Tag Archives: recovery

The Miracle is This, Seed Poem I: The Evolution of a Poem

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Seed Poem I
An Evolution of a Poem
By
Joseph Anthony Petro

I thought you might find it interesting how this poem evolved. I offer all three drafts. The first one stems more from the overt depression. The second opens to the reality of light, and the third, while still coming from the depression, remembers the many who love seeds, and thus sings the song of hope and healing.

Seed Poem I, Version I:

What must it be like
To be enshrouded
By darkness and the cold,
Unrelenting truth
Of the earth?

What must it be like
To have a heart
Full of light confined
To husk and shell?

What must it be like
To be touched, softened,
And drawn upwards,
Palms open into the air?

What must it be like
To be invited heavenward,
Born skywards, lifted
By encouraging hands
As darkness crumbles
Around you, and the mind
Warms, and the possibility
Of sky roots itself
In your whole body
As you spiral away
From brokenness, and rise
Into the rebirth of branch
And blossom, green and standing tall,
Unveiled, uninhibited,
In the light of day?

Seed Poem I, Version II:

Shrouded in darkness and unrelenting earth;
A heart full of light confined to husk and shell
Longs to be touched, softened, drawn upwards,
Invited heavenwards, encouraged skywards, lifted
By encouraging hands, so that the darkness crumbles
And its mind warms to the possibility of sky rooting itself
In its whole body; as it longs to spiral away
From brokenness into the rebirth of branch and blossom,
As it longs to rise, green and solid, unveiled, and uninhibited
In the clear light of here and now.

Seed Poem I, Version III (Final Version):

The miracle is this:
a heart full of light,
confined to husk and shell,
shrouded by darkness and unrelenting earth,
is touched by a greater light,
is softened by darkness,
is drawn upwards,
invited skywards,
born heavenwards,
held and lifted
by the encouraging hands
Of angels who have known the darkness too,
And it senses doors crumbling away as its mind
warms to the possibility of sky rooting itself
in its whole body,
and it spirals away from its own brokenness,
and it rises high into rebirth,
and it grows outwards into branch
and blossom, where it stands unveiled, uninhibited,
Palms open in the clear light of day.


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Limitless Possibilities

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Limitless Possibilities
By
Joseph Anthony

Limitless Possibilities

Every seed is hand-crafted
and placed lovingly in a world
of sweetness and protection.
Every seed contains the hope of sky,
and the memory of a passageway,
and the deepest ache and longing for light.
And inside every seed burns a steady darkness.
Not the kind where you can just make out the shapes of things,
but the kind where nothing is visible,
and this is good, holy, necessary.
And every seed holds a question
Whose answer opens into vast,
Cathedrals of light. And then,
life surges further upwards, blazing slowly
through blindness, past hard places,
past bones and ancient relics of past generations,
through the sweet, congratulating earth,
through darkness, and out–
out into the golden warmth
of limitless possibilities.

light through the trees


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You and Our and the Magical Arithmetic of Hope

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You and Our
And the Magical Arithmetic
Of Hope
By
Joseph Anthony

You and Our

And the Magical Arithmetic

of Hope

 

In the shared space pain takes up,
Camaraderie prevails.
And it isn’t so much
That the pain doesn’t matter,
Those partaking of this bitter bread
Give thanks for the nourishment it brings.
And even as they accept me
Into this holy fraternity,
This circle of understanding,
This affiliation of grace,
I stand myself apart and say: Your
Rooms, your fellowship,
My pain, your pain.
One of them brought this
To my attention and I am grateful.
So much depends upon unity,
Upon the shared understanding
That weaves through and through
Each agent of mercy, each emissary that carries
The gifts of sadness and transcendence.
And so I stand and take fledging steps
To the edge and then into
The Community of Our:
Our pain. Our rooms. Our healing.
And as I take my place amidst and among,
I sit neither below nor above,
I am simply one of the many,
One of a band that grows, like
Ripples in a pond,
Like the fragrance of honeysuckle in spring,
Like the good thoughts of forgiveness
And humility, like a song sung by the One
Who is the Ultimate Our and You and I
And We and Every Living Thing,
And on we go,
One tapestry of hope,
One table of plenty shared,
One perpetual thanksgiving
Of you becoming our
And our becoming more
Than the sum of its parts,
And the sum of its parts
Becoming the magical arithmetic
Of hope: things subtracted
Become the variables that give way
To the addition of constants
Like love, understanding, acceptance, humor,
And miracles, yes, miracles
Are a constant,
That when combined
Multiply a thousand fold, pressed down, shaken together,
And running over into a joy that equals
The priceless gift
Of serenity.


 


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12 / 13 / 14

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12 / 13 / 14
by
Joseph Anthony

12 / 13 / 14

The tissue paper wing of the dead cicada,
The dry, decomposing leaf that reveals the hair-thin frame,
The tailspinning snowflake landing on my coat,
The seedling finally threading through the ruckusy goings on of the thick forest floor,
The hatchling robins shaking, blind, void of feathers, hungry,
The surface of the pond as I just lay my hand, like so, upon its face,
My hand as the cool water enfolds it with the darkness of sensation,
The small Christmas present, all crinkles and tape, loosely and lovingly wrapped by a child,
The quavering moon held in the fingertips of the winter branches,
The trembling hand adding the last, tiniest detail to the drawing,
The onion skin paper between the pages of the prayer book from the 1800’s,
This heart, this mind, this fluttering soul,
How does one allow for such vulnerable tenderness?
How does one be in the presence of such beautiful, holy fragility
Without feeling the impulse to crush?
How, dear Lord of sparrows and lilies,
Does one protect such delicate things?





