It is with much gratitude that we welcome words treasured and shared in this installment of Poetry Corner from our dear friend Rachelle Oppenhuizen. We simply invite you to witness again here, her creative and compassionate presence as a contemplative healer and guide to many throughout the community. ~Randy Smit
One of my favorite poets is Jenny Miller. Jenny is a self-published poet with a recent collection entitled “So Far.” If you’d like more information about the collection, you can contact me at racheller.o@gmail.com. I would encourage anyone who finds her “voice” as compelling as I do, to check out a few of her longer pieces in “So Far.” Jenny’s compositions are such pure expressions of awe and dis-covery of the treasure within firmly rooted in nature and oozing a sincere delight/gratitude. There’s a deep reverberation and affirmation of life in her writing, even in the pieces that include loss and struggle and absence. I love her poems because I love her spirit and I can hear her so clearly when I read her poems, even though she’s not actually speaking in my ear.
back to the heavens
just now, say only nothing.
right here is where you belong.
I mean Here, under this blue sky, where the gold
of day fades
into sheltering night.
still yourself. plant your feet into the
answering earth. can you feel it? between the
drumbeats of your heart
there is a vast space; there is
prayer.
trace hidden Pleiades with your finger
thread the southern cross. wherever your
desires journey
the rest of you
will follow.
a silver star shimmers on the pale horizon.
place it on your tongue. what you speak
back to the heavens
becomes
your
life.
Jenny Miller
I offer “You are released into the freedom of some afternoon” because it may be fun (or of interest) for others who have written to this prompt from Laurie Baron to see where it took me. It reconnects me to the experiences of my life at that point in time, and I loved the synchronicity of the “reply” from Thomas Merton which arrived a couple of days later. That’s just plain juicy stuff–the synchronicity felt like art, even though the language of the reflection felt a bit closer to klompen-dancing than to ballet.
But this is why poetry is a “go-to” condition for me when meaning is lurking in some mystery. For the same reason that Vincent van Gogh could not stifle the impulse (his soulful response=praise) to paint sunflowers or a starry, starry sky, or irises in the garden of the mental hospital. Poetry arises from a desire to explore (worship within?) the relationship with life, with my own life and the life of the whole world, and see what is happening in that place where they overlap. “Mandorla” is a word for the fish-shape that is created where two side-by-side circles are overlapped. Visually, when it’s presented in some religious art it offers a symbol that cues the viewer that the contents of the mandorla are set apart–as sacred content, and are to be taken as such. It’s not an attempt to offer explicit explanation, but rather an invitation to immersion and from there to relationship. Exploring that space where language and experience overlap is an art form that some people are more naturally graceful with than others. But poetic expression, graceful or not, provides the soul with a way to listen for meaning in the experiences and images that arise in one’s own life and to bring language to them so that, perhaps, they may be shared with others.
You are released in the freedom of some afternoon
and you begin again to explore what you’ve never
quite dared to trust about that word—“freedom”. Some
patriots call it “liberty”, certain Christians may add, “from sin”, adolescents
carve it from parent love grown too confining and fearful of loss,
while saints and mystics speak or unspeak it as “detachment”.
Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose…
Janice’s acid-soaked voice cuts through your brain,
as you listen through the noise of your molars closing on your lunchtime salad
to the fading echo of those moments a few months ago
when you stood in your kitchen, quietly cutting onions and carrots
and listened to the survivors of Katrina
(a few) who tried to tell of what it was they’d found—
they’d lost everything that typifies the ordinary
and discovered, hidden within their empty surprise
Something.
This afternoon’s release may be that—or some such nothing—
a small release from this morning’s anticipations,
the searching, the planning, the what-ifs and grocery list,
the return-to-the-workweek rhythm
of “have a good day” mid-winter Monday-farewells…
even as your mind keeps reviewing
the black-and-white photos in the dresser
that summon maybes and mild shock.
There’s just enough not knowing for sure in this or any space
for certainties or absolutes with which to rule the world
and thus you are released in the freedom of this afternoon
with the grains of this day’s remains at rest as mercies in your palm
which in your small and artful way you hold dear and let them be
as sand, rice, salt, seeds, pebbles for one’s shoe? Or because of the salad
and the irresistible sound of the word, perhaps they will be peppercorns?
(or simply)
moments for no known measure.
Rachelle Oppenhuizen
2/6/06
…from Merton’s The Inner Experience (p. 151) two days later:
“Is there indeed, a mysterious stream of reality and of meaning running through the history of mankind? If so, who is called to discover it and travel with it?…But as soon as you start to measure it, it is no longer there.”