Tag Archives: self discovery

Maybe it is My Heart

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Maybe It Is My Heart

Maybe it is my heart I hear when I think I hear Coyotes.
Maybe it is my heart I hear in the croaking of the frogs.
Maybe it is my heart tap-tap-tapping on the window glass.
Maybe it is my heart walking across the rooftop.
Maybe it is my heart howling in the treetops.
Maybe it is my heart in the two long rumbles of thunder.
Maybe it is my heart in the three-minute violence of hail.
Maybe it is my heart in the rustle of the Redwood trees.
Maybe it is my heart in the weeping of the loon.
Maybe it is my heart in the quiet undulations of the reservoir
Maybe it is my heart that splits the water with the paddle.
Maybe it is my heart that reflects from the breast of the waves.
Maybe it is my heart that has found its own places
Maybe it is my heart that is looking for me.

 

This post came about because of a Facebook message from Linda Levy, a friend of many years who lives in Bonny Doon, California. When she saw news of my upcoming show entitled “The Poet’s Eye, the Artist’s Tongue,” she sent a photo of a piece we collaborated on when I was the curator of the Santa Cruz Mountains Art Center in Ben Lomond, CA. I used that title for a show that involved artists and poets collaborating on pieces. Either the artist showed the poet a work of art they had created and the poet wrote a poem to go along with it or the poet presented a poem for the artist to make a piece to go with. In this case, I gave her the poem and the illustration above is the cardboard and paper sculpture she made. The ripped-out pieces of poetry on the desk are the words of the poem above.

That show reoccured on a yearly basis for a number of years after I left and Linda assumed the curatorship. Can’t believe that was twenty years ago and SCMAC is still going strong. Long story short, when Jesus asked me to do a show with him in his gallery, since both of us are writers and artists, I thought the title would work well for our show, so I resurrected it. Thanks, Linda, for the memories.

Poem by jdb Sculpture  and photo by Linda Levy

Here is another photo of the lid of the box just sent to me by Linda:


Core Identity

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Judy's new haircut and thin lips

Core Identity

Whoever really gets to see
what is at the core of me?
Neither my mother nor my lover
gets to see beneath my cover.
No surgery has extracted it.
It’s not exposed in ire or wit.
It’s in a corner still unlit,
buried in identity’s pit.

Even I have not exhumed it, for
I’ve never found my very core.
Some say it’s found in meditation,
prayer or true love’s exaltation,
but I have journeyed into each
merely to wind up on the beach
of what I know must be the sea
of my soul’s identity.

Perhaps it is the world’s distractions––
all its toys and fine abstractions,
its petty jealousies and fears
regarding family and careers
that get me lost while searching for
that ladder, passageway or door
that will lead me to the root of me––
that seed of my identity.

Perhaps in death we’re rejoined with
the part of us that is our pith.
Could it be what life is for—
this striving toward identity’s core?
Perhaps the lonely death I fear
will finally serve to bring me near,
away from all those things I’m not
to that whole self I’ve always sought

 

The WordPress prompt today is core.

 

Voyage

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Voyage

Each day, do you set out once more
on a voyage of discovery—
following a horizon you’ve been told
bends to itself with wonders in between?

Or do you trace a well-worn path,
fitting your feet to yesterday’s footsteps—
unfolding that map of  yourself
that ventures deeper with each step?

How old are you now?
Old enough to know
both courses can take you
in the same direction?

The prompt word today was “discover.”

Favorite Quote: Day 3: Wanderlust

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A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it. ~George Moore

This quote says succinctly what I have been saying to friends lately.  I no longer feel the push to travel but would rather stay home and think and write.  At first this made me feel old and then I started to realize that it is in the natural order of things to seek and then reflect.  It is not just a question of energy, but more a matter of the direction of one’s curiosity.  The more I traveled, the more I found that things do not vary that much.  Everywhere I’ve gone, the same personalities are sprinkled over the landscape.  Only the landscape and the percentages change.  Once you’ve found a place where there are the greatest number of people who appreciate you for who you really are, you have found home.  Then the task is to go inwards. That is where the real journey exists.