Essence

AuthorHouse

Chapter One

In the world I am this ever-full cup.

All those stairs to climb, leaves and wings to examine, stories belonging to others.

Look without language, she said, here, with a surrendered mind, in the cascade of longing.

Don't pretend not to know me, our forest journey, our crabwalk on sand, celebration of fins and feathers,

our moment to moment decision to play this game round again.

At the edge I am always forming, melting, the crest of creation.

Not a distance, nor destination, something to push in front of me,

but you- closer than close, a new way of seeing.

I wound my way into the rock,

deeper and deeper, night inevitably falling, pulled or pushed

from within or without, it no longer mattered.

My nest is high in the cliff. I cling to the word

until nourished. Then I fly.

Not waiting for your return we set out at first light.

With our desire and our feet firmly on the deck, we cast into one another's eyes.

Whatever was in my mind that day fades with wind, rain;

the urge to connect raising my hand again and again.

And where is that place I look when I find you?

Anywhere I look when I look from here.

Each slice of air, each sliver of breath is a current twining its singular way into the clouds.

At night all these scoops of sky return to the field, a flock bowing down as one.

All day I worked on the wheel, grabbing at levers, shouting directions, making things go.

At sunset I leaned on the rail and wondered, Who beats this heart, Whose face rises everywhere I look.

Not the dream: this crystal-edged glittery thought, but the dreamer.

It is the dreamer who dissolves, melts into the silent roar.

Sheltering me, lifting me, in every rock the earth bursting forth,

urgently diverse. In every moment silence, presence.

Such a sense of humor! Lets see-today I will be a thousand flowers with curious faces.

Tomorrow, each leaf will wake and decide for itself.

I follow the crumbling, stories of saints, illusive source and flame.

When I'm a pot hunter, a thief, a hungry child selling gravel, I get in my own way.

What business is it of mine how rain falls? Today I have feet, yesterday, fins, wings.

Perhaps I am not these things, perhaps there is no end to this delight.

Living in the midst of it, the exchange is simply the song we sing,

migrating with buckets to the spring, dipping for others, passing our self around.

Plowed fields, rolled-over ranges, layers of creation,

stones like grandparents singing beneath us.

I have kept this landscape to myself long enough, its tremendous storms, its shelves of red and lavender, sunlight telling time on rock, rock receiving water.

Come to the edge of your mind, open. These are your real parents. This is the ancient road that leads true North.

This hill is my heart. I know that because last night I dreamt lights

like a hive buzzing above a loaf, all the bees coming home.

The birds return, the sea returns. I raise my arms

in welcome, my circling self landing on the shore of time.

I wasn't always a water planet, not always poised on this leaf of a dream. But loving you

is easy, and nothing you thought you could dream against me could ever come true.

I, reaching for you; you, reaching for me, the jagged arc of our excitement.

Who could have thought this charge of longing in the heart, the joy of forgetting and remembering?

This is where we meet, where love grows, where corn rises to the sky,

this marriage of lights, these tassels in the sun.

We walk and talk and sing to each other, then we fly up and over,

giving ourselves to wind, to movements of sun and water,

to the great wing within us.

I did not come to worship walls or things, but to extend that which I am.

I'm already in love so I'm not sure what to call this;

your hands like wings showing me how it goes, opening, opening ...

spending all morning breathing as one.

The word rising from every given thing, the light from the inside out.

Where we meet I have no name, nor need for one.

I asked the fire, Before this flame, what? I asked the water, Before this wave, where? I asked myself, Who?

I tried to imagine this amber light and tilt of horizon as it might have been or might yet be, but again and again, just this.

It begins to flower; it begins to decay, and in between it and begins I am the watcher. Come,

let's walk together; I have more to show you.

This cup of water, this precious cup I have carried across the desert

to offer, to empty- all travails burning like a mist in the morning.

Bored with my own stories of creation I smashed the clay pot belonging to my family and walked, not into a mythic or metaphoric desert,

but straight out my back door into whatever wildness lay beyond this so called body of knowledge.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Essenceby Corinna Stoeffl Stewart S. Warren Copyright © 2010 by Corinna Stoeffl & Stewart S. Warren. Excerpted by permission.
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