Heart Left Open: Collected Poems 2004 -2008

By Birrell Walsh

MORNING
In my evening
I am folding a package of palm leaves
so that in your morning
you can unfold them and find the sun .

MOVING HANDS ABOVE SOMEONE BELOVED
It is a craft we learned in that school:
moving hands above someone beloved
feeling the energy rise from them and
(instead of letting it gather, to become either desire or movement)
spreading it softly through the body-aura
as combing hair spreads the oil of the skin to all of the long strands.
Done right it lets the recipient sleep, but sleep refilled, untangled,
and wake alive and glad -
so they taught us in that school where we learned this craft.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Mar 29, 2011
• ISBN: 9781257192854

Book preview

Heart Left Open

Collected Poems

2004 -2008

by Birrell Walsh

Here is a toast

to those who open our hearts.

Birrell Walsh

[e-mail] and [e-mail],

1-415-753-2572

Copyright 2004-2008 By Birrell Walsh

All Rights Reserved

Cover Photo Copyright 2006

By Radmila Krieger

All Rights Reserved

Author Photo Copyright 2007

By Frederick Douglass Perry

All Rights Reserved

eISBN: 978-1-25719-285-4

Flow Felt, Answering Need

June 22, 2004

Hands raised soft

seeming casual

to send,

Hands resting on

painful bodies

lightly.

Flow felt, answering need

of beings with

Amitabha's light

I Don't Believe In This Stuff, She Said

June 23, 2004

I don't believe in this stuff, she said.

I know how that is, said I

And rested my hand on her back. She relaxed

with a great long audible sigh.

He Doesn't Know I Know He Has AIDS

June 23, 2004

He has AIDS

But because his AIDS is secret

He doesn't know I know he has AIDS

He and I have often conflicted -

words and power, role-in-the-play.

This is a demonstration day

for energy-healing: a different play,

ten minutes to give a taste

I put my hands on his shoulders: so tight.

Knead them, let them go.

Scan him byosan-reiku ho*

My hand falls to his heart -

Oh, such despair!

Let the hand rest there,

and on his back.

Scan again. The hara

dan tien, second chakra:

driving/driven desