Blowing a Kiss
` Today, like every other day, I wake up empty
and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument. *
Doing has become mundane
snakes through me.
Sometimes great sadness visits
diminishes my sense of being alive.
This doing, this wandering
from one door to another
this wanting for each one to swing open
offering miracles I secretly sense exist
What is this hidden sense?
Is it like too-weary to forge a morning walk
but stubborn legs have a notion to
dance me down a path
where clouds part, warm sunbeams spill onto bare shoulders,
unfeeling heart opens, knees genuflect on soft earth?
What is this throbbing sense?
Is it like when my nose smells lilac
and I am in Grams garden?
Wiggling toes caress fresh mowed grass.
I sing with her harmonica tune
and suddenly my memory finds itself in familiar room
high up is her dusty faithful instrument.
There is no locked cabinet.
It is just there for the reaching.
I spread my small fingers,
ask her if I can play a tune.
To be that child again, to have blowing air carry
my mundane doing away.
I begin to inhale then exhale the sounds alive.
My being explodes like a flash flood rushing down
a canyon of joy.
Let the beauty I love be what I do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground. * Rumi
Full
Today, when I happened on this place
saturated with joy, my heart opened
and I remember only a few
times in my life feeling my cup filling
One time I heard a symphony
pulled out of a swirling breeze
poppies gold and lupines blue
in spreads and comforters.
Another miracle day
revealed an ancient oak
alone in nearby woods
silent in golden shimmer of afternoon
Today my heart opens again
sheds a hardened husk I sometimes wear
and as I walk home
joy becomes the rhythm of my stepping
Along a white picket fence
I carry back the vision
of a patch of soft burning nasturtiums
clustered like clannish little families
You understand? We are not that different.
I bid you open your door, take a walk
And happen upon your own places
places that fill you up.
Marianne Lyon has been a music teacher for 39 years. After teaching in Hong Kong she returned to the Napa Valley and has been published in various literary magazines and reviews. She has spent time teaching in Nicaragua. She is a member of the California Writers Club, Healdsburg Literary Guild. She is an Adjunct Professor at Touro University Vallejo California