How simple
Once, in a moment of stillness just like this, Flint asked,
How simple can you let this be?
Sometime you may be broken hearted by the poverty
of what you have to offer. Stunned into silence
and struck dumb by awe, you wonder
whether you can even survive this
crushing grief. So many years gone by in ignorance
and bad choices, so many opportunities for grace
just wasted,
so many good moments ruined by
your own resistance, your own
stupidity and carelessness.
Maybe you have crawled here
on your hands and knees,
maybe you came in upright
and then got felled by what you’ve seen
or heard. A bird song with the light rising behind it,
a slab of stone with a deep vein of color, a person
laying a whole life open right before you,
or the sharpened blade of pain in a shoulder
held for an eternity.
In “just sitting,” over and over again
we are stung by the complete failure
of every plan and strategy. And yet...
And yet, if you are like me you are both grateful
and terrified by the recognition
of this very life, bereft of all our fantasies and
illusions. No use crying out “I am just one person!
What can I do about it?” Just stay.
The squirrel runs so lightly on the fence rail while I
struggle with my doubt and long for
a magic transformation into
something I can admire or even tolerate. Just stay.
The evening bells, the flame of a candle,
a long still evening ahead. In accepting
the gift of a life, even my own life, just this particular one
I took a dare. What can I make of this,
a human life? Days of rapture, nights of dread,
the whole catastrophe, and yet, I wonder,
how simple can I let this be?
When you have nothing else to give,
offer the tenderness of your longing and the
awkwardness of your struggle. And on these
paltry crumbs you can feed multitudes.
Just stay, and let the world feast on you.
Peg Syverson
October 18, 2008