By Nadia Colburn on
Presence
Outside, the sparrows are awake
and all the complications in my heart:
I, who did not know how to love
my own body, who mistook
the world for a task. Listen:
one voice and then another
amid the rustling of the leaves.
Hands
(after a teaching by Thích Nhất Hạnh)
You who open for me each day,
Already a subscriber? Log in
You have read 5 articles this month.
For only $3 per month or $28 per year, you can read as much as you want!
A digital subscription includes unlimited access to current articles–and some exclusive digital content–released throughout each week, over thirty years of articles in our Dharma archive, as well as PDFs of all back issues.
By Nadia Colburn on
Presence
Outside, the sparrows are awake
and all the complications in my heart:
I, who did not know how to love
my own body, who mistook
the world for a task. Listen:
one voice and then another
amid the rustling of the leaves.
Hands
(after a teaching by Thích Nhất Hạnh)
You who open for me each day,
who close upon a pen, a hairbrush,
a plum, a rock that I lift
from the shore and throw into the lake,
two in unison, in opposition, one that,
when the other is hurt, immediately helps;
hands, unprotected in the day—
dangling, un-shy, unselfconscious,
not full of doubt—
fully yourselves.
4am
Outside, the streetlight is still on
under the half May moon,
its marble face broken off
as if it had been dropped.
If I offer a poem to my loneliness,
it goes something like this:
lonely the moon that orbits the earth
one side shadow, one side lit—
Just as in the monastery
I was taught to say a poem
when I wake up,
when I put on my clothes
when I brush my teeth:
Brushing my teeth and rinsing my mouth,
I vow to speak purely and lovingly.
and still my heart longs.
My husband in bed sleeping,
my children sleeping:
where will I meet
myself?
Will I recognize
the fullness, all of us
cresting now into dawn?
Oh: let me accept
each day a small part
of this orbiting loneliness
of this orbiting fullness.
