To End April

What to Remember When Waking, by David Whyte

In that first hardly noticed moment in which you wake,
coming back to this life from the other
more secret, moveable and frighteningly honest world
where everything began,
there is a small opening into the new day
which closes the moment you begin your plans.

What you can plan is too small for you to live.
What you can live wholeheartedly will make plans enough
for the vitality hidden in your sleep.

To be human is to become visible
while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others.
To remember the other world in this world
is to live in your true inheritance.

You are not a troubled guest on this earth,
you are not an accident amidst other accidents
you were invited from another and greater night
than the one from which you have just emerged.

Now, looking through the slanting light of the morning window
toward the mountain presence of everything that can be
what urgency calls you to your one love?
What shape waits in the seed of you
to grow and spread its branches
against a future sky?

Is it waiting in the fertile sea?
In the trees beyond the house?
In the life you can imagine for yourself?
In the open and lovely white page on the writing desk?

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Poetry was one of my first loves. It was how I first learned to organize words, images, emotions, and longings. Writing poetry has always been a means of processing, a way of speaking to the heart of a matter while, as Emily Dickinson once wrote, telling is slant. It’s poetry that speaks in a way that most makes me come alive in sense and sound to beauty, curiosity, sorrow, conflict, and so much more.

It makes sense to me that April should be National Poetry Month. April is a curious month where I live, with so many possibilities for sensory wonder and exploration. It’s typically the month when the earth begins to crack open into bloom and to burst with a feeling of new possibility. While March feels like a time in which sadness is a presence around me, April enters and reminds me of joy, sunlight, warmth, nature’s creativity. The earth becomes a kind of living poetry.

Through this past month, the cracks that life left in me were filled in by new joys. New flowers blooming, new opportunities to see the color green again as if for the first time, hearing the cacaphony of morning birds all around my front porch, a fresh experience of sunlight on my face and arms. It’s a marvelous experience to be alive.

So to end this month, I wanted to leave you with the beauty of creativity in word and image. The poetry of David Whyte, Mary Oliver, and of the sun doing what it does in dazzling color (in case you’re not a morning person who wakes in time to see the sunrise, but love to see pictures of such things). I’m not sure you’ll fall in love with words and sunrises the way I have, but I so love to share, and imagine us finding beauty together.

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Invitation, by Mary Oliver

    Oh do you have time
            to linger
                    for just a little while
                           out of your busy

    and very important day
            for the goldfinches
                    that have gathered
                           in a field of thistles

    for a musical battle,
            to see who can sing
                    the highest note,
                           or the lowest,

    or the most expressive of mirth,
            or the most tender?
                    Their strong, blunt beaks
                           drink the air

    as they strive
            melodiously
                    not for your sake
                           and not for mine

    and not for the sake of winning
            but for sheer delight and gratitude—
                    believe us, they say,
                           it is a serious thing

    just to be alive
            on this fresh morning
                    in the broken world.
                           I beg of you,

    do not walk by
            without pausing
                    to attend to this
                           rather ridiculous performance.

    It could mean something.
    It could mean everything.
    It could be what Rilke meant, when he wrote:
    You must change your life.

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I am so excited for this upcoming opportunity to escape, to embrace delight and tranquility, and experience the “sacred” area of Sagres, Portugal. Known for its stunning beaches in Portugal, delicious food, rich history, and friendly people, Sagres is part of the Algarve Coast, an area travelers say should not be missed. With a few spots left for this retreat week with myself and Jen Rolston, perhaps you’ll choose to join us and let us immerse you in a truly beautiful and restful experience. Discover more and sign up by clicking on the name here: Embracing Delight: Practicing the Art of Attention

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Finally for my paid subscribers, here is this week’s yoga recording for you, with a lower back therapy focus and some sneaky core work, click here on the name of the class: Adapted Yoga with Christa