Deep Terrain

I was pointed in the direction of reflecting on GRIEF a few days ago. Strange, I thought, as I feel so overjoyed to be alive right now. Thinking just a little more about it, I realized that wherever I am in the moment, I am standing and walking through a deep terrain that contains much more than what is obvious. That evening I rediscovered this poem, written two days after my grandma Shirley's birthday, less than a month after she passed away, seemingly quite suddenly. 

It's good to remember that all our stories need to be told.

1.9.07

Deep calming breaths are not possible right now

A concentrated attempt, an elongated, nostril-flared focused sip

Is thwarted as the air is diverted, released through a deep hole

Between my breasts, both sides buzzing with the living’s speeded heartbeat

The soul is not at ease, cannot be stripped of its suffering,

Needs to be bathed over and over in tears,

Sung to over and over in wailing lullabies, bubbling down into

Sniffling attempts again at the breath of life

The prana which will feed each organ and cell

The rocking ebb and tide, apparently not so endless

Catch, catch, catching against a jagged rock again,

To wail the widow walk’s howl to the sound of the sea, relentless

Breath which keeps coming in and out, without that feeling of fullness

As a deep emptiness sits among apparently thriving systems, buzzing

Along with all the exchanges, receptions and pathways required

With mysterious flexibility and commonalities

Somehow this buzzing complex system receives its heart’s message beyond blood

And connects so deeply and un-physically, that the corpus can be annihilated

By a memory floating down neuron streams, can do things beyond reason,

Beyond belief, with the strength of that unseen powerful force,

And can create a growth or an emptiness in itself in response to so many

Factors beyond the scope of generations of rational study

The hole is deeper than the depth of my torso,

Like an endless well with a bottom somewhere,

A child not ready to drop a coin in and find out where

Or what lies down there, breathing and squinting into the blackness

To make out ephemeral forms that remind her

Of what’s most important, even though it never looked just like that.

A faint hum from under the breath hugs the hole

Blows warmth on a blazing ember losing its outside fire, still hot

To the core, and opens the windows to let more air in

And sing joyfully discordantly out to the trees whizzing by

In sweet full summer of life moments that resound

Through the cold snake of a tunnel

When that coin is dropped.