 

It All Started With a Box of Darkness

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It All Started With a Box of Darkness

by

Joseph Anthony

Last night my dear friend Mindy sent me a quote by Mary Oliver (the best poet in America of the last 100 years, maybe even ever):

 

“Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.”

 

I read that and as so often happens, words and images started flowing. Sometimes they come like a flood, right away, rushing and gushing–exploding all over the page; other times it’s a more gradual build, images and words finding their way into me slowly, like the dawn. Last night it was the former. It all came out in one brief, satisfying, healing torrent of images, words, and insights.

 
I went with the current on Twitter. Sometimes the constraints of the 140 spaces is a perfect discipline to channel the flow. Other times it’s silly to even try. Last night, the Twitter format worked fine.

 
So thank you Mindy for the initial share; thank you Mary Oliver for writing your wildly luminous poetry; thank you Muse for coming to me in the form of Mindy and Mary; and thank you also, Dear Darkness, of whom I am learning so much from, thank you for being full of light. So many times the depression feels only like utter and complete blackness. I am learning, little by little, the more I simply keep walking, that as soon as the darkness begins to feel overwhelmingly isolative (isolate=from the Latin: to become an island), that exact moment—if I tell someone, find a way to share the hidden pain, the secret suffering, then the darkness blooms into light, into lessons, into invaluable help for myself and others, and I can breathe again. For deep depression is nothing more than the suffocation of the soul.

 
Last night, I didn’t drown in the darkness. I was able to swim. Thank you everyone who helps me to do this. The trinity of diseases: addiction, depression, and isolation, often go hand in hand and can lead to the final darkness. I needn’t go through anything alone again, ever. You don’t either. May my journey through the heart of darkness bear witness to this truth: bring others with you—not dragging them into the chaos, no, bring them with you into your heart, invite them—the safe ones into where the secret hurts live, and the burdens, whatever they are, will become light, the yoke becomes easy (easier). For wherever two or more are gathered–there, in the midst of them, is salvation from the fears of being vulnerable, of showing one’s weaknesses, of being so-called-perfect. There, in this place, this holy space of breath and of embracing–the common experiences, the threads of compassion, identification, love, and eventually ultimately wonder, creativity, and dancing, weave us together into the shared fabric of humanity.

 
Thank you all.

 
The Poems in order of their appearance:

 
Wherever I go, I carry a box of darkness handed down by generations. Inside are echoes of sorrows; and light, beautiful, hidden light.

 
***

 
I speak, the box of darkness closes; I am silent, the box opens. I weep, the box closes, I sleep, the box opens; I sing the box disappears.

 
***

 
I reach inside the box of darkness and find a key. A door appears. I stand, set the box down, and go, go to fall into the shimmering light.

 
***

 
Three words: “Box of darkness,” open secret passageways to the soul. I’m going, take my hand, let’s go find the way back to now.

 
***

 
Where are you? I cry. Here, says the Beloved. Where? I demand. Here, says the Beloved, Where you left me, inside this box of darkness.

 
***

 
One day, I slipped the box of darkness under my bed, not wanting to see it again. When I got home that night, my room had become the box.

 
***

 
I never know when it’s going to come, this rush of images. I only know to slip into it and allow it to river through me to wherever it goes.

 
***

 
Goodnight. I open the box of darkness, slip inside with a blanket. I close the lid. And when I open my eyes to the darkness, I see light.

 

 


 

 


Thanksgiving, A Little Story on the Nature of Prayer, by Jennifer Angelina Petro

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Thanksgiving,

A Little Story on the Nature of Prayer

By

Jennifer Angelina Petro

A prayer hung heavily on a branch of the Tree of Life. Ripening over centuries, it grew sweeter with age and the persistence of faith.  One day the Gardener strolled by, singing as usual, and plucked the prayer from the Tree, and with great gusto, took a hearty bite, letting the juices river down his chin.

 

“Now that,” he said, talking with his mouth full, “is a good prayer.”

 

He continued to eat the prayer, crunching down to the core. When he got to the star shaped seeds he carefully picked them out and then casually, gracefully, and with intention, dropped them to earth.  Weeping for the sheer ecstasy of having been touched by the Gardener’s hands, the seeds fell for days and weeks through open, pristine space, tossed here and there by currents of sound and desire.  They danced as they descended—leaning into little pirouettes and whirled in sweeping spirals, down, down, down they drifted and eventually landed precisely where the Gardener intended them to go—right into the hearts of a little boy and his father.

 

The little boy had prayed prayers of gratitude all night, for his father hadn’t had a drink in over three months; and the father, weeping in thanks for finally having been freed from the chains of his disease, had prayed prayers of gratitude all night as well.  The seeds nestled in their hearts and, because they were prayers of thanksgiving, sprouted quickly, spreading their holy fire into entire orchards of flourishing trees right through the dark valleys of the lives of that boy and his father.  Soon the boy and his father would be harvesting the fruits of their prayers, and sharing them in heaping bushels with each other, their neighbors and friends, and the world.

 

“A beautiful day,” the Gardener said as he plucked another prayer from the Tree, “thanksgiving is blossoming everywhere.”

 

 


 

 

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