Where the spirit meets the bone

I'm not a real swiftie.  I barely know who she dated (yes,  I know she just got married!) and I like her songs,  my car is almost permanently on Taylor Swift Radio,  but I don't know all her lyrics by heart or all her songs.

Then I started listening to the Swiftie and the Scholar,  on youtube.  It's a deep dive (about an hour an episode and each episode covers only one song) on random songs. 

I'm not listening to them in any order,  but I've been watching about one a week.  

Last one was about Ivy,  I song I realized I barely knew.  I had listened to it once or twice on Evermore,  but it hadn't gotten it's hooks on me, though some of the phrases I really liked. 

I had noticed the phrase,  where the spirit meets the bone,  it's so evocative.  And then the poetry professor tells us it's not unique to Taylor,  it comes from this poem:

From The Ways We Touch: Poems. 

Isn't that a beautiful phrase in a beautiful poem? And I love the song so much more now!  I didn't realize the Emily Dickinson connection and was fascinated to learn about it. 

So if you want to do a deep dive,  this is a fun away to while away an hour... 

Current favorite poem

I revisit this poem from time to time.  The first time I read it,  I was still menstruating and I kind of smiled at it.  But having reached menopause some years ago,  this poem grows stronger for me each passing year.   I think this is why we need poets to write about our own experiences.  Otherwise we just miss their amazing perspective and reframing of our lives... 

To my Last Period

by Lucille Clifton

well girl, goodbye,

after thirty-eight years

thirty-eight years and you

never arrived

splendid in your red dress

without trouble for me

somewhere, somehow

now it is done

and i feel just like

the grandmothers who, after the hussy has gone,

sit holding her photograph and sighing,

wasn't she beautiful?

wasn't she beautiful?

Current favorite poem

I love poetry,  dense like truffle chocolate,  an amuse bouche that lingers for hours afterwards.  I read a lot of it.  Lots of it not great,  some of it very good and some just strike that perfect chord.  

The ones that strike, I put up here.  For you, but also for me,  so I can find them again,  so I can remember them

This latest one is by Jess Janz 

Enjoy! 

David Whyte, poet

 A friend recently introduced me to a new (to me) poet.

I really loved this one:

Sweet darkness

When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.

When your vision has gone
no part of the world can find you.

Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.

There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.

The dark will be your womb
tonight.

The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.

You must learn one thing.
The world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn

anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive

is too small for you.

From The house of Belonging,  poems by David Whyte

Ahead of her Time

Sinead O'Connor saw clearly. She saw what the Church was doing in Ireland and she brought light on it - and frankly,  they tried to crucify her for it.   There's something so powerful when someone can see a cultural disease and clearly speak to it.  

But she saw other things clearly too. How the music industry wanted her to be pretty,  and she shaved her head;  how they wanted her to be docile and she rebelled;  how they wanted her to be overawed by them and she said she never wanted to be a pop star in the first place.  She saw herself so clearly - a protest singer who shone a light.  

I love the quote - in Rememberings, "A lot of people say or think that tearing up the Pope's photo derailed my career. That's not how I feel about it," she wrote. "I feel that having a No. 1 record derailed my career and my tearing the photo put me back on the right track."

I know she is a complex being and not everything she did made sense. But she came from a pure place,  and it took a few decades for us to catch up with her,  and see that most things she said were absolutely true and right.  I am grateful to her,  for the risks she took,  and for how hard she struggled to show us Truth. 

Why the Prophets are Human

In my last tarot reading I quoted a Rumi poem - Rumi is a Sufi poet who rhapsodizes over Spirituality and love, but the poem I was recalling was more prosaic than that - it was about why the Prophets are human -

A Woman came to Ali, "My baby has crawled out
on the roof near the water drain,  where I cannot go.
He won't listen to me.  I talk to him,
but he doesn't understand language.

I make gestures.  I show him my breast,
but he turns away.  What can I do?"

Take another baby his age
up to the roof."

The woman did so,  and her child saw his friend
and crawled away from the edge.

The prophets are human for this reason,
that we may see them and delight
in the friendly presence
and crawl away from the downsprout.

(Mathnawi, IV, 2657-2669)

We were talking in the reading about how much do you have to know,  how self evolved do you have to be,  before you can help others.  And I said,  you can't be too far from the person,  you can't lead from 100 miles away,  it's easier to follow if you are only a foot or so ahead.  So as we are now, today,  we can help others,  because we are close to them,  close to the struggle. 

We don't have to know all the answers,  we only have to be a foot or two ahead;  and we can be over taken,  and helped ourselves.  It's much easier that way,  than chasing a perfection a hundred miles down the road...