feather rain

some wounds
would take the whole earth
to heal....

last night
rain danced softly,
like feathers

through my open window....

delicate drops stirred still air,
drawing my attention
to their sweet secrets....

quietly,
like shimmers
through a web,

i heard whispers
of comfort,
reassurance....

i remembered how once
i had heard
the great one
speaking to me
through desert rocks....

i had leaned my tired head
against their warmth--

they radiated a whole day's worth
of desert sun
into my fearful heart....

listen:
i have been here since the beginning.
i've seen everything there is to see.
you are no worse
and no better
than anyone....
keep going....

some wounds we carry our whole lives,
like amputations....

what was torn out
exists only in the other world....
in ashes,
in dream....

i listen and remember--
this soft gentle rain
falls on everyone,
everyone....

if i turn my face up to it
and stay very quiet
and listen very deeply,
i can feel love
seeping right down into
this suffering heart....

everyone
everyone
is worthy of this
deep and private love....


________________
©2011
beth anne boardman

reconciling grey

sometimes all the beauty
in the world

seems to vanish
in one whoosh....

death bookends life

fate turns on its dime

and rugs shift
under our feet....

poems, words, colors, disappear
metaphor leaves....

shall we hope for no more happiness
if gifts come
on the sharp edge
of a knife?

•

perhaps i have fought the grey too long....
perhaps grey needs to be my new favorite color....

do i lose color?
do i merely note loss?

do i thank god for
this opportunity to
find myself alone in the dark?

to reach out to something
more powerful than my own humanity?

i don't know:

everything i think i know
is really everything i can't ever understand....

•

this morning

i stood on my front steps
and this foreign wind
played in my hair,

ran all around my face
and made me dizzy

birds sang confusingly
of nests and mates
and territories....

the sun shone strangely
springlike

and i brought in the laundry....



_____________
© 2011
beth anne boardman

einstein and rumi are laughing

one day
i saw myself through another's eyes....

....and paris lay before me....

sparkling like a thousand diamonds
alive with a thousand breaths

vibrant with history
shaped by love, and death, and joy....

oh, this world, this world....

how can every day not be a celebration of the
great rite of trees?

of the amazing birth of new grass?

of babies, of passion,
of death and tears?

we are alive at a wondrous time --

learning to see
through mists of illusion
into the universe
of the mere twenty amino acids we all share....

science and love are merging....

einstein and rumi are laughing....

that we can even entertain the thought
that we are anything other
than diamonds....


______________
©2011
beth anne boardman

piano

life whirls --

blowing in
through open windows
and doors....

in the puff of air against my face,
i am sometimes halted --

i sense a cadence
within the rush
and routine
of daily living

a sort of miraculous rhythm
of comings and goings

haves and haven'ts

old age and death

uncomfortable pregnancies
delirious births

iridescent joy
rending grief....

pausing at the threshold,
i become aware of life's notes --

running and chasing and loving
each other across
the keys of a distant piano....

despite despair
abreast of beauty

i stand enwrapped
by eternity....

•

once,
on the way up into
an indelibly still
exquisitely soft
grey whispery dawn....

up, from deep
peaceful
midnight blue
dreams --

i heard the river rushing by me again....

it was like waking
to god....

or to a lover's touch....

i and the river
--and the wind
and the sound--

and

the air
the light
the dark
the depth

we lay blended into
one moment....

i couldn't tell if i were the river --
or was i by the river?

when the night-current
softly buoyed me up
to full wakefulness,
the lovesong of the river merged

into whooshing tires
on a distant motorway....

i lay bereaved....

oh my river....
what incandescent cruelty
in this life

turned you into

a highway?

•

yet inside me these things dwell:

the silence the river the dawn
the darkness the light....

and now and then

singularity

re-expresses itself

through a puff of breeze
across a sunny expanse of pavement....

through voices joined in friendship
wafting up from sidewalks below....

through a single piano note
wandering through the air --

dropped delicately

like a curtsey

upon my delighted ear....



