the tightrope

we skip along a tightrope
stretched between love and fear….

looking down on one side,
we see a vision of ourselves --
alone and struggling up a huge hillside
pushing boulders, like sisyphus….

or paddling, paddling upstream
against the rapids,
like yosemite sam chasing
that ever elusive rabbit in the mist….

we imagine ourselves caught in a sticky web,
choiceless, driven, yearning,
crying out, raw, in our self-imposed
isolation….

while on the other side of this tightrope,
we see another vision….
a great connection linking the living….

we see our molecules smack and bash against
the atoms of the stones we push,
exchanging electron-sized bursts of energy….

we see that our skin sucks in the hydrogen
and oxygen that
the water generously ladles over us
in great gallumphing splashes….

our cells drink what is offered with
automatic joy….

we see a web connecting diamonds….

•••

i once heard a hopi woman laugh when
she told me the story of a ‘belicana’
who came to visit the mesas,
and was moved to tears by the
sight of children’s feet
smudged with the dirt
of the pueblo floors….

my heart, she said to me….
as we sat in the inbetween times,
between dances of kachinas
between meals of hominy
and big white beans
and fry bread and honey…..
between dawn and dusk,
between her world and mine….

i let her cry her sweet sacred tears….
her water was a precious gift to this land,
to us….

but i told her,
what makes you think that this dirt
is our enemy?

what makes you think
that this is not a
priviledge….

this dirt --
she is our mother.
we sweep her,
we live on her,
we love her….

this dirt is where everything that feeds us
springs from….

we care for her and feed her and water her and
plant her….

with our hopes, our dreams, our seed, our blood….

it’s all in where we look from our
tightrope….

•••

my poverty keeps me close to
the edges of living….
if i see it that way….

close, like my hands making bread,
kneading soil….
cradling my bloody newborn….

or it banishes me to a wasteland
of despair and un-nameable suffering….

my wealth
ripens me with gratitude,
if i see it this way….

causes me to swell like a bud –
bursts me with the awareness of
usable blessings….

or it isolates me in frigid, air-conditioned,
perfectly-appointed splendour….

i can, if i want to, see the magic
of living and dying every day….

i can see hot blood run from a chicken’s neck,
and value the gift of it’s life to me….

or i can purchase a bloodless, boneless
piece of cold white meat from the market….
and still feel the grace it gives my cells….

no path is better….

how are we to say which side of the tightrope is better?

life is the tightrope….

•••

when we wobble on the side of
connection…..
of awareness that we are surrounded by
the love of the world….
nothing seems undesirable, not even death….

tipping into fear, though,
life exerts its tragedy,
and a lost limb is
a broken heart…..

and both are true….
and how annoying is that truth
when we bob around
trying to find our balance every day….

•••

every day is different for me….

so often i am stuck by the pins of my humanity,
and i suffer inside the separation of my own thoughts….

but in those delicate times when i
stand poised on my tightrope,
balanced between gravity and the wind,
a light in my eyes, and a laugh in my throat,

arms outstretched, one leg hovering midair,

i smile into the vision of who i really am…..
which is ageless and everything….

all things that crawl,
that fly and swim,
that shout and clatter,
that sing and cry,
that love and fear….

and i hear the old ones say to me….
go cry your tears, little one,

and then…
go plant corn…..

•••

my teachers smile at me with buddha smiles….

i am glad
that my crazy tightrope dance
makes them laugh…..

___________
© 2010
Beth Anne Boardman



(photo courtesy kyle harrington)