Mark Nepo: The Art of Facing Things

There have been times I've been hurtful or
forgotten who you are, times I've mistaken
you for one of the dark faces I've never put to
rest. Times you've done the same. Times we've
worked out our pain or fear, using each other
as the block of wood to carve our way to truth;
feeling awful when we remember that the one
we carve is the one who has loved us through
everything.

But this is the messy art of facing things:
knocking over what I love with what
I avoid; only to learn again that
this is not of our timing.

It doesn't matter what thorns we carry
or how we squirm to avoid their pain.
We unfold as long as we love,
pried into blossom.

My love for you has outlasted my notions
of love, the way a redwood, allowed to stand
after many storms, grows from the inside,
forcing its bark to drop away.

Mark Nepo: To Know by Heart

When I looked in your eye, the light was just right.
I could make out the markings behind your seeing,
through which you perceive everything. There was the
door you hid behind as a child, the wood through which
your father's voice would raise. And the neighbor's bird
feeder which you could see from your first apartment,
the one the goldfinch would dart in, that spring we
fell in love. And the photo of your Uncle Billy standing
with a mug of coffee, listening softly to everything you
every wanted to say. Sometimes, when alone enough,
before you're up, I stare into the mirror in the guest
room, reaching for the markings behind my eye. This
is harder but they are there. How I would wheeze as a
boy in the dark wondering about God. My first glimpse
of the Pacific after college. And Grandma's thick open
palms that fed goats in Russia, that felt the ocean through
the hull of the ship that brought her to America, the hands
that rubbed her chest when her Nehemiah died. It's hard to
say how, but I see life through the water of her palms. How
does that work? How does the heart like the bottom of a river
keep shifting its features? To graduate into the world, we are
required to memorize practical and odd things: the number
of feet in a mile, the year Henry VIII beheaded Anne Boleyn,
the degree at which clouds will freeze their rain. But since
death is the mirror we eventually move through, let's stop
carrying the things we repeat and start holding things
with our eyes. To know by heart is to warm the
broken as they lay down in the sand of your eyes.

Mark Nepo: Coming Out

Whilte there is much to do
we are not here to do.

Under the want to problem-solve
is the need to being-solve.

Often, with full being
the problem goes away.

The seed being-solves its
darkness by blossoming.

The heart being-solves its loneliness
by loving whatever it meets.

The tea being-solves the water
by becoming tea.

Mark Nepo: Feeling the Oar

I was in the air, frustrated
that fog had delayed us. Now,
I would miss my flight to Dallas
where I was on my way to speak
about obstacles as teachers.

I was feeling pissed off
when I noticed my left hand
on the seat—it was my father’s
hand—the large knuckles, the
pronounced veins, the bark-like
wrinkles at the base of my thumb.

It was his hand as I had seen it
countless times: guiding a piece of
wood through a band saw or tapping

on an open book as he would
try to understand.
I opened and closed it like
someone waking from a long sleep.

It is the hand I write with. And it
is weathered, an immigrant hand,
rough from crossing many seas.

Had it not been for the fog and the
delay, I wouldn’t have noticed.
I touched it with my other hand;
trying to know my father,
trying to feel the oar,
trying to remember the sea.

Mark Nepo: Behind the thunder

I keep looking for one more teacher,
only to find that fish learn from water
and birds learn from sky.
If you want to learn about the sea,
it helps to be at sea.
If you want to learn about compassion,
it helps to be in love.
If you want to learn about healing,
it helps to know of suffering.
The strong live in the storm
without worshipping the storm.

Mark Nepo: Breaking Surface

Let no one keep you from your journey,
no rabbi or priest, no mother
who wants you to dig for treasures
she misplaced, no father
who won't let one life be enough,
no lover who measures their worth
by what you might give up,
no voice that tells you in the night
it can't be done.

Let nothing dissuade you
from seeing what you see
or feeling the winds that make you
want to dance alone
or go where no one
has yet to go.

You are the only explorer.
Your heart, the unreadable compass.
Your soul, the shore of a promise
too great to be ignored.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mark Nepo: Three faces

I have carried three faces
across my life, though from within,
it’s clear, they have carried me:

a woman who can stare through
the leaves of any tree, who names the
tree by the birds who sing in it

a man who works hard at
clearing paths in order to stop
where the path ends, and listen

and a small child with the heart
of a horse, eager to sniff out any
thing alive and run to it.

Together, they have led who I
thought I was through openings
wide enough for only
what is essential.

Mark Nepo: The Appointment

What if, on the first sunny day,
on your way to work, a colorful bird
sweeps in front of you down a
street you’ve never heard of.

You might pause and smile,
a sweet beginning to your day.

Or you might step into that street
and realize there are many ways to work.

You might sense the bird knows some-
thing you don’t and wander after.

You might hesitate when the bird
turns down an alley. For now
there is a tension: Is what the
bird knows worth being late?

You might go another block or two,
thinking you can have it both ways.
But soon you arrive at the edge
of all your plans.

The bird circles back for you
and you must decide which
appointment you were
born to keep.

Mark Nepo: So much is carried

(for Saba)

When just a pup, I took her into winter.
While Paul photographed the heavy snow,
she, having never run free, circled wildly,
her little nose caked with white.

She slipped and broke the ice. I can still
see her puppy face underwater, looking
for a way out, her tiny paws swatting
at the thick clear deep.

With no thought, I was waist high and
wet, sweeping her into the air. She flew
a good twelve feet and landed with a thud.
She shook and started to shiver. We rubbed
her down for two hours, blowing her with
an old hair dryer. I held her in my shirt,
near my heart, the whole way home.

I'm fourteen years and seven states away
and she has died. My first dog. I close
my eyes and there she is, grown,
sniffing the air in an open field,
smelling things I couldn't even sense.

How many times I've played that day
in the pond: her struggle underwater,
her drying on my chest.

How much that day has shaped my art:
always jumping in and sweeping what
has been baptized in the deep back
into the world, always holding it
near my heart. As if my life
depends on it.