The Lost Garden

by Dana Gioia

If ever we see those gardens again,
The summer will be gone—at least our summer.
Some other mockingbird will concertize
Among the mulberries, and other vines
Will climb the high brick wall to disappear.

How many footpaths crossed the old estate—
The gracious acreage of a grander age—
So many trees to kiss or argue under,
And greenery enough for any mood.
What pleasure to be sad in such surroundings.

At least in retrospect. For even sorrow
Seems bearable when studied at a distance,
And if we speak of private suffering,
The pain becomes part of a well-turned tale
Describing someone else who shares our name.

Still, thinking of you, I sometimes play a game.
What if we had walked a different path one day,
Would some small incident have nudged us elsewhere
The way a pebble tossed into a brook
Might change the course a hundred miles downstream?

The trick is making memory a blessing,
To learn by loss the cool subtraction of desire,
Of wanting nothing more than what has been,
To know the past forever lost, yet seeing
Behind the wall a garden still in blossom.


"The Lost Garden" by Dana Gioia, from Interrogations at Noon. © Graywolf Press, 2001.

If you give a little love...

This video is made of strung together insurance adverts, but I love it just the same....


 
If you give a little love from Markus B. on Vimeo.

Namaste, Houston!

December 7 was my mother's birthday, and since we live a few hours away, now, I had to put the gift I got for her in the mail on the Wednesday morning before. I drove in to downtown Houston and parked at the public library, where I am working, and wandered through the streets in search of a UPS Store. I found it and had another hour to kill before I was scheduled to work, so I just wandered the streets and enjoyed the architecture and cool morning air.

Downtown is a frenetic place on a Wednesday morning before nine. People pour in by the bus load--literally!--and everyone walks at a pace seldom seen outside of an early-morning suburban mall. People are in a terrible rush to get past one another, to grab coffee and to get to work. Some are already doing business on their mobile phones, their eyes fixed on things only they can envision. The sidewalks are a blur with motion.

All of the stereotypes are represented on the streets. You can see the perfect professional lady and gentleman, dressed to kill, briskly maneuvering through the crowd; You can see the entry-level executive in new clothes, with carefully-messed-up hair, with eyes the betray his outward confidence. There's an Assistant who has been on the job for nine years--she is no longer excited by being downtown, but she no longer has to work so hard to try and impress her boss.

I walked for a half hour, wondering what it is that she knows, before turning back so I could hopefully find my way back to work. When I got to the busy part of downtown, something that we talked about in Shambhala Meditation a week or two back popped into my mind: namaste.

Namaste is a common greeting in India--basically, it means something like, "I salute your form." But that form points to the formless part of us all, so Namaste is a way of acknowledging the divine in others. So, I started thinking namaste inside, making eye contact with everyone I could. "God loves you," I told them in my head. After passing by maybe 50 people, these two thoughts had become something of a mantra for me.

By the time I made it back to work, I was in an amazing state of mind; when you remember that God loves each and every person you meet, regardless of their membership in this group or that, you begin to remember that He loves you, too. The truth of the fingerprint of the divine within the people rushing to and fro is the truth for you, too, whether you know it or not.

We are all on the same journey, heading to the same destination, even if we, ourselves, have no idea where the trail ends.