Friday, April 18, 2014

Holy life


The sun’s yolk
spreads

neon pink
and orange

across the pan
of sky.

Broken to flow
it bleeds

like this
everywhere

eventually
in one day

egalitarian,
as needed




21 comments:

  1. This is a lovely morning poem! Few words, and yet so much meaning. It reminds me of the poet Hafiz <3

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    1. Jade, the way Hafiz has with simplicity and profundity is something to try to attain. Thank you so much for that compliment.

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  2. Beautiful, Ruth -- as Jade said, a perfect morning poem -- especially as we soar toward Easter.

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    1. Thank you, Jeanie. To me it is beautiful to know the sun continues to "rise," endlessly.

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  3. a very lovely poem, ruth, and more complicated that it might first appear

    i don't know a precise word for describing what this poem does. it exists as itself, imagistic and evocative and complete --- but other poems that it might have been flicker around it, as if the words are particles shimmering in their quantum probability waves, many realities rainbowed around them, until we read and the waves collapse into this poem, though we still remember that we glimpsed the others with a sort of longing ....

    for example, in a poem posted on Good Friday, how easy it would be to read "the sun's yolk" as "the son's yoke," where he is "broken" and "bleeds," to nourish us "as needed" in an "egalitarian" manner (Matt. 5:45) ...

    but, to me, the poem doesn't want us to do this!! rather it wants us to see that variant reading as a different poem that could have been written, to consider the possibility (however briefly), and then to hold it at some distance, a glimmer from a different, almost reality ...

    and there are other potential readings ... before the probability wave collapses, there is a poem here about the transmutation of the sustaining aspects of the natural world --- sun, egg, etc. --- into mythological figures --- Tammuz/Adonis, Christ ... which must be broken, like the (Easter) egg,or the sun (son) burning itself away, in order to release their power ... but once again, i think the poem wants us to notice that poem gleaming between the words, but also to remember that that poem is not this poem ...

    everything is here:-)

    in this way, the poem becomes truly egalitarian, it seems to me, inviting us to pay attention, opening and then opening ...

    .

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    1. James, you are a poet's dream. :-)

      Now please picture me as a colorful, squat Peruvian woman carrying my belongings in a big striped bag, eyes and head bowing to you in gratitude for your attention and insight.

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  4. Yes, imagistic, and quite beautiful. I like James's interpretation.

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    1. Thank you, Robert. It is a wonderful thing to have readers see and feel what is between the words.

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  5. Ruthie,

    I can't help but reflect on "the pan of sky."

    A yolk spreads only on a flat pan. The sky as a flat pan. The ancients had it wrong. It's not the world that is flat, but the sky, "everywhere." Nothing to fall off of. No where to hide.

    Your twenty-eight words open our imaginations to quite a world, as James Owens so rightly writes above.

    Thank you.

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    1. Nelson, yes, and it's a pan for everyone. As I wrote this yesterday morning, I felt grateful that the sun is at a distance, and there is nothing we can do to harm him. xo

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  6. (i smile deeply at how james sees into your poem. i can't help it.)

    i settle, or is it that i am hooked, at the word egalitarian and i can't help but thinking on other conversations between us recently in regards to justice. in this the meagerest of ways, the egg spreading, the sun rising (the natural world!), finally we arrive at justice, don't we?

    xo
    erin

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    1. Erin, I felt so grateful to this sun as I wrote the poem. How to understand something this simple, this constant, this powerful? We are recipients of this life-giving light and heat, and thank god there is nothing we can do to harm it, though we harm ourselves on the planet as we have destroyed what lies in the sky between us and it.

      (I think you can imagine me also smiling deeply when I read James's comment yesterday.)))

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  7. Ohhh...this holy, awe-striking life that you have captured so perfectly in the image of sunrise as egg (James has given the perfect interpretation; there is nothing to add)

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    1. DS, thank you for your warm echo of James's thoughts. I sat under this sun in my imagination yesterday and could not think of anything so perfect, consistent and important to life on this planet. And then it became the holiest of things to contemplate in a holy week.

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  8. And to add to all that has been said above, "Holy Life" is the perfect title!

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    1. Thanks so much, Boots. I changed the title about ten times. :-)

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  9. This made me smile because when my granddaughter asks for an egg, she calls her favorite a flat egg which is a fried egg with a broken yolk. I hear her precise instructions as I read your images of sun/egg and it warms my heart. Such a perfect Easter/ spring poem. Buona Pasqua, Ruth.

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    1. Mary, oh that is interesting about your granddaughter's favorite style of egg. Thank you for your Pasqua wishes, and I send you the same warmth in return.

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  10. What a gorgeous image to celebrate this time of rebirth.

    And it took reading Erin's comment to pick up on the eg.....priceless

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    1. Thank you, Amanda. There are always connections, if we can see them. Happy Easter.

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  11. I like the idea of the egalitarian sun – (liberté, fraternité, égalité…) The sun is there for all of us, humans, animals, men, women and children, any color, any religion or no religion, and plants. It is also a source of free renewable energy, as long as you let it. Yesterday I learnt that Oklahoma is fining home owners who install solar panels and use this renewable energy – a sun tax if you will. They are not only against the environment; they fine their citizens who try to help.

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All responses are welcome.