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Musings on Deep Listening
Retreat at Rose Mountain
a
poem by Marilyn Lerch
Journeywoman
Poet
The rock'n roll, jolt and bump, rut-riding trip up Rose Mountain, then
slow down, letting go,
attuning inward,
turning outward from silence, peace-seeping, pores
like little ears
when the mouth stops,
the mask drops
who cares what you wear, what you don't say,
who gets seconds, who's on first, where the day goes
breathing across boundaries, following fantasies into snake pits, night
dreams into wake/work
morning movement underwater, single file of listening soles,
light step on membrane of baby skin up to the meadow
shake out, come alive, gesturing anew the essence of east, south, west,
north and center
blue herons in a circle, unisoned lift of limbs and breath
long stretches of silence and meditationthe slow drag of clouds across New Mexico, morning
hills rusting into
green, crescendo and decresendo of winds,
lulls sudden: air pockets of silence
uplifting articles in the outhouses but holding the non-verbal form asks no reading, no
writing: my eyes HAPPEN on this:
The best form in which to worship God is in all forms.
We create temporary social structures out of gesture, play, soundings: a
healing circle, improv of cellos, viola, voice and pine cones, forest
encounters of a surreal kind
Our silence gathers
knits
Are animals drawn into our orbit or we into theirs?
A deer drinks at the pond near the cook house, a bear circles nearer,
chipmunks scurry over our shoes,
one morning our meditation walk is so organically fused
with the surround that a rabbits sits a few yards away
poised during the slow procession of twenty-five folk
I walk in the forest intending to find deer, forget my intention, come
across a fawn and two doe
and the skunk family: their low-along-the-ground dolphin glide, glossy
undulant trail of black and white equally apportioned--grounding
image of the universe--rising through the plume, sweet bearers of light and shadow.
What do we really know?
One of us reframes a father's admonition--Listen here!--to Listen here.
We celebrate, honor, play, let our idiosyncrasies out of the bag, let our
peculiar warps and woofs weave a collective tapestry of love
Most of all we listen deeply here.