Which Are You?

I read Roethke in college, and all these years later "The Waking" bubbled to the surface of my thoughts this morning as I mused about relationships and ways of being with others. "Of those so close beside me, which are you?" That line I both do not understand and do (if I think by feeling). Compassion and love feel different tonight and I can't quite explain why. I didn't get out of bed in time to make a 6AM yoga class, so as a penance of sorts I sat 15 minutes of zazen. The usual suspects of mind chatter ran round and round and I wondered why I even bothered. Still, later in the morning I stepped out of my classroom for a minute onto a cold, semi-white playground and felt the profound emptiness in the space around me. That was a moment of grace. Without those brief encounters with stillness I'm rushing through my days, saying things I think I should say, thinking I'm teaching students to read, calling out yoga cues to a room of warm bodies, living more by idea than by living. OK, this probably doesn't make sense to anyone who's not inside my head. I'm trying. Be patient. Occasional emptiness makes it possible for me to be in a classroom of 2nd graders and experience them as human beings. How could I ever think to be a teacher without that? Of those so close beside me, which are you? Do I really see?

Tonight the woman I wrote about earlier came to my yoga class. She has been fairly steady and makes slow progress. She doesn't fall any more, but still looks lost. Last week I greeted her and she looked at me in a way that I hastily interpreted as neediness. I didn't know what to do with that. Yoga cues, yoga cues, tuck that tailbone, root and extend. However tonight I asked her after class how she was doing and I learned that she has recently lost her husband. That was not neediness, but grief, grief, grief. I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. How fucking egotistical of me to think I had something to "teach" here. Great Nature has another thing to do to you and me. 

This shaking keeps me steady, I should know. Life is bigger. Love is bigger. I'll be damned if I understand it, but I learn by going where I have to go.

The Waking

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.


Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.


Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.


Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me, so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.


This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.