Find your voice

Every Friday I read a poem in a group setting as a contemplative practice. I read repeatedly, slowly, and we listen and, eventually, share our reactions. No, we don’t analyze. It’s not a poetry class; it’s a contemplative, self-care practice. So, we listen and then we check in and react. It has less to do with the poem and so much more to do with what we bring to the session that day.

Last Friday, no one came. Meh! It happens. People were working, ailing, traveling, and more. So, I brought myself to the session. This is what I read. What follows the poem is what I shared with myself. :-) Now, I’m sharing with you.

The Wild Iris 

by Louise Glűck

At the end of my suffering

there was a door.

Hear me out: that which you call death

I remember.

Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting.

Then nothing. The weak sun

flickered over the dry surface.

It is terrible to survive

as consciousness

buried in the dark earth.

Then it was over: that which you fear, being

a soul and unable

to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth

bending a little. And what I took to be

birds darting in low shrubs.

You who do not remember

passage from the other world

I tell you I could speak again: whatever

returns from oblivion returns

to find a voice:

from the center of my life came

a great fountain, deep blue

shadows on azure seawater.

What beautiful imagery! I keyed in on a few things.

• The renewal of life in spring. How things come back. They don’t come back from the dead because they didn’t die. They withered. They rested. They retained consciousness and returned.

• We can return from oblivion. We do it to be what we are meant to be, to fully express our selfhood. I can return and bring with me my voice.

• That which I fear ends abruptly.

• We don’t die. We pass from one world to another. From one kind of consciousness to another.

I’ll often tell attendees in the class to jot down whatever they take away and put it on a sticky somewhere they’ll see it during the week to remind them that they came with themselves, listened to some poetry, and heard something they needed to hear. That’s all. Listen to what you need to hear.

For me, I heard “find your voice.” I also heard that which I fear “ends abruptly.” So my mantra for the week ahead is find your voice. And my guidance is that which I fear will end. May you find your voice and your guidance for the week ahead. Then put that thought on a sticky note and post it where you’ll see it every day.

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5/12/25