inner Courage © 2007 by Mark Nepo published by Red Wheel/ Weiser, LLC Newbury Port, MA and San Francisco, CA. www.redwheelweiser.com.

pp. 55, 123: Epigraphs to the two sections, “Till We Know Each Other” and “Falling in Love with the World,” are the author’s.

p. 84: The poem “The Throat of Dawn” appears in Burning the Midnight Oil, edited by Phil Cousineau, Viva Editions, 2013.

p. 87, epigraph: “To be poured into…” Chuang-Tzu, from Chuang-Tzu: Mystic, Moralist, and Social Reformer, translated by Herbert A. Giles. London: Quaritch, 1889, chapter 2.

p. 97, epigraph: “A fish cannot drown in water…” Mechthild, from The Enlightened Heart, edited by Stephen Mitchell. NY: Harper & Row, 1989, p. 64.

p. 121, epigraph: “When people are at a loss…” The quote in “The Water Takes Many Forms” is from The Sutra of Hui-Neng: Grand Master of Zen, translated by Thomas Cleary. Boston: Shambhala, 1998, p. 12.

p. 129: The poem “Restoring Confidence” first appeared in my book Seven Thousand Ways to Listen, Free Press, 2012, p. 103.

p. 143: The poem “Where Is God?” first appeared in the journal Sufi.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

MARK NEPO is a poet and philosopher who has taught in the fields of poetry and spirituality for forty years. A New York Times number one best-selling author, he has published fourteen books and recorded eight audio projects. Recent work includes: Seven Thousand Ways to Listen which won the 2012 Books for a Better Life Award, Staying Awake (2012), Holding Nothing Back (2012), As Far As the Heart Can See (2011), Finding Inner Courage (2011), and Surviving Has Made Me Crazy (2007), as well as audio books of The Book of Awakening, Finding Inner Courage, and As Far As the Heart Can See (2011). As a cancer survivor, Mark devotes his writing and teaching to the journey of inner transformation and the life of relationship.

Mark has appeared with Oprah Winfrey on her Super Soul Sunday program on OWN TV, and has been interviewed by Oprah as part of her SIRIUS XM Radio show, Soul Series. He has also been interviewed by Robin Roberts on Good Morning America about his New York Times bestseller The Book of Awakening. The Exquisite Risk was cited by Spirituality & Practice as one of the Best Spiritual Books of 2005, calling it “one of the best books we’ve ever read on what it takes to live an authentic life.” Mark’s collected essays appear in Unlearning Back to God: Essays on Inwardness. Other books of poetry include Suite for the Living (2004), Inhabiting Wonder (2004), Acre of Light (1994), Fire Without Witness (1988), and God, the Maker of the Bed, and the Painter (1988).

His work has been translated into more than twenty languages. In leading spiritual retreats, in working with healing and medical communities, and in his teaching as a poet, Mark’s work is widely accessible and used by many. He continues to offer readings, lectures, and retreats. Please visit Mark at: www.MarkNepo.com, http://threeintentions.com, and www.simonspeakers.com/MarkNepo.

Author Photograph by Brian Bankston, www.brianbankston.com.

TO OUR READERS

Viva Editions publishes books that inform, enlighten, and entertain. We do our best to bring you, the reader, quality books that celebrate life, inspire the mind, revive the spirit, and enhance lives all around. Our authors are practical visionaries: people who offer deep wisdom in a hopeful and helpful manner. Viva was launched with an attitude of growth and we want to spread our joy and offer our support and advice where we can to help you live the Viva way: vivaciously!

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Copyright © 2013 by Mark Nepo.

All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in newspaper, magazine, radio, or television reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Published in the United States by Viva Editions, an imprint of Cleis Press, Inc., 2246 Sixth Street, Berkeley, California 94710.

Text design: Frank Wiedemann

eISBN : 978-1-936-74066-6

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Nepo, Mark.

pages cm

eISBN : 978-1-936-74066-6

I. Title.

PS3564.E6R43 2013

811’.54--dc23

2013020163

Table of Contents

Title Page

Praise

Also by Mark Nepo

Epigraph

Dedication

Foreword

ABOUT JOY

LEFT IN THE OPEN

THREE FACES

FEELING THE OAR

IS THERE ANY OTHER QUESTION?

THE ART OF FACING THINGS

HEARTWOOD

COMING OUT

TO KNOW BY HEART

WAY OF THE DOLPHIN

ONE STRING

NEAR THE LIGHT

ON THE WAY TO WINDSOR

UNDER BIRDSONG

IN GETTING THERE

BEHIND THE THUNDER

SO MUCH IS CARRIED - (for Saba)

LOST IN OUR WAYS

EARLY

KISS EVERYTHING ON FIRE

COME TO LIFE

STAYING WARM

BEHIND THE THUNDER

ON EVERY CORNER - (for Saki & Rachmana)

FOR THE MOMENT

MADE FROM BONE

THE SUBLIME DISTURBANCE

YEARS FROM IT ALL

FOR JOEL AT 94

SENT ON MY WAY - (for my Great Grandmother)

TILL WE KNOW EACH OTHER

THE INDUSTRY OF NO

TO SPEAK OF STORMS

PIKE PLACE MARKET

HOW SPIRIT WORKS ON EARTH

RUNNING THE TABLE

RUMI GOES TO WASHINGTON

TRANSFORMATION

HER NAME MEANT LIGHT

WITHOUT KNOWING

WHAT OTHERS HAVE TOUCHED

WE’VE COME TO THIS

LEAVING

BETWEEN THE CITY AND THE SEA

THE THROAT OF DAWN

FROM NOW TO NOW

OVER TIME

CAUGHT IN TIME

ONE MORE TIME

THE STORY OF HEAT

BIRDS IN AIR, FISH IN WATER

AFTER

ON THE RIDGE

THE ELEVENTH COMMANDMENT

ANIMAL BEING

THE THING ABOUT FEAR

AHYO-OH’-OH-NI

FOR NINE-WEEK-OLD MIRA TOO EXCITED TO SLEEP

DISCERNMENT

QUIET, QUIET, THE SMALL CREATURES ARE TALKING

WRITTEN WHILE RUNNING

ANOTHER PATIENCE

TILL WE KNOW EACH OTHER

HOLDING THE GUN

REPEATEDLY WE ARE ASKED

AT THE END OF THE FIELD

EXPOSED

INSIDE WHY

THE WATER TAKES MANY FORMS

FALLING IN LOVE WITH THE WORLD

FALLING

SATURATED

BREAKING TRANCE

RESTORING CONFIDENCE

FALLING IN

WALKING TOGETHER

THE PROMISE OF THE INNER WORLD

BRAVERIES

WHAT SUSTAINS

FALLING IN THE WORLD

WHERE IS GOD?

STAYING CLOSE

REDUCED TO JOY

Acknowledgments

NOTES

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

TO OUR READERS

Copyright Page