The Poet's House

Robert Sund was a poet that lived and breathed as part of the land around the Skagit River Delta and Anacortes Washington. I admire him because he was a poet that lived in outward poverty and inward opulence. Sometimes I think of what it means to be a poet. Many of the greatest heart scribes lived in obscurity and poverty, especially when they gave their whole life to their work. But that was just the outward appearance.

I think of Robert, how the riches and fame of the burning heart and whispering ink remade him day by day. His hall of light was a leaning shack on a finger loam river which scythed arm fulls of moonlight into his wrinkled window. He was like a monk but not a hermit. He was well known in his sleepy town. I remember when I first shared a dream with him of building a warm refuge for poets and artists. I still feel those dreams meandering in the sing-song tide of my heartbeat. I am here in my refuge. Here I watch the field melt down in the autumn rains. I listen as the trickle of life moving in the grasses, down into the rising stream and toward the faraway sea.

Last night I remembered him and clung to the mystery of our nearly intersecting life paths. I recalled the shack and the woodland and the mighty pen humming upon a burning thought. Suddenly I did not feel so poor or alone. All the riches in the universe opened up inside the hand that writes my life story.

If you feel alone, remember someone who came before and opened the way of longing and life within your heart. What magic is falling outside your window?

This is the life I live... the Great Song spinning all around me and tracing the patterns of belonging in my heart.

Information about Robert Sund (1929-2001) may be found by clicking here at: Poet's House Trust website

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Copyright Rick Sievers, 10-2010

Grandmother

My Grandmother and Grandfather
off the Coast of Avalon,
Catalina Island, CA. Early 1930s.
This was her favorite place and time of her life.

Today would be my Grandmother's 98th birthday. She died while sequestering herself in a house for decades. Her husband abandoned her. She never recovered from the seven years of the "good life" with a smoothly arrogant man. I think of her son who took on the mantle of impatience and meanness in her final years on earth. Yet I finally have a measure of compassion for him now too. He found her hallway closet full of her razor's blood when he was only two years older than me.

This morning I hold my cat who was bloodied by an attack by the wayward tom in our neighborhood bushes. I've seen my feline friend here as elegant and strong. Now I see her as delicate too. Her nostrils are flaring and her eyes wide after the attack. I have loved her and cared for her ever since her owner and my friend died. Perhaps it sounds strange, but I feel my Grandmother's spirit in this little cat. I feel her inside of me too.

I have sequestered myself in memories of my own Avalon, often coasting on memories of a past era. What will I choose as to never enter the dark closet of my ancestors? And how will I choose to be loved and loving instead of feeling arrogant or dismissed?

I write this to you as the cat now purrs and finally relaxes in the sun on the rumpled bed. Wrapped around me is silence. My Grandmother's eyes are watching me, bent and concentrating at the desk.

Who lives in our veins?
We all walk the line between strength and delicacy.
How do we contain the grief and longings that flow there?

What kind of life is a proper memorial to those that have gone on before?

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I dedicate this journal entry to Ann, who loved me and my Grandmother so deeply.

(c) Rick Sievers, October 2010

Perseverance

Callie, the wonder cat, in our field.

Per-Severance:

Summer has passed into Harvest Time. For me it has been a month of severance from almost everyone, including my own heart. My writing has seemingly languished. The big ideas of selling my new book have remained ideas, netting 24 sales (so far). My business plan is lost somewhere in a disheveled drawer. I ask my partner to communicate with me and then I become mute. I look for friendship and leave the phone off line.

Strange, the seasons of emotion... e-motion.

I wonder if I'm a quitter. Or has this been a time to recollect myself from a Summer of labor and growth? I ask God for an answer to these queries.

Then I look out my window and see a beautiful coyote in our field. She is gray and tan with thick fur and bright eyes. She appears to be searching for voles or mice in the dewy grass. And she runs on only three legs. Her front right leg is a stump, a painful relic of someone's trap or speeding car.

Who am I to quit? Who am I to second guess the paths of fate and consequence? The word Perseverance comes through the window and lands on the writing desk. Per- Severe... Per-Sever... to be willing to go on and do what you alone can do, to come out from the den and the shadows to hunt and play. The crippling aspects of life, the very things one rails against, become the motivations to come into the light.

The coyote sees me as I go out to watch and protect the chickens. She runs to the edge of the woodland. Perhaps she still observes me, wary, curious and determined to live the only life she can live.

Today I pray for two things:
For a vision of how to live and be creative in this harvest season.
Then for the strength to do what is necessary to bring in the all that I have sowed so early in the year.

I paraphrase my yoga teacher* who says that the purpose of a spiritual practice is to move through to the end of life without regret... even if the movement requires extraordinary balance and perseverance.

May the peace of discipline and determination be yours today.
May you smile upon the harvest that comes to you this season.

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*Yvonne at Shanti Yoga

Elements

Elements (c) Rick Sievers 2010

Last week a Google manager on Public Radio said that he has found that about 130 million distinct books have ever been written. All of these are made up of a small number of vowels, consonants and symbols. In our society only 26 letters have blossomed into tens of millions of books and billions of poems. Each one of these works is a literary universe in itself.