_____________
© 2011
beth anne boardman

singing the spring

lately i have noticed
the frogs
singing springtime
out of mystery....

so busy!
so admirable, how devoted they are
to their nightly work....

i wonder
a little
whether spring might not come
if they stopped....

but then i see it's a group effort --

because the geese also fly it back in
out of deepest south....

trailing it on their wings
like wordsworth's
clouds of glory....

the lizards tug it gently out from under
the rocks where
they've been wrapped in it --
snuggled
right up against it
all winter long....

oh sometimes it seems so long
that we must journey through
the dark
alone
forlorn
brave and
hopeless....

sometimes it seems we drift
in a vacuum
of space and time --

our souls ashiver....

but beating hearts
seem to continue....

feet seem
to keep
inching
forward
to the next step --

then

unsuspected

a flash of
the green!

oh those shy tips!
how they peer and peek
out of the mud....

but doesn't their green
delight you?

and then
somehow
the air softens....

and our scrappy hearts
expand
with our
evolving breath....

i have noticed that
though frozen,

we also
soften
in the dark....

and when we are all soft enough,
the frogs begin
to chant....

slowly
slowly
their singing
turns the earth
back toward the burning sun....

stirring us gently
out of the fertile mystery....

are you ready to ripen?

to blossom with
the star-flowered plum?

to linger in sun-warmed disguise
under sheltering leaves,
and transform?

are you ready to burst with
your juicy life?

oh my friend!
imagine the frogs' delight!

___________________
©2011
Beth Anne Boardman

coalescence

lately i sense
something building
out in the ethers --

an extraordinary
jumbling of
improbably gorgeous
clouds....

a net of diamonds
coalescing
in the night sky....

a knitting together
of unspoken hopes
and spoken dreams....

it's happening in the silence
that infuses
acceptance
gratitude

confusion....

it's happening in the
mistakes i make....

the clumsy words that
spill out....

in my deepest unknowing....

•

what is required of me now
is no more
(and no less)
than to continue
living
exactly
as
i
am....

devoted
and sentenced
to learning --

to the irredeemable pain
and joy (like a mist)
that crowd each
conscious moment....

to stumbling through
my truth

and finding a way
to turn stumbling
into
dance

•

a gathering of guides
and angels
meet

to discuss our cases
when we are asleep,
exhausted from our efforts....

for a long time they
must watch us
sending only
dustings of
compassion

to drift over our saddened souls
and soften life's suffering turns....

and as we
hesitantly embark

across that sea
that both buoys us
and threatens our very keels....

as we learn to catch
the breath of love

in our own sails....

steering our lives by it,
allowing it to penetrate
the veils over our hearts....

as we feel ourselves stirred
and wakened
by the great
energies

the uncontrollable
motions
around
and under us....

as we give our lives over
to something we can't understand

and surrender gracefully to its lead --

as we travel bravely on into
the chill, unpromising wind,

the angels take note....

and begin kindling
our next
fire....


__________________

©2011
Beth Anne Boardman

under the western sky

on nights when life seems vast --

filled with space
and chilly

when a frisson of fright
hovers at the edge of
consciousness

like a wraith....

like a held breath....

when i am assailed
with wonder

but not the good kind --

on those nights

words whispered
long ago
well up

through depths of
memory:

walk to the window, daughter --
stand and gaze out
softly
into the
darkness....

you are all that you see
and all that you don't....

warmth suffuses
the silence:

stars and chemistry
are shared....

we are all
passengers
in this darkness

•

sometimes
on our rare
starry nights,

i pad quietly out

lift my face and heart up

to those silent
bluewhite
sparks

and feel the secret we share between us --

we burn
all alone

yet ensouled....

our very cells
atomic furnaces

knocking around in a vast microcosm....

i and the stars
differ not at all really --

sailing together
through infinity....

and that western star that always draws me --
lures my eyes upward and into
endless liquid
twilit depths....

into that elegant, embarrassing profusion
of starry riches....

we wink
and reassure each other....

•

here under the lights of the city

and the loft of the atmosphere

and the crazy zinging of microwaves
that net over my head --

i offer up my attention

to diamond barques in a velvet sea

silently signalling

here we all are --
together....

•

turning away,
a smile widens within....

a resilient glimmer
plays at the edge of my vision --

how those stars dance
down into the western sky!


_____________________
©2011
Beth Anne Boardman