Posts tagged desert

Poem: Surprisingly, How Pain Left This Morning

0
12 years
by in Dominique, Poem, Poems

Dominique Larntz * June 7, 2012

I was walking down steep dirt in the desert
with the same hurt hip that visits daily
in my forties, and each next step became
the uncertain place that pain makes
its bed frame since the accident.

For a few steps, I relied exclusively on the right,
placing my left only momentarily where I knew
its sole would not slide amongst altitude’s tiny granules,
and landed gracelessly with several hard gaits on its companion.

There’s a shooting pain in this sort of imbalance
that no poem can soothe, because it is outside the words
and inside the music of movement in the space
surrounding what I call myself and my body.

I stopped moving halfway down that hill
and I started to meditate instead of hike.

I took my eyes from the bottom of the crest
and focused on the rock right in front of me.

I changed my mind’s calculation
from counting the steps to get to my car
to noticing that I am in this step.

I told my left hip, I am here for you now.

I sustained a simple, humble change
of awareness in each step,
and the pain dissolved quickly
in an unexpected surprise.

Surprise because I was just
trying to finish the walk without falling down
and I had no eyes for easy steps
where each side supported the other.

Wherever else uncertain,
I am sure to take this walk again,
and I may not always find such easy relief,
but I can dig my heel firmly into faith
in the restoration of balance
over an uneasy terrain.

 

(With kudos to Thich Nhat Hanh For his Walking Meditation which inspired my walking meditation today.)

Poem: Deep Listening

0
13 years
by in Dominique, Poem, Poems

Dominique Larntz * May 7, 2012

Deep Listening

My desire to grow tomatoes is so deep
that I wonder if they desire me too,
if the tomato seed dozes and views
the arising images of a farmer placing her
gently into the soil, and how the tomato seed
experiences love in its swaddled dark
arid bed just after it is tucked into
the dampened dirt and dolomite
so that it feels safe to respond to the sunlight
in the days that follow.

The dormancy of the seed,
the dormancy of that desire
and its potential that will build
from a rigid tiny thing you could have dropped
from your fingers before it was ever planted
into the fragrant desert blossom that will feed
and fulfill the entire lush autumn season
reminds me that spring is anytime
you can find the environment
to feed it.

Poem: Transplant

0
13 years
by in Dominique, Poem, Poems

Dominique Larntz * April 30, 2012

Transplant

The dry soil absorbed me as quickly
as the drops of Lady Gray tea
slopped from the side of my cup
while I leaned the opposite way
to feed the lemon thyme Shauna
gave me for my birthday–
the perfect fit to replant
in the stands we made
just outside our front door.

My eyes kaleidoscope
on the radiance
of the escaped sky.
In its heated airways,
Summer is sending its missives
each day now, announcing itself
by thrilling our skin into moistening
and making intimate embers
where we are bare.

I know Summer will bring baking heat.
I will tend the garden,
tend myself and my frailties,
the skin that burns too fast,
the sense a transplant has
that it wants to wind its way
back down to sea level
and find a way home to the ocean.

I am as impermanent
as anything else
and the desert
is one of the most
skillful teachers
to plant the idea
that we all root
in foreign soil
for a while.

 

Go to Top