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Pilgrim, You Find the Path By Walking, by Jeanne Murray Walker (sonnets)

Pilgrim, You Find the Path By Walking, by Jeanne Murray Walker (sonnets)

by Neremite@ · 29 things on Twos

Brian McLaren wrote a books called "We Make the Road By Walking"
"The title comes from one of Brian’s heroes, Brazilian educator/activist Paolo Freire. He used this title for a published dialogue between Freire and another seminal educator/activist, Myles Horton, who was an important figure in the Civil Rights Movement in the US. Freire may have derived the quote from the great Spanish poet Antonio Machado."
Traveler (Your Footprints) by Antonio Machado... Traveler, your footprints are the only road, nothing else. Traveler, there is no road; you make your own path as you walk. As you walk, you make your own road, and when you look back you see the path you will never travel again. Traveler, there is no road; only a ship's wake on the sea.
"Rummaging Through Language to Find a Sonnet"
...after the sun opens its aperture to take in vineyards beneath my window the way light must have explored air when God said Let there be light and dark cracked forever like a geode divided by the strike of time, when I see this precious, never-to-be-precisely-reiterated brightness, I long to find some modest, sturdy cup, some strong bowl of words to hold it: Thursday. How lightness drops from the womb of night like a white foal this sudden morning, juddering to unbend, breathing new air. Gathering herself to stand.
"The Creation"
was going well. A perfect, rosy sow, a finch, an elephant. Then a giraffe at the last minute, sprang up like Wow, an exclamation point on legs. A gaffe. Or maybe not. Her fringy eyelashes, her voice, a bleat soft as a low laugh, a yard-long black tongue to lick and cath leaves from the sky. She nuzzles her newborn calf, still wet, eyes shut, legs splayed and sliding, the two of them improbable sweet chaff of the imagination, hang-gliding off the cliff of reason. Oh giraffes, gather around, bend down your horns. Remind me, when all seems dark and sane, of mystery.
"What Was I Thinking"
(this excerpt makes me think of @Lenia ) ...This was the land of shadow I passed through, hearing behind me death's rasping, wintery breath. As he stalked me, how tired I grew, how sick of grief. How I laughed bitterly...
"Farewell"
(an excerpt) ...Dusk falls. So much goes on that we can't grasp. Trees hush, the vast dimmer switch of sun dials down and noise relents...
"Nightmare"
...words are only letters, dumb, drifting down like brown leaves on the lawn...
"Border Crossing"
...And I'm back at the checkpoint, the guard with his gun pawing through my luggage. My heart skipping its ragged rope...
"Study: How the Leaf Falls"
...It falls, allows itself to spin, then rocks in the hammock of a breeze...
"Silence"
...But still I long for stillness, white and vast as an Alp glistening in the sun, its tall massive shoulders shawled with light...
"The Problem With Silence"
Last week I was restless as the ocean. I paced the winter beach in sleet, alone when I didn't want to be alone. My phone, silent. I longed to talk, to hear some human voice. I called: Let me know you're here. You didn't answer. Then I knew how poor I was. I picked up conch shells, hoping to decipher their loopy shapes. I tried to read blank air. I was nothing but flayed hunger, my need more raw than the roiling sea or freezing rain. Back in the city, I'm going mad with speed and noise. My heart's inflamed with neon. Now I wish I could be poor again.
"At the Ocean"
...How I see better what is there after sitting quietly with what is not.
"Working to Save Yourself"
...Waves thrash, my hands slip off the boat. I call. The sky eats lightning...
"Breaking the Blue Bowl"
I am the tiny, irate, scolding person standing in the dome of my own skull, she shakes her head, arms crossed, again disappointed: I'm clumsy, struggling, dull. Then there's the shattered wine glass, an afternoon misspent, a dinner gobbled, rank laundry, unpaid bills, uncut grass, and, I suspect, one lovely friendship bobbled. And yet, I'm here. Alive. These yellow swiveling leaves, this carnival of wind, make me recall I'd love my neighbor if I loved myself better. The sky's a million geese unraveling in blue forgiveness. Love the tattered fall. Forgive yourself. So what if a bowl slid off the shelf?
"In the Beginning"
It was your hunch, this world. On the heyday of creation, you called, Okay, go! and a ball of white-hot gasses spun its lonely way for millions of years, all spill and dangerous fall until it settled into orbit. And a tough neighborhood it was, too. Irate Mars, and sexually explicit Venus, the scruff of a moody moon, and self-important stars. And trees. Think of their endless rummage for light, their photo-what's-it, how their growing is barely regulated damage. Then birds, mice, sheep. Soon people, bursting into language. Creation thinking about itself: our words soaring like yours through time, dangerous, ordinary words.