Returning to Where I’ve Never Been

Read Mark’s weekly reflections on The Huffington Post.

It’s very human to have an understanding, to have a dream, to grasp for a moment a larger sense of things, and also very human to then get lost in the details, entangled in the problems along the way. And so, we forget what we understand, what we dream; we forget the larger sense of things. But when we are returned to the depth of life, as we always are, it feels both familiar and new. This is a poem about such a moment I fell into the last time I was in New York City.

RETURNING TO WHERE I’VE NEVER BEEN

I’m sitting in Bryant Park

and the light through the trees

has stopped my mind. At last

nowhere to go.

I was here twelve years ago.

So many stories I could tell

but as with all migration,

everything has changed

and nothing has changed.

I am older, gentler, less afraid,

stopped more easily by subtle

things, only subtle because

of our noise.

So the story is this:

I went in search of you

and found myself.

I went in search of God

and found the magic of light

waiting in everything.

And so I search for wisdom

only to fall into this life of

feelings too deep for words.

We work so hard

trying to get there

but I think this dream of want

is God’s trick, because

without burning it up

we’d never accept here.

A Question to Walk With: Describe a moment you fell into that was too deep for words? Tell its story to a friend.