leaving/the riptide

each leaving
resurrects
all separations….

secret
painful
twinges riffle
our dancing spirits….

coming apart,
we know fear
and we know doubt….

with exactly the intensity
of the sweet whispers we shared….

it’s as though, sometimes,
a riptide
carries us farther and
farther apart….

and though we swim and swim for shore….
we lose sight of one another….

and so
we must float….

we must turn
and swim parallel,
softly….

•

it’s been months since you were here….

but i feel you in your absence….

mostly in the darkest hours
when the silence is touchable
and a great horned owl calls
only to me….

i feel the great love of the universe
waiting just outside my walls
waiting to rush in,
fill me where
it used to fill me….

i’ve been playing with it,
like the tide –
chasing it,
then running away….

it’s waiting for that sigh it knows so well,
that sigh of surrender,
of ‘yes’
of ‘yes and yes’….

•

right now,
floating in this gentle
undertow,
sun warming my face….

i know
that breathing
and swimming
i will find my way
to my own shore again….

•

life crashes over me
with a terrible kind of beauty….

i live and love this present….

but sometimes pictures
of our last soft morning
drift into my mind....

like gauzy curtains,
blowing on a breeze –
flickering
across my memory –

taking my breath away
with their innocent unformed promise….

igniting in me a tiny soft glow:

i am vital, alive,
i am living the mystery….

•

and so i swim softly,
breathing,
grateful,

humming a tune of love—
to this great ocean that birthed me….

finding my way to yes....

____

©2010
Beth Anne Boardman

amazement is a choice

amazement is a choice….

green leaves are not….

here are the things that amaze me:
everything.

but only if i sit still and stop worrying….

mary oliver says that there is singing in a leaf….
i believe her….

i’m pretty sure i’ve heard them singing to me….
or at least whisper….

i remember once
hearing great sheaves of palm fronds whispering over me
as i napped
in the middle of a sundrenched june,
cradling the jumping daughter inside me….

i remember hearing the soft voice of my husband
murmuring to our little son
on the patio outside our bedroom window --
and my son’s lilting voice,
asking the most adorable questions about bugs….

all these long years of happiness and disaster later,
these memories still bring sweet tears to my eyes….

and those palm fronds are still whispering….

i’m convinced
what they whisper
are blessings….

and now i know the secret to amazement --

even amid chaos
even in noisy bars
or midtown traffic….

if i can just remember to touch it….
silence flows everywhere….

it’s how the old wise ones have developed such deep laugh lines
around their eyes and mouths….

practicing their buddha smiles….

they’ve been finding amazement
in the dirt
in love
in despair and tragedy….
in rain and mud and starvation and dancing….

in shattered last breaths....

some call it magic
some call it god

and some miss it altogether
racing around in their twirling dramas…..

and that –

that, my lovely friend,

that is amazing too…..

_______________
© 2010
Beth Anne Boardman


[mary oliver's poem
'what can i say'
appears in
swan: poems and prose poems
boston: beacon, 2010]