Leading to the center, leading home

Poems and labyrinths, with a guest appearance by a cat

Photograph from www.bishopsranch.org

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You know how sometimes you start to write a poem about one thing and it turns out to (also) be about something else? And then, once you’ve written it, you remember another poem you wrote years ago that isn’t really anything like this new one, except that it (also) is?

Well, so.

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THINGS I’D PREFER A POEM NOT TO BE LIKE                         2025


A brick wall. A Rubik’s cube.
An earnest moral tale. A coded letter
with no key-word. That ghastly
two-ton China hutch, Aunt Bessie’s
pride and joy, that can’t be sold. 
Static on the radio. A twist of reeds
that snares your feet and traps you
underwater. A labyrinth — unless 
it was the outdoor kind, no walls
but paths outlined in curves
of colored stone, with moss
and clover pushing up between, 
paths where, as you walk, you see
it’s one path really, winding
every way and back again, and always,
surely, in no hurry, leading to
the center, leading home.

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WALKING THE OUTDOOR LABYRINTH                                     2014
Bishop's Ranch Retreat Center, Healdsburg, California


The rosemary bush that splays
its aromatic spikes across two quarters
of the patterned path
is at the center.

The lavender that raises heat-dried blossoms 
between stones just north of the rosemary
is at the center.

Each pad of moss is at the center,
each seed-pod, each sprout and curl of clover,
each stone-plant and each stone,
veined with runes, set with care at the angle
for clearest reading — each of these,
along with the dust-striped cat, who,
seeing you halt as if lost, comes padding
between the runic stones, path-regardless,
to brush your ankles: 

			                 each of these
is at the center, and so is that tiny star
the sun, polishing stones,
waking fragrance from rosemary and lavender.

With every step you take
into, along this path, away from it, you 
stand at the center, and all that forms 
the pattern and keeps it company
stands with you: Maker and all things Made,
traveler and each step traveled,
rooted and walking, leaf and seed,
fragrance and breathing, stone and flesh,
beloved and loving — at the center,
pattern and path, in the warm light
of sun, of stars, of All.