Tag: Padraig OTuama

Rest, My Friend

wintering in dawn’s stillness

Arriving at my desk to write this blog, I opened an email to learn of the sudden passing of my first professional friend. With his wife and young son, they became our first “couple-family” friends when Sig and I made our first home together in small town Ontario. They hosted us for our final nights in Ontario nearly forty-four years ago before we packed up our first dog, Beckey, a few plants (a hosta that still blooms in our dining room window), and some luggage to make the trek across Canada in our little white VW Scirocco sportscar to our new home in Alberta. The vague sadness that has hovered around me for much of this grey, cold and damp day has now found a foothold.

Earlier today, I attended the 4th annual Poets Corner “Reading Rilke,” with Rilke translator-poet Mark S. Burrows in conversation with Padraig O’Tuama and Krista Tippett. Among my notes, the following bore my highlighted underlining:

“I believe in everything that has never been said.”
– Rilke

“We are here to listen the world into being
and then to share its stories.”
– Mark S. Burrows

Consistent among each of them was that much of Rilke’s writing was an embodiment of his famous directive to live into the questions.

Despite my cup feeling full, I don’t have much to write this evening. Questions tinged with sadness. So much that has never been said. Listening into silences. Trusting the infinite possibilities to be found in the unknown.

Remembering how my friend tempered my youthful naievety with his experience and wisdom. For years, throughout every career move, I pinned his handwritten note in front of me to remember: “The world is perfect, including my efforts to change it.” A bit like Rilke.

Rest, my friend.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.

The Pilgrim

THE PILGRIM

When you return from a long journey
air sweet with lilac and unfurled green
then you fall to your knees
and become gratitude’s pilgrim.
You were given the way at birth.
Given blue fields and loam.
Given an open throat, wild orchids,
a path lit by milky stars.
You were given desire,
sweet darkness of the body,
white hum in the bone.

It’s not the departure you long for,
nor the finish, with its thick incense,
tired feet and weeping.
It is the quiet loneliness in between,
When memory marries wind
and you are pure light. Walking.
One foot in front of the other.
You cannot speak of this place.
The way you cannot speak of grace
or what holds you to this world.
How at this moment you can only stand up
and move toward the light of home.

– Rosemary Griebel –
YES (2011)

Last week, listening to a past episode of The Road Home on my radio station CKUA, I heard my friend Rosemary recite three of her poems from this collection, YES. Her lovely voice, together with the background music selected by host Bob Chelmick made for several minutes of exquisite listening pleasure. I first met Rosemary virtually, and then in person when we both attended last November’s weekend workshop with our beloved Irish poet, Pádraig Ó Tuama. Knowing I’d see her, I brought my copy of her book for her to sign. It was there I learned how we are kin, not only in our shared love of words, but also in our both having walked the Camino de Santiago. It occurred to me while listening to Rosemary read last week, that I needed to feature here, in my Friday photo and poem post, some of the local poets whose love of words I share, to uplift those “prophets in my own land,” so to speak.

I’ve written here how the Camino does its work; on me, from the moment I made my decision and deposit a year ago December to walk, but more so upon my return. This past December I took some time to make the photo journal of my walk. Too, I wrote a short story, A Creative Walks the Portuguese Coastal Camino, drawing on my Camino blog posts, for both the Canadian Company of Pilgrims and Sage-ing: The Journal of Creative Aging. And I had the lovely opportunity to talk about my walk and its impacts, both to support a fellow doing his Master degree in Tourism, exploring the transformative gifts walking a non religious Camino, and on the Ellipsis Thinking podcast, “Paying Attention,” hosted by my dear friend, Greg Dowler-Coltman.

Rosemary’s poem speaks to me of so much that was my Camino. That in the planning, the going and the return, I was “gratitude’s pilgrim”… how the “quiet loneliness” while walking became my necessary and bittersweet companion… my “tired feet and weeping” with relief at our safe arrival…and since home, remembering the light, the grace, the beauty. Thank you, Rosemary.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.