......a poet

Yogis,

“Hello, sun in my face. “

A student shared her experience of a meditation talk she had attended the night before. It had been centered around a poem by Mary Oliver, and more specifically the last line which reads…...

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

Mary Oliver’s writing always stops me in my tracks, touching something buried somewhere in the deep recesses of my body. A quiet inner longing that as often as I try, I can never quite put into words. She somehow does it with ease. That want to feel more. To live deeply. Be moved each moment by the beauty that awaits right outside the door. This was the third time she crossed my path reminding me to go back to read her work again.  All of the quotes here are hers.

“Ten times a day something happens to me like this - some strengthening throb of amazement - some good sweet empathic ping and swell. This is the first, the wildest and the wisest thing I know: that the soul exists and is built entirely out of attentiveness.”

Attentiveness. I often photograph for this purpose. When patience sits with me I can see ‘it’ through the lens of my camera. Feel it under my bare feet. The wind at times whispering it in my ear. And the world notices back.

As I read some of her words I often want to shout to her through the page…..hey wait, I should have written that. As if she had been walking beside me the other day on my favorite trail and somehow read my mind. Heard my inner voice.

Ordinarily, I go to the woods alone, with not a single
friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and therefore 
unsuitable.

“I don’t really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirds 
or hugging the old black oak tree. I have my way of 
praying, as you no doubt have yours. 

Besides, when I am alone I can become invisible. I can sit
on the top of a dune as motionless as an uprise of weeds, 
until the foxes run by unconcerned. I can hear the almost
unhearable sound of the roses singing.

If you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must love
you very much.” 

I too can be invisible.

This morning while meditating a stirring opened my eyes. Through the open window I watch a fox emerge from the brush, soundlessly lifting onto my wood pile. Followed by another. And then one more, but this last one needing that quick frolic in the grass first. Following the leader. Perhaps a dad teaching the art of hunting. Or siblings out for their first solo adventure. For one brief moment they pause, three red faces peering up at me. One leaps down, then another and then another.  My heart resumes its beat.

“You can have the other words-chance, luck, coincidence, serendipity. I'll take grace. I don't know what it is exactly, but I'll take it.”

Grace. I know it when I feel it. The pouring through of aliveness unobstructed by those tight knots of worry or fear that I chose to untangle on that particular day.  When I surrender, lie back and allow myself to be touched. 

Mary Oliver often makes me cry, and that's a good thing.

“I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.”
SARAH

Yin Yoga Workshop
Sunday, July 15
3 - 5 pm

$30