| So Close to Life for Nora Doane The moment the performance ends,
the sadness begins—
an actor friend once shared with me.
Living so close to life
on the stage
you feel Life’s clarity and its shape
in a way, that only
artists share.
No one else knows
understands
the devastation afterwards,
when the play is over. Yet, this is no reason
not to do it, not to perform.
Instead, just let
the pain you feel now
grow the soul larger.
Yes, it does get easier to feel these things, but
It will always hurt,
and this is what an actor says yes to,
this particular kind of pain. Without pain’s void, your acting
would be less than real
and you would not give to others
what you gave this weekend. This is one of the few times in their lives
that an audience, your audience,
will feel something so deeply.
Your gift is to be brave enough
to be the one to do this… to make this gift from your heart.
—j.r. willems
May 9, 2005
OjaI, CA Watching Her Move Four times I’ve seen her working on the machine—
physical therapy just after both our surgeries.
The story of hers is so much more grand than mine.
Years past, she saved her husband’s life
while they both climbed.
Her left arm supported his whole weight
until his feet found purchase,
and he climbed back up to her
Her shoulder was never quite the same.
The second surgery, finally, to replace the shoulder.
Even the slightest movement
a dreadful pain.
Later, the therapist confides
she can do little to help.
Vera won’t move through the pain—
hesitates, refuses to move
makes sounds of anguish
that would break a jailer’s heart.
Is the life she saved
worth these years of intimacy
with this hurt she bears?
She sees me and smiles;
so concerned about my own pain.
She laughs at my silly joke
about my being able to pick my nose
with my new shoulder.
Watching her smile
I think
there was never a choice for her
saving him was the direct
fruit of the love she fashions
for everything she sees. Marginal Charity I am sitting with my friend, Michael,
in the warm Spring sunlight.
The subject is money.
He has lived nine years without money,
(it’s called Dana in Sanskrit
pure charity)
at the retreat center he organized
in southern New Mexico.
I remember the face of a homeless man
six days ago,
at an off ramp in Ventura
with his simple sign
“Generosity will help.”
Rolling my window down and
handing him two dollars causes
a chain reaction, and three other cars do the same.
“Generosity will help.”
I think of my friend, having lived this way now for nine years.
He’s going to Sacramento to help his newly divorced daughter
make the transition.
He’s going, yes, without money.
Naked trust, it’s called, not even blinking.
I ask myself, In whom do you trust?
not quite trusting the Supreme Court
to get my allegiance right.
I feel the warmth of my own strangeness
here with Michael.
So many years now for us both--
living outside the rules.
Yet, the weight of them, sometimes,
in the middle of the night feels like a blanket,
pulled off the spine, which evokes
a chill whose stabbing texture lifts the eyes from sleep.
Speaking together, I feel an impulse simply to give. I do.
j.r.willems
ojai, ca
3-25-04
These Three Things
for Christina When I was much younger, I loved
to ride as fast as I could
on a Triumph motorcycle
with no shirt, no helmet.
The sheer speed ripping the long
hair back from my skull
nto a tight comma
down my naked back.
It seemed then
that everything extra
was stripped off
by the screaming air.
And I was left with
what was basic,
not expendable.
Was me,
an essence. Now, the years flash by
more swiftly than that wind
still pulling off what is extra
or obsolete
and I am left with these three things: You, the immanental purpose
the taste and flesh of this world Desire's famished well,
Filled.
Thou, the Transcendent
the long guiding pull from beyond ancient and impossibly vibrant
Alight.
Me, the simply present
just leaning into Time's caress
with fewer assumptions Alive. It is a grace to simply state them here and feel the inadequacy of the poem, which can not, finally,
touch the yearning,
Learning. —j.r. willems
january 23, 2003 |
