Deep Listening
Rock Me, Mercy
The river stones are listening
because we have something to say.
The trees lean closer today.
The singing in the electrical woods
has gone dumb. It looks like rain
because it is too warm to snow.
Guardian angels, wherever you're hiding,
we know you can't be everywhere at once.
Have you corralled all the pretty wild
horses? The memory of ants asleep
in daylilies, roses, holly, & larkspur.
The magpies gaze at us, still
waiting. River stones are listening.
But all we can say now is,
Mercy, please, rock me.
- Yusef Komunyakaa
At a vigil last week I saw a sign that stopped me in my tracks. It said “I will do better.” It was what my heart had been wanting to say. And so since then, I’ve been exploring how exactly I will do better. Listening stands out as an opportunity, a starting point. And becoming more familiar with the poetry of black Americans and other poets of color, poses an opportunity to do better, so that a diverse set of voices will be heard when I add a poem to a blog post or email, or share one on a meditation call.
So I sat down and began to read through the works of Maya Angelou, and Langston Hughes and Alice Walker, and then Yusef Komunyakaa and Gwendolyn Brooks, Rita Dove and Lucille Clifton: the works of poet laureates, Pulitzer Prize winners, National Book Award winners…. Their poems offer a window into an experience, taking you there, allowing you to see the world through the eyes of the poet for a few moments. Because the black experience on this soil has been steeped in suffering, the poems are often hard to read. And this is part of listening: listening to the stuff that’s hard to hear, as well as the stuff that we find pleasant.
And so I’ve been leaning heavily on the mindfulness of sounds practice: spending time placing my attention on the sounds around me; listening with my body and not just my ears; noticing when there is a sensation of resistance in the body to a particular sound that I don’t find pleasant or comfortable. When that occurs, reminding myself that this sound is here, a fact in the moment already, and then trying to open to it.
There are things we need to hear that are also hard to hear. The content may be disturbing, it may make us uncomfortable, or we may flat out completely disagree with what’s being said. But we can build the ability to listen and to hear, and from there we’ll have a fuller sense of the world, and our role in it.
The photo for the blog this week is of one of artist Nick Cave’s Soundsuits. For more information about his work, see the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
For more information about the poet Yusef Komunyakaa, see the Poetry Foundation.
May all beings feel heard, and feel the wisdom that comes through listening,
Your CMP Family
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