"the heart was strangely open"

walking home this evening with the first chill of fall on a breeze beginning to coax the turning leaves from the branches, a melancholic sweetness fills me. i experience a momentary mingling in that deep sea where laughter and tears together reside...sensing a brisk aliveness in my being as the crisp mountain air tousles my hair and simultaneously the transience of it all. no matter what, in this life, it seems that death is always a hairbreadth away. impermanence, the grand trump. absolutely no evading it and hence, a fierce invitation to live with full presence and an open heart, from moment to moment, with exactly what is. a reality that i drift to and fro again and again in consciousness. remembering seems to come most vividly in nature...through poetry...and music. the reason for this is no mystery to me.

"last night they came with news of death
not knowing what i would say.

i wanted to say,
"the green wind is running through the fields
making the grass lie flat."

i wanted to say,
"the apple blossom flakes like ash
covering the orchard wall."

i wanted to say,
"the fish float belly up in the slow stream,
stepping stones to the dead."

they asked if i would sleep that night,
i said i did not know.

for this loss i could not speak,
the tongue lay idle in a great darkness,
the heart was strangely open,
the moon had gone,
and it was then
when i said, "he is no longer here"
that the night put its arms around me
and all the white stars turned bitter with grief."


"news of death" by david whyte
from his book "where many rivers meet"

oil on canvas "autumn breeze" by jeanette james