Week 41 - Sitting in the Power

Abundant Silence by Shirley Riga

I find trust in my silence

I’m as surprised as anyone I found it there

Long before this practice I thought silence

Meant alone and forgotten

But with this newfound trust

I’m realizing a world is inside

In my silence

And I’m grateful.

Dreams of memories past

Visit me again

Where difficult situations are

Laden with helplessness.

I always find myself in dreams

Like this when I’m on the cusp of change,

feeling bigness before me

In an emptiness of waiting

The cusp holds the edge of anxiety

And the thin edge of Now

Where my comfort lies in

The present at the tip of my toes.

My trust holds the simple truth

I am here now and that’s what I know.

To venture past the trust puts me

In a wanting state.

I found this Mary Oliver poem about letting go in nature. Comfort of a memory can ease me on the cusp of change.

Picking Blueberries, Austerlitz, New York,1957 (Mary Oliver)

Once, in summer,

In the blueberries,

I fell asleep, and woke

When a deer stumbled against me.

I guess

She was so busy with her own happiness

She had grown careless

And was just wandering along

Listening

To the wind as she leaned down

To lip up the sweetness.

So, there we were

With nothing between us

But a few leaves, and the wind's

Glossy voice

Shouting instructions.

The deer

Backed away finally

And flung up her white tail

And went floating off toward the trees -

But the moment before she did that

Was so wide and so deep

It has lasted to this day;

I have only to think of her -

The flower of her amazement

And the stalled breath of her curiosity,

And even the damp touch of her solicitude

Before she took flight-

To be absent again from this world

And alive, again, in another,

For thirty years

sleepy and amazed,

Rising out of the rough weeds

Listening and looking.

Beautiful girl,

Where are you?