When inspiration fails
the clock ticks and walls echo,
music won’t play, voices annoy,
bones ache, fissures open
and the Earth groans;
habitual and rigid
yet afraid of this brittleness
I look to dreams and find confusion.
On this day of atonement
something old must pass away
for the new and vital to reappear.
Will I leave with the tide
or find strength in the wave?
I take inventory and forgive
following the way of Yom Kippur,
fasting from inner noise,
freeing the goat of retribution.
I go alone to the altar,
connecting to the deeper voice
as what must go is allowed to pass.
I descend and I raise up;
the color green astounds me.
I bring gifts to the space
that keeps us apart
saying Amen to this moment,
to the sounds of life stirring
and enter the garden
as if for the very first time.
You bring good tears, old warrior … Thanks!
Thank you Don! Yes, amen to this moment! I am so grateful for your amazing ability to say it like it is!
So beautiful. The path to renewal — maybe even to innocence. It takes courage to enter the garden as if for the very first time. My heart breaks — will it break open, or apart? Not mine to decide. This equinox has been hard for me, and I feel your poem in my bones.
Beautiful and deeply moving.
This poem says so much and its images points to so much more, and says to me that living authentically is not about getting to some utopian future or an expanded consciousness, but in simply letting go of all of the ideologies and accretions of culture and to live our birthright of nourishing life. And these beautiful and insightful lines contain the whole poem:
“Will I leave with the tide
or find strength in the wave?’
Thank you for the brilliant light of this poem.
Incrediblly beautiful description (in words) of the creative process . . . whatever it is we or I am trying to create . . . a poem, a painting, a song or a new design for an addition & the required humility of it all. Love it!
Yes, Don, the altar is the only place where I find real inspiration residing. Unless I spend time there the mind seems “fuzzy” and lacking something.
Thanks for describing poetically the deeper meaning of the symbolic life we live. The altar seems the only place to take that which is passing.
Inner silence and openness is the key, as you point out in this eloquent piece…….going alone and listening to the inner voice is what we must all do to really “grow up”………….
I love going to the altar alone, to hear the Voice. Your poetry speaks from that Place. My voice loves your voice.
High school students are glancing at me in this internet shop, noting my tears rolling downward. Oh gawd, but the Tide has ripped at me this week! But I refuse to succomb. The new wave is forming already. I have had a number of seizures the past 3 days (they tend to come in clusters), testing my fear, testing my blessing, testing my forgiveness of those who somehow overlooked my injuries back when. One of my best new friends in this new neighborhood is a two-story Buddha, whom I visit often. I stop here….and revisit this gorgeous draw of the bow-string across my heart. Thank Don, and all…
Going to the altar alone, says it strongly for me. That’s when I call on my Presence to massage my heart and I whisper I Love You .. I Love You .. repeatedly until I come back to my conscious state. That’s where I find that I’ve chosen the wave .. and gained another insight for my journey in the garden.
How powerful in its sweet sorrow and regeneration. Gratitude for the opportunity to be remade shimmers in this. Love it.
No one has describes Yom Kippur as you have.The discomfort and pressure and not knowing quite what the do with the being one is in. Then, of course, the only option is to feel the power of that wave, to allow another rebirth. And the freedom of that gift that one offers to the altar. And the “Amen” to the Unity in the Garden. Once again you have touched me deeply Don, and I thank you for clothing my experience.