Two poems from talk:
Shaped by love
~Trudy Johnston
Shaped by love,
Are we clay spinning on a wheel?
Then where is the wheel, whose hands
Are shaping this soft earth,
Is the supple earth
Choosing?
Are we wood, with a craftsman’s hands
Revealing through the grain
And the sharp blows
Of a chisel, the faces
Of hidden love,
Are we river beds,
Shaped by the tumbling waters
Meeting hardness
And softness as we plunge towards
The waiting sea.
Life, life is hands
And chisels
And earth banks
Holding and revealing
What cannot be known,
Only relinquishing
Knowing
Allows our full shape to emerge.
The Question
~ Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
for Jude Jordan Kalush
All day, I replay these words:
Is this the path of love?
I think of them as I rise, as
I wake my children, as I wash dishes,
as I drive too close behind the slow
blue Subaru, Is this the path of love?
Think of these words as I stand in line
at the grocery store,
think of them as I sit on the couch
with my daughter. Amazing how
quickly six words become compass,
the new lens through which to see myself
in the world. I notice what the question is not.
Not, “Is this right?” Not,
“Is this wrong?” It just longs to know
how the action of existence
links us to the path to love.
And is it this? Is it this? All day,
I let myself be led by the question.
All day I let myself not be too certain
of the answer. Is it this?
Is this the path of love? I ask
as I wait for the next word to come.