[Thespiritexpress] The Layers

[Tracey Coddington]

Whew! I sense resonation with this poem.....thank you!
Tracey

On 4/3/24 4:31 PM, Ed Balldinger via Thespiritexpress wrote:
> Here's the Stanley Kunitz poem I read in Pathwork class last week that 
> a couple of folks asked me to post.
>
> Many blessings,
>
> ~ Ed
>
> _The Layers_
>
> I have walked through many lives,
>
> some of them my own,
>
> and I am not who I was,
>
> though some principle of being
>
> abides, from which I struggle
>
> not to stray.
>
> When I look behind,
>
> as I am compelled to look
>
> before I can gather strength
>
> to proceed on my journey,
>
> I see the milestones dwindling
>
> toward the horizon
>
> and the slow fires trailing
>
> from the abandoned camp-sites,
>
> over which scavenger angels
>
> wheel on heavy wings.
>
> Oh, I have made myself a tribe
>
> out of my true affections,
>
> and my tribe is scattered!
>
> How shall the heart be reconciled
>
> to its feast of losses?
>
> In a rising wind
>
> the manic dust of my friends,
>
> those who fell along the way,
>
> bitterly stings my face.
>
> Yet I turn, I turn,
>
> exulting somewhat,
>
> with my will intact to go
>
> wherever I need to go,
>
> and every stone on the road
>
> precious to me.
>
> In my darkest night,
>
> when the moon was covered
>
> and I roamed through wreckage,
>
> a nimbus-clouded voice
>
> directed me:
>
> “Live in the layers,
>
> not on the litter.”
>
> Though I lack the art
>
> to decipher it,
>
> no doubt the next chapter
>
> in my book of transformations
>
> is already written.
>
> I am not done with my changes.
>
>                     ~ /STANLEY KUNITZ 
> <https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/stanley-kunitz>///
>
>
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