The Soul Lives Contented
by listening
The Soul Lives Contented
The soul lives contented by listening, if it wants to change into the beauty of terrifying shapes, it tries to speak. That’s why you will not sing, afraid as you are of who might join with you. The voice hesitant, and her hand trembling in the dark for yours. She touches your face and says your name in the same instant. The one you refused to say, over and over, the one you refused to say. -from River Flow: New & Selected Poems; originally published in Fire in the Earth
Written as a part of a long cycle of poems in Fire in the Earth working with the experience of the voice, fully in the body, disembodied from the body, or nowhere to be found when it was needed. At the time I was actually running 'Fire in the Voice " workshops where I would often work with individuals on bringing the voice down into the breath and back into the body from whence it had fled. It was a seminal time for grounding my own way of speaking and listening to my old recordings now, I can hear my 'before' voice prior to this work and my fuller 'after' voice. This poem works with one of the fiercer aspects of the matter. DW
Wonderful. I am working with listening in many meanings of that word as I prepare for a coming meditation class I'll lead. You touched a resonant string here. I'm listening. Thank you.