A Talmud Angel

[image from Flickr.com]

"Every blade of grass has its Angel
that bends over it and whispers....
'grow,grow'."
The Talmud

[I penned this poem for a dear friend who is walking through the kind of days where the spirit grows faint at the prospect of putting one foot in front of the other. Days when life is pain and the heart grows weary. I post it here to encourage any of you who are experiencing dark days right now. In the midst of the fuss and frenzy of the holidays,  it can sometimes look like most people have privileged and easy and happy lives,(they don't; no one is immune from trouble and sadness). All the hoopla can make one's own circumstances seem harder to bear. This is to remind us all that the new year will dawn, and spring will come again. Flowers will bloom, sunshine will bless us all, and a happier day will dawn for one and all. That is my wish for 2011. Let us all continue to  Live In Hope!]

How do you
keep hope alive
in times when
the March wind blows
and hoarfrost forms
around the edges
of your heart?
Times when
the winter wolf
stalks your footsteps
and you doubt the sun
will ever warm
your cheeks again?


Those are the days
when my eyes
seek the first light
of morning,
receiving each day
as a new beginning
with the possibility
of new perceptions;
days when I remember
there is a
larger landscape
than the one we see;
when I know,
if I look out through
my small window,
I may only see gray clouds
over the city.
Yet if I enlarge
that window
and my vision,
I can see the whole sky,
a patch of blue
just breaking
on the horizon.


In those times
when all around me
seems to be
chaotic and dissembling,
I have come
to understand
the universe is
simply rearranging,
through times of transition,
and on the other side
there may be
something wonderful
waiting that
I can't yet see.


I remember
that every cell and seed
in the universe
has one purpose:
to grow.


Even when living
feels too hard,
I still believe in life.
It is the underlying principle
of the universe.
In the midst of war,
political imprisonment, torture
and the worst that humankind
can do to one another,
a human’s instinct
is solely to survive,
to live long enough
to arrive at
a better day.


When your soul is
sorrowing and defeated,
and resists putting
one tired foot
in front of the other,
what I see is
the hugeness
of your spirit
that survived
the trenches
of childhood,
and the heartbreak
of lost love,
to get to this place
where you feel
you are
coming up
empty.


With all of my belief,
in you, in life
and in tomorrow,
(I who have walked
through similar
barren wastelands),
until you can
believe, again,
yourself,
let me be the
Talmud angel
who bends over the
solitary blade of grass
that is your life,
and whispers to it:
“Grow! Grow!”

Warrior Hearts

image from emoda.com

She was born
with a gentle nature
and a tenacious spirit,
which would
come in handy
down the road.

She and her mother
were born
of the Celtic mist,
the turbulent tide
and the
hope of the
morning star.
They came,
blood and bone,
from a long line
of Irish crones.

Stoicism
was bred
in their marrow.
This, too,
would prove
helpful.

They shared
hearts full of dreams,
lives of disappointment
and, fortunately,
a wicked cackle.

When she was
fourteen,
the worst thing
that can happen
to a girl-child
happened.

There followed
bad and
painful times,
and despair.
Somehow,
she hung on.

With the force
of her will,
her mother
kept her
tethered
to the planet,
and
would not
let go.

When she was
barely seventeen,
she had a girl-child,
one more elfin
Celtic woman-
in-the-making.
And for this child
she turned her life
towards hope.

More pain
would follow,
for more pain
always follows.

Like her mother's,
her marriage
was oppressive.
Like her mother,
her spirit 
rose from
that oppression
and cast
those bindings
definitively 
Off.

Oh, how
her spirit rose!
Like the sunrise
over a peaceful 
inlet mountain,
fiery red
and glowing,
so bright it hurt
one's eyes,
did it arise.

But life
as a single mother
is no picnic.
She had watched
her mother
do it.
She had lived it
as a child.
Now here
it was again,
all pain and struggle
and trying
so hard to
keep on
keeping on.

Times of despair,
of hopelessness,
the too-much-ness
of every single thing,
trying to find
a storybook ending,
finding instead
the Rocky Horror Show
of Real Life.

And then
this girl
got on
the healing path.

Courageously,
she went to
the scariest place:
within.
She peeled away
the layers
of muck and shame,
as her forebears
once dug
in the earth
to find the
potatoes
that kept
their souls alive
through
years
of famine.

In that deep earth,
she found treasures
that had lain
buried within
for decades,
gone all unnoticed.

She strung them out,
in wonder,
all pretty and twinkling
and feeling
just right
in the hand:
her heart's jewels,
her own worth,
the worth that was
always there,
belatedly discovered.

After so much pain,
it takes forty years,
give or take,
to finally believe.

Now she believes.

She has claimed
her voice
and uses it
to state her truths
respectfully.

She takes no shit
from any single body.
This is her time now.

She has arisen,
and, baby,
you better
keep your
sunglasses on,
that's just
how bright
things are
about
to get!

Instead of the
scarcity
in her
fridge
and wallet,
she chooses
to see
the abundance
of the All That Is.

She is grateful
to be alive
and on the planet.

She stopped
dreaming
of those misleading
fairy tales
and started living
her very own
Reality TV Show For One,
and what a show!

Her life is
far from easy,
but her
radiance
is dazzling.

Her mother
has watched
all this
with pride,
her daughter's
warrior heart
coming into
the light of day
and claiming
its passage.

This fellow warrior
was walking
in her footsteps,
following markers
she had herself
laid down
to point
the way.

They exchange nods
of deep respect
and recognition.
They are both
Warrior Women
on the path.

Now the girl
flings
a long scarf
round her neck
jauntily,
and pulls her
combat boots on.
She is heading
out the door,
looking for
the day's
fine adventure.

Her beauty
turns heads
wherever she goes.
But what stays
with you
is her kindness,
her respectful manner,
her compassionate heart
for the most broken
among us,
her seeing of
the downtrodden,
the bypassed,
and their worth
as human beings.
It is her
inner light
-that she has
always had-
that truly
shines.