Pick any landscape
Once in a while I read a poem that sinks into my soul. One that I hold onto tenderly. There is so much to love in these words from poet Maya Stein. Not forcing ourselves to find beauty in ordinary landscapes, not looking at the world through some imaginary set of rose-colored glasses. No, this poem feels like permission to get close. To see and feel the roughness of life. If you can bear the stillness of not looking away . . . there is the chance for softness, breath, openness.
Thank you to Jan Falls and Heart Poems for introducing me to this poem. It changed my life.
what to love when you’re running out of things to love by Maya Stein
Pick any landscape—a kitchen counter, a waiting room, that part of your body
you shield from photographs—and narrow the distance between you. At first,
the stains will monopolize your eye. Each blight and crack and overgrowth,
a seismic disruption. If you can bear the stillness of not looking away, if you
step even closer, the contours will begin to lose their meaning. The noise
of an old story will fade. New shapes will emerge, like petals after a hard rain.
I’m not saying you will desire, suddenly, the pits and pores of the world,
or that your hands passing over every rough surface will feel fresh tenderness.
But you’ll notice your breathing has softened, your heart a door you can open
past the jambs. How there’s room for what you see, and everything you can’t.