Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Birdwings


Your grief for what you've lost lifts 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 expanding,
the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated
as birdwings.

3 comments:

Jane Lancaster said...

makes me think of all the birds that dropped out of the skies...

Ruth said...

Oh yes, Jane, I hadn't made that connection.

Shaista said...

Aaaah, just what I needed to hear at this moment, Rumi to the rescue, as a million times before.
My big brother bought me a journal in Laos. It has three monks on the cover, dressed in saffron robes, under black umbrellas stepping peacefully into the puddles of rain beneath their feet.
This poem is now my 2011 book's first entry :)