Tu Fu’s Reappearance

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Yesterday, Sounds True published a new, expanded edition of Inside the Miracle: Enduring Suffering, Approaching Wholeness, which gathers twenty-eight years of my writing and teaching about suffering, healing, and wholeness, including thirty-nine new poems and prose pieces not yet published. One of the great transforming passages in my life was having cancer in my mid-thirties. This experience unraveled the way I see the world and made me a student of all spiritual paths. With a steadfast belief in our aliveness, I hope what’s in this book will help you meet the transformation that waits in however you’re being forged. The following piece is an excerpt from the book.

TU FU’S REAPPEARANCE

The great Chinese poet Tu Fu (712-770)

has appeared to me in dreams

as a guide.

Out of the yellow mist

he came again, his Asian beard

in tow. We were on a healthy shore

and he sat cross-legged in the sand,

scratching delicately with a branch,

his slender head down. I crouched

and put it to him, “How do I block

the fear?” He kept scratching the sand

as if he hadn’t heard. I grew angry,

“How do I block the fear?!” He lifted

his head and shrugged,

branch waving above him,

“How does a tree

block the wind?”

With that, he

disappeared.

A Question to Walk With: Tell the story of a time when fear got the better of you.