Versione Italiana | Nota biografica | Versione lettura |
The world begins and ends in memory;
what I remember is what I am.
Did that blade of grass I plucked
as a boy to vibrate with my breath
really burst the air with shrillness?
A remembered world holds truth
and realities far clearer than echoes.
In the cupped hands of remembrance
the thin green reed of what we are
trembles with a sound so rare.
From Leaving Holds me here: Selected Poems. Thistledown Press, 2001.
the spaces that lie
between moments of sharing,
those times when it is
enough to feel the presence
of the other, the knowing
that this silence, too,
is a gift;
the silence of the mountains
or the dark forest,
or the plains at night,
reaching out to touch
some part of us
that craves time alone;
the moments before sleep,
or after waking, when the world
rises or falls into order,
finds shape and meaning
of its own.
We need these silences
as we need the words
we must first learn to say
and then forget
as we come to know
silence.
From: Leaving Holds Me Here: Selected Poems. Thistledown Press, 2001.
The river flows one way
and in its passing, swift
or slow, you feel
the weight of time,
the lunar pull, the turn
of seasons. Go with
the current and it takes
you where all things
come at last together.
But there is another way —
turn against the flow
and brunt the mystery
leading you where things
begin, where a river is
just a notion wrought
from sun and ice and stone.
The river flows one way,
but in the wonder of its
passing, we choose.