Mind Gardens: February 2006

why loneliness?

you ask,

why loneliness?

i ask,

why mosquitoes?

or love?

or humans?

are they all the same question?

Have You Seen Me?

Have you seen me? Anywhere?

she asked.

What?

I’ve lost myself and I’m hoping

you know where I am.

Well, you’re here.

You know, right here. Now.

Not really, she said. It’s not me.

It doesn’t feel like me. You know?

I’m sorry.

Thank you ... but will that help?

Where do you guess

you lost yourself?

I’ve been in love …

And?

… and he left.

Oh, I see.

Yes.

Perhaps if you look elsewhere.

Where?

Well ...

I walk around the lake to wake up my cells and strengthen my heart and all the other good things walking does. Yet the walk always gives more than that. Just to be inside the unconditioned air is a natural pleasure too often missing from my common day and to socialize with the sights and sounds of nature as both observer and participant is as perfect as it gets when allowed to simply happen.

I wonder if the geese and ducks and gulls walk and paddle and fly for their health? Of course, I think, mostly to accomplish their survival needs, like eating—and that’s for their health. But sometimes they seem to enjoy flying for the fun of it, the joy of it—and to practice. The gulls are especially good flyers—show-offs sometimes, impressive to me, an admiring (envious?) flyer of machines. I often wonder if any of them wonder about us humans.

It's winter. Bare-limbed trees (except the evergreens), display their singularly different, sometimes intricate, silhouettes, their limb structures so clearly displayed against the still-lit, quiet eventide sky, reveal their heritage—their family characteristics.

I am awed by the diversity and beauty of it all even in this small park. Then there is the ever-fascinating activity of people watching ... and sometimes meeting. The park is a good place to visit.

Your Release Awaits

Unwittingly, though unerringly,

she lives by her script—the coping tapes,

the survival codes, the ones we write

in childhood to get through each day to the next.

Unchallenged, thus unrevised, her script crafts

her future as predictably as we mark

the movement of the stars.

In her early pubescent days—the heavy-burdened days

of her young and tentative womanhood—she sought

the mother-love she's never had from boys whose

nature-driven bodies sought something else.

These collisions of mismatched wills and wiles,

of offers and compromise—acceptance

of disguised, deceptive, and fleeting fulfillment

—refined and sculpted her nature and fate.

She gave the boys what they wanted. Oddly, to her,

at times she enjoyed giving them what they wanted –

and what they gave to her. But when they were done

she was empty again. She did not feel loved.

Now, in her tightly-bound woman world,

romance (as she knows it) abides ever so briefly

to protect her from the certainty of common life,

the reality of change and loss of which she is

most afraid. It is tricky to manage though.

It is increasingly demanding to keep reality at bay.

The pain of unmet expectations in another

ill-conceived, starry-eyed adventure—

one more self-scripted romantic failure,

is a moment of utter, bitter confirmation

that she is surely unworthy of worthy love.

Yet, loyal to script, each painful encounter is new.

She is caught unaware, fully surprised at this great,

awful, unwanted, unearned suffering

of a kind and measure so very familiar to her

should she dare to give it even a passing

sideways glance for an honest moment or two.

For her denial of authorship, the cost is high.

Unremitting tears well up from deep reservoirs

of longing where love so desperately wants to be.

Oh, dear woman, your release awaits you on the

other side of your sorrow, should you choose

to love yourself ... at last.