I am a blog-posting MACHINE!! I re-read this poem and thought it really captured my emotions at present and also that it was worthwhile to share it. Below are some photos of a walk my roommates and I took before Travis left to go back home. We’ll miss you, Trav! Also, there’s one taken of a few of us at the temple by my boss, Yeshe.
Neon Birch
By: Adrie Kusserow
Hush, little one.
Nothing I tell you
will ever measure up.
Nothing else will coax the small fists
of your brain
to open this wide.
In the bright of winter, enter the sun’s open
mouth, its brilliant, giddy scream.
Behold the densely packed snow,
all whale-muzzled, crested and tidal wave.
Look up. Even in winter
the wild geese
will still be sewing their stitch of ache
across the sky.
At dusk, enter the silence.
if the past comes lumbering in,
keep walking up the hill to the oldest field of birch,
poised like dinosaurs in their slow walk across time –
only these can take the mind’s weight
and deposit it, small, random, and inconsequential
as a teacup in the snow.
When the dark crouches at your feet,
Watch the sleek pale gloves
of the birch glow neon
pink, neon bone. Behold their tiny branches,
glowing capillaries
inching across
the dark laps of hills.
Nothing I say
will ever feel this good.
Still, even in joy, watch the mind start to fuss,
watch its haggard architects
hunched over their blueprints of meaning, ink
smudged on their face and hands,
I say: let the ink bleed across the page,
let it spill out luxuriously across the meadow.
Remember there is nothing you offer
the fields do not drink gladly.
Behold the small pond you have become:
this is the first fist, opening.
Lie back, float. Let the slow oars
pull you farther and farther
into this wild and ragged life.
Out there, beyond
the dense coils of worry
beyond the fields we have sewn
so diligently with self and other,
beyond the swollen landscapes
pitted with language and thought,
go there, don’t hesitate.
Whatever it is
that flies hard into the light,
go there, don’t be afraid.
julia's world tour! 
Wow. (sob) (deep breath) Whew.
Julia, thanks so much for the great GIFT of this poem! Wow.
(And thank you, thank you, gods, for Julia’s own great gifts.)
Also, thanks for the photos of the path circumambulating the temple. I’m wearing a small om-carved stone from the stonecutter tucked in there to one side of the path–have you run across him? Sheila Grossman, whom you met in Massachusetts, gave us each one of these stones. It hardly ever leaves my neck: it reminds me of her, of others, of the dharma–and now of you. The Kusserow poem is likewise a profound reminder. Thank you so much!
And I love that you’re “a blog-posting MACHINE!” We are avid consumers on this end.
Quick question: is this poem in her collection “Hunting Down the Monk”? Where did you come across it?
B.
I agree with Bonnie. Wow!!
Now Spain. A country where the Carpe Diem philosophy rules. And then there’s the food! Keep the blogs coming.
Jim