You merged from behind
a raspberry bush.
On a fragrant summer evening.
You were a dot of light
and I chose to see you golden.
You have been my travel-mate
since I’ve opened my eyes to life.
You’ve traveled with me through
mysteries I could never understand
and it was not your job to explain
anything; ever.
Sometimes you travel from
flower to flower and sometimes
I lose sight of you.
You become a colorful kite
vanishing into the endless sky,
a shooting star landing
where I cannot reach you.
You too sleep, maybe at the
peak of the Himalayas, maybe
on the wings of a tiny bird or
maybe on the wavelets of a calm
mysterious beautiful river.
What you whisper in my ear
cannot become a book
what you breathe into my being
cannot become a religion.
If anyone has seen you
and I’m sure they have,
if anyone has heard you,
and I’m sure they have,
then they’d also know
that the notion of you is
so ethereal, so changeable,
so paradox and so unknown
that they cannot trap you
in man-made notions.
No, you cannot be defined
and no, your whispers
have a different tune for
different souls.
Believe me,
I am trying to accept
that I’ll never know you,
never understand you.
Sometimes you become
a pouring of Jasmine petals
as a blessing for a lone traveler
who pauses to sigh.
Maybe that is a blessing
and maybe it is a blessing
that I have made peace
with not knowing you and
sometimes, achingly, loving you.
life
Wild Peace
(For my mother)
I am grateful,
so grateful,
for my life,
I am a raw human who knows how to be whole,
I am a curly-haired child walking over piedmont hills,
brushing against rounded white oak lobes,
by myself, but not alone.
Captivated by buttressed trunks and carpeted ravines,
traversing the slippery bark balance of fallen logs,
imagining the living space among rooted brown earth
and light floating leaves falling at my feet
I will always be there,
exploring creek edges and following fence-lines,
crunching and climbing to find the sheltered natural
rooms
framed by branches and
stone where I could
b e h o l d
the dancing beings of cedar,
the towering reach of oak and beech
cycles of green to copper leaves
that shape the vessel of my soul-
I finally know how I am to live-
to fill my soul with awe,
to live in wild peace.
In memory of Marjorie Hare Andrews 1945-2006.
ROSS L. ANDREWS
I Taught Myself to Live Simply
I taught myself to live simply and wisely,
to look at the sky and pray to God,
and to wander long before evening
to tire my superfluous worries.
When the burdocks rustle in the ravine
and the yellow-red rowanberry cluster droops
I compose happy verses
about life’s decay, decay and beauty.
I come back. The fluffy cat
licks my palm, purrs so sweetly
and the fire flares bright
on the saw-mill turret by the lake.
Only the cry of a stork landing on the roof
occasionally breaks the silence.
If you knock on my door
I may not even hear.
~Anna Akhmatova