These last months

I watch you bailing out the boat
as if there's any chance you'll sail again --
your back, so stooped with age and pain,
and still you dip, and pour
and dip, and pour,
the water in the boat is slowly ebbing,
like the life that leaves your veins.
My shoulders ache in sympathy,
but I'm silent: I cannot condemn
your efforts to convince me -- or yourself --
that all is normal.
I'll watch, and smile, and throw bread to the ducks,
and I'll pretend to lean on you as we walk to the car,
though we'll both know the truth: you'll lean on me
as long as I can stand.
You'll drive, but I'll be at the wheel,
following wherever you need to go
to make these last months easier.

The cafe of my thoughts

I've grown superstitious, now that bad news
seems to have taken a permanent place at the corner table.
The cafe of my thoughts seems interminably busy:
a never-ending rush of unexpected patrons,
desperately seeking sustenance, or prayer, or simply time --
some drug to slow the passage to oblivion,
to keep the restaurant open, keep
the dark waitress from removing
the plate of life.

Hymn of Tonglen

I'm sorry you feel broken:
There've been times when I felt broken, too.
There's a way I've found to deal with it
that might also work for you.

Whatever fills your heart with sorrow,
whatever causes pain,
try to spare a thought for all the others
who struggle with the same.

Think of me,
and I'll think of you,
and if we all think of each other,
then somehow we'll get through.

Pray for me
and I'll pray for you
and if we all pray for each other,
then somehow we'll get through.

Whatever makes your heart break,
there's a way to help it heal.
Extend your prayerful thoughts to those
who know just how you feel.

One way to bear our brokenness,
one way we can get through,
is to breathe a prayer on behalf of those
who are broken just like you.

Think of me,
and I'll think of you,
and if we all think of each other,
then somehow we'll get through.

Pray for me
and I'll pray for you
and if we all pray for each other,
then somehow we'll get through.

Stay

Stay.
Don't let your mind
go down that dark road to loss.
Be.
Be here with me, and hold my hand:
we'll cherish what we've been
and who we are.
Don't go.
don't leave me here alone,
the empty space beside me
like a pillow puffed with pain.
Hold
this moment, and hold me;
together we can face what lies ahead.
Breathe, my love,
Breathe, and then keep breathing.
Please.
Don't stop.
Don't.
Stop.

What lingers

Old breasts can still remember from a distance of 30 years
that sensation in the nipples that you feel when your child cries.

Old hearts can still remember the way they used to skip
when a certain someone walked into the room.

Old eyes can still envision the colors of the countryside;
the autumn we've not seen for many years.

Old melodies still linger, and old fingers still remember
how to play her favorite hymns, though her feet no longer walk.

But old brains begin to stutter: Is it now, or was it then?
Is this my husband or my son? This cat, so like the one I lost at 12...

Old muscles, filled with memories of wounds and great adventures,
will still flinch or warm at a touch, and twitch until we take that final breath.

Old friends will still remember us, our families may mourn,
but the love we brought into the world lives on.

The truth is an elephant

The truth is an elephant, and all of us are blind,
declaring what we feel to be what we know.
But what will we do with the contradictions
that inevitably arise?
How can we safely stand beside
the huge paradox in the room
and trust that the magnitude
that encompasses all our beliefs
empowers and appreciates us all?

What is it?

What is it that you've heard along the years
that's opened you to thoughts you'll never think,
lives you'll never lead;
all the ways of being that aren't you?
When you empty your heart,
what is it that spills in?
Everything.
Everything.