[Thespiritexpress] The Layers

[Riantee Rand]

Fantastic, inspiring poem, thank you so much Ed.

Here is the little poem I read on Tuesday

A Perfect Day
 
The house didn’t get clean, 
the dinner didn’t get started,
the bills didn’t get paid,
because a lily was blooming 
in the dead of Winter,
the blue jay had traded his boisterous call
for the cooing of spring love,
the seals were barking their friskiness
into the wind
all the way to my house from the ocean. . .

A playful mood rode the wind, 
blessings trailed behind,
everything I encountered along the way
filled me with curiosity
and I had to go see
what else the day would bring. 
 
In the early evening 
instead of a dinner party
we had a picnic on the beach.
 
Every guest provided 
deliciously inspired morsels
adding their varied aromas
to the bouquet of love
I had gathered all day
in the galleries 
of my reflection.

> On Apr 3, 2024, at 19:30, Yasskin Marc via Thespiritexpress <thespiritexpress at lists.mcn.org> wrote:
> 
> 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 <mailto: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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> 
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