Even though that title is probably an oxymoron, that’s pretty much what I feel like I’m doing.
It is so hard to actively wait. But I’ve never learned how to wait passively and patiently.
I keep waiting for that Big Bad Rove to be indicted.
Waiting for b!X to get a job.
Keep waiting to be inspired to blog something worth writing about.
And then, out of the blue, a comment left on one of my recent posts puts waiting on hold and sends me to my poetry stash.
But not before I link over to the commentor’s site. Which is in Chinese. Whaddya know. There I am, in China. And in Chinese.
Of course, I emailed the commentor out of curiosity. She says that she’s a Chinese woman with a two-year old daughter. She found me while searching for a poem by Jane Hirshfield, which I had posted on this blog a couple of years ago.
When I started blogging, one of the most exciting parts of the experience for me was crossing virtual paths with women I never ever would have a chance to get to know otherwise. Women from other countries and cultures, women from other generations. The first such young woman was Anita Bora, from India , who, as I see from her recent blog entry, seems to be on a world tour, running into fellow bloggers by chance in Paris. I’ve lost track of and touch with Anita. But I think of her now. Wonder if she’s coming to America. Remember what we shared when we were first starting out in the blogworld.
And now there’s Yan, in China.
I might be hiding out in the mountains of New York State, but blogging takes my spirit out into stunningly wide world.
So, tonight, I’m thinking of Yan and what we might have in common as women on this planet and I’m digging through some of my old poetry, like:
a point of order
his loyalty is to the horizontal,
to edgeless glacial plains,
oceans sacred to the seal.
his eyes return the call of gravity,
hold true to the long, linear view.
she prefers the root and cloud,
spirals with wind, intrudes upon stones.
her reach inspires the vertical,
hides in the rise of trees,
flies the moon with string.
where they meet,
the earth unfolds its secrets,
one
breath
at
a
time.
Think I Mean
Please don’t think I mean
that I have all the answers.
I race the same wind as you,
worry the same bones.
Like you, I watch for
signals and symptoms –
cast an ear, bend an eye.
(Is it a cry or a whisper
or the sloughing of old skin?)
If I try to spin the moon,
please don’t think the reason.
It is my way to dance with shadows
when they are manic with meaning.
what place is there for vultures
in this stark heart of the gorge?
this is a place for mourning,
for lying under rocky eaves,
loosing old moans
into the spill of unbound waters,
for sending into the core of the gorge
some haunting heaviness of heart.
Riding the Current
When the sun finally slips
through the clouds
spilling into that lake
in high Wyoming,
it is only a matter of time
before the muddy wters
reach Montana,
where the Missouri gorges itself
on the Jefferson, Callatin, and Madison,
binding its fate
to the press of a season’s passion.
Along the banks at Bismarck,
Spring becomes a time of waiting.
And even at bold St. Louis,
bright fishing boats
hold to their moorings,
sheltered from the sudden currents
that rush Springs’ murky dreams
toward the hungry Mississippi.
It is never wise
to swim the dark Missouri.
As everyone in Nebraska knows,
the mud must run its course
through each Missouri Spring.
I can be patient. I can wait.
And, while I’m waiting, I’ll go and click on the breast cancer site because:
The Breast Cancer site is having trouble getting enough people to click on their site daily to meet their quota of donating at least one free mammogram a day to an underprivileged woman. It takes less than a minute to go to their site and click on “donating a mammogram” for free (pink window in the middle).
This doesn’t cost you a thing. Their corporate sponsors/advertisers use the number of daily visits to donate mammogram in exchange for advertising.
Here’s the web site! Pass it along to people you know.
http://www.thebreastcancersite.com
