[Thespiritexpress] The Layers

[Yasskin Marc]

Amazing poem here Ed~ !! ~~~~~~ thanks so much for this.
 ~~ Never done ~ ~~~~  ~~~~~~ forever arriving into a deepening mystery ~ 🙏⚡️



> On Apr 3, 2024, at 4:31 PM, Ed Balldinger via Thespiritexpress <thespiritexpress at lists.mcn.org> 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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