When I feel a lack of resources at hand, when I'm scared, I remember the miracle of words. Only 26 letters and 10 numbers make up anything I can write on this earthly plane. Zeros and Ones make up every pixel you now see flickering on this screen filled with news of the universe and songs from every mind connected on the web.

The elements of life are precious and mostly unrecognized miracles because they appear so ordinary. Yet the possibilities and unique combinations are infinite.

Is your bank account ebbing? Is your love tank drying up? There is still enough remaining to create from. One alphabet, one vision, one spark of hope can create a whole new universe... or even healing in your particular world.

I try to remember the basics of creation when I write from the heart, when my longing seems thwarted or when my world is crying for relief from suffering.

A few elements can join and make a miracle. You have a unique combination of building blocks that make up your essence... and your gift to life.

I remember today that who I am and what I do is adequate and miraculous in the ordinariness of everyday living. It's a privilege to play within the letters and songs that well up from the deep ocean of our world.

The act of creation,
not necessarily the outcome,
is what's important to me.

Creation is happening all around us,
even on this very screen.
We're made to be ourselves...
elemental and unique.

RS

(c) Richard Sievers, August 2010

Letters to Kali

Junior 10/2008 - 8/2010

Four days after putting the cat down:

Junior was an innocent and trusting soul, and very sweet. He was happy until last Thursday when he suddenly began great suffering physically. I had a choice of either allowing the suffering to continue, fruitless surgery or to euthanize him. I made am impossible decision. I held him as he died. I found myself aware of his simple presence still within me even after I cradled his little lifeless body and wept. I have thought about Kali, a goddess that strips away illusion, one who is fierce and ruthless with an intention of creating harmony and enlightenment.

Kali,

Why must destruction come with creation? I am speechless as a corpse, yet angry and demanding like a newborn child. The world is shoving at the light of love with pitchforks and sickles. Must I love the destroyers as much as the creators? Why does life take such a push and tug to make anything beautiful? I sit and write to you from the Zen garden we created as a peaceful retreat. The moles tear up the yard beneath your statue in our sanctuary.

Can’t there be place that is a refuge? You answer “Yes, but it is not a place.” You push back my hair gently before you sever my head. Why must you kill to enlighten?

~~

Kali,

I have become death for my little friend who was suffering. Now I suffer remembering my kitty's cry and plaintiff shudders. He knew death was coming at the end. Our prized golden cat knew no real danger during the life he shared with us. He knew no fear until the final moments of a life I tended… then ended. The vision of the needle became my recompense. I became you, Kali.

Now you hover beside me and ask: “What else must die little one?” Must I give up everything I bought so dearly to save my flowing life from becoming the sea? A shudder surges in and out of my flesh. I am the one who has hardly known anything But fear.

A ruthless truth wells up from deep within me: I must become a truer aspect of myself now or my soul will shrivel and die.

Inside I hold Junior and cry, remembering the happiness of love even in the severance.

RS

(c) Rick Sievers, 8-2010

Why I Write

I watch the cat out by the edge of the wild field of poppies. She sits and waits and watches with her whole body. Usually she'll catch a vole, or if she's lucky a mole. When she scents the prey she stiffens and quivers and leans into her hunt. Her ears taught, body firm, she has one hundred percent attention upon her quarry. To some this attention might be akin to love.

If a poet does not seduce a poem, s/he lives lonely.

I wait at the window's edge. I see the cat and her work and my own death scampering about in the tall grasses.

For a moment a breeze ruffles the green sea prairie. And I am floating upon this very page, crossing to an island full of voices in caves and eternal twilight forests. Then the moment passes. The winds fall back to calm earth. A still small whisper says: "Good. That is a beginning. Now wait. Soon enough, I'll be in your arms."

I write now because it's all I really can do as work that's worth much to me. I've prepared my whole life to create poems and colors for my field of earth. Everything I love has revolved around the blank page... solitude, Spirit, surprise that life ends and begins again, beauty everywhere.

I notice these things with my whole being.

I'm ready to begin falling into this page. I put the pen upon the paper. I wait, and then hear a rustle in the grasses. My whole body becomes alert.

RS

(c) Rick Sievers, August 2010.

Milestones

Field of Sky (c) Rick Sievers, 2009

In yoga last night we contemplated the mid line of our body. A key to health is the act of coming back to the center of gravity and back to the fulcrum of movements. Everything, muscle and gristle, blood and bone, moves back to the center of the body as a pause between movements. I suppose this is true for endeavors of the spirit and psyche too. There is a thin red line from the ultimate dimension that runs through our lives, bodies and spirit.

Yesterday, I sent my first published book of poems off to the publisher for review and a proof copy. I wrote my first humble book. And another is on the way. But before I start another process of doing and spiraling in the creative process I pause. I come back to the mid line of my breath and vision.

This morning I sit with the cat purring. I do the work of observing the trees flocked in mist. I see the garden bent with dew. The sun is polishing the granite of sky, turning it soon into pure lapis and shining gold. I am a cloudy day full of words and colors. Soon I will be a poem. Soon I will shine.

This morning is a reset for my creative life.
I rest my back upon the milestone of my yearnings.

After you put in the fire of effort where do you return to?
Is there a sustainable cycle of burn and rain, growth and production, fallow time and reflection in your life?

R

PS The book is called Earth, My Body. I'll let you know when it is ready for the public.