April is Poetry Month--a poem for each day we are open

April 2nd

Donna's Choice

Meditation on Ruin
by Jay Hopler

It's not the lost lover that brings us to ruin, or the barroom brawl,
or the con game gone bad, or the beating
Taken in the alleyway. But the lost car keys,
The broken shoelace,
The overcharge at the gas pump
Which we broach wihout comment - these are the things that
eat away at life, these constant vibrations
In the web of the unremarkable.

The death of a father - the death of the mother -
The sudden loss shocks the living flesh alive! But the broken
pair of glasses,
The tear in the trousers,
These begin an ache behind the eyes.
And it's this ache to which we will ourselves
Oblivious. We are oblivious. Then, one morning - there's a
crack in the water glass - we wake to find ourselves undone.

Eliza's choice

Your grief for what you've lost holds a mirror
up to where you're bravely working.

Expecting the worst, you look and instead,
here's the joyful face you've been wanting to see.

Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes.
If it were always a fist or always stretched open,
you would be paralyzed.

Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expand
the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated
as birdwings.


Jalaluddin Rumi (1207-1273)