Family/Memories/Mercy

She learned to let mercy enter the shattered spaces of her heart

Posted on by stephen t berg / 22 Comments

I’m lucky, I have a reasonably well adjusted family, no ongoing dramas, so coming away from a reunion I feel refreshed; happy meeting new members, talking to kids who’ve grown, couples who’ve changed, gotten wiser, and the rest of us who’ve aged. Speaking of which, we celebrated my eldest brother’s and his wife’s 50th wedding anniversary, no small thing. But as much as reunions are for catching up, celebrating, they’re also for remembering those who are missing. We mourned the recent passing of a nephew, honoured his life through ritual, song and story. And we again shared memories of grandparents, parents who have passed on; looked at those old pictures with a sadness that stays, and over the years deepens and sweetens:

“She learned to let mercy enter
the shattered spaces of her heart
and so drew near the mystery of divinity,” *
is what her friend said as you sat under arched windows
looking above the coffin to the podium.
“It’s something I read in a book,” said her friend,
“but it fits here.”

     You never thought of her having those kinds of spaces.
      You only knew her as someone who stood at the stove stirring porridge,
      someone who made potato pancakes for supper,
      someone who was always letting people in ahead of her,
      who made owls out of cotton twine and laughed at herself,
      especially when you made fun of her for missing the point of a story,
      which never bothered her.

Then your brother spoke and said,
“She was not highly educated, had no grand ambitions,
didn’t move in important circles…”

     When you were still at home, you remember thinking  
      how dull her life was,
      most of it lived in a radius of 20 grassland miles.
      Lived behind a kitchen sink, chopping board, washtub, 
      bent over weeds and rows of peas bordered by gardenias;
      her weeks punctuated by Wednesday night prayer meetings,
      Ladies-Aid, and Sundays, sitting toward the back of the sanctuary,
      in a pew off to the side.

“…but all of us knew her voice was in her eyes,
and through those eyes she spoke with grace.
It was as if she had learned the trick of self-tenderness.”

     She was wearing her house dress,
      the green in it long washed out,
      standing with her back to you scrubbing carrots,
      and you were looking at her and thinking,
           I’m going to be more than you.
      Just then she moved to the stove and caught you looking at her.
      A moment later she turned and said,
      “Sweetheart, one day you will need to find a quiet place,
      sit down and apologize to yourself
      for believing you are valuable only if you are noticeable.”

Then it was your sister’s turn and she was trembling
and her voice was breaking
and because of that the only thing you remember her saying,
just at the end,
“She lived the way a flower lives for the berry.”

* The first three lines in this poem are a paraphrase of a sentence in the book, “Wild Mercy,” by Mirabai Starr.

Hope

Everyday Hope

Posted on by stephen t berg / 8 Comments

     Isn’t it hope that sends us out from between the covers to reckon with the long uncut grass and lumps of clay?
     Isn’t it hope that keeps us vacuuming the guest room, tidying up the bathroom, standing at the kitchen window watching the driveway?
     Isn’t it everyday hope that takes a moment to plug in the block heater at the freeze of winter?
     Isn’t it everyday hope that hangs up pictures, keeps lists on the fridge door and sits down to write a letter to the editor?
     Isn’t it hope that builds a bin for compost and every spring tries for tomatoes straight from seed?
     Isn’t it hope that packs a lunch and refuses the daily broadcast of fear without denying all the shit we’re in?
     Isn’t it everyday hope that prepares the easel, moistens and kneads lumps of clay, writes a song with a maze of lines that harmonize?
     Isn’t it morning hope that slides open the patio doors to let in the bird song despite the gravel trucks rumbling by?
     Isn’t it hope that picks up litter on the walk to work, takes the stairs beside the escalators, sends off a money-gram on the first of every month, risks an appointment, gives itself a second chance, plays double-or-nothing, but not every time?
     Isn’t it everyday hope that sits in a lake of memories watching the rabbits run and play between the upright stones and crosses?
     Isn’t it hope that dissolves the edges of our individuality, remembers we are vessels made from the same clay?
     Isn’t it hope that finally wakes us to our own indulgence, negligence, violence, now so obviously reflected back to us, asks forgiveness and summons the feminine Spirit of wisdom and benign power for help?
     Isn’t it everyday hope that sends us to bed, sets the alarm, flicks off the light?

A meditation

When your heart is overwhelmed

Posted on by stephen t berg / 16 Comments

When my heart is overwhelmed,
lead me to the rock that is higher than I. (Psalm 61)

When the sky’s red fades, when the sparrow stops singing, when the soul aches for loss of years and beauty, when grace is lost in a maze of weeds and your companion and all your kids, your friends, are far away wrestling with their own problems, and your heart is a boat full of stones and you are finally honest with yourself about your own fears, anxieties, your own little addictions, and you wish for a bullet, “Come to me, I will lead you,” says some angel who looks like the gentleman gardener next door who always whistles and wears bright mauve scarves while raking leaves, or a doctor who smells like soap and knows just how to sit with you, or your partner who knows where there’s a trail to a mountain ledge where you can see forever, which is right where you stand. Here. Now. Seeing farther than you’ve ever seen before, seeing past the place where the sea meets the sky, into a memory you’d almost lost, something you want to call faith, strong enough now to lift you up, send you back into the human menagerie of sorrow and joy, of holding on and letting go, of howling and singing, of failing and failing and rising and falling into that pile of luminous leaves.

Poetry

Beacons, Blues and Holy Goats

Posted on by stephen t berg / 8 Comments

If you’ll pardon a bit of self-promotion, I’d like to let you know that my first full-length book of poetry is out.

Here’s a description of its content:

In Beacons, Blues and Holy Goats, Stephen T Berg brings us nose to nose with bicycles, farmers, country lanes, bad roads, and the pacific coast through narrative poems both lyrical and full of longing. He brings us to the hard, rusty places humans find themselves in, then shines a moment of rhythm, language and light on them.

The poems touch on Blake’s notions of innocence and experience, by exploring spiritual belief set against life experience. In “But for an Otter”, he writes, “in that fragrant acrid cloud / by the swaying skirts of eelgrass and choirs of kelp and shell / he waits for some solicitous sand crab to move his beached heart / into a tidal font of hope.”

Here, welders are poets, “the blue arch of a 7018 rod is thought, / that alloy is voice, that metal is diction, / and welding is conviction,” and we note that mushrooms have, “full hips, the botox-smooth brow, the parted fluting breath…of spore and earth.”

Poetry here is language rendered to “swagger,” “surprise,” and “break us open”. 

                    – Yvonne Blomer, past poet laureate of Victoria, BC, and
                        editor of Refugium: Poems for the Pacific and author
                        of As if a Raven.

If you’d like to purchase a copy please go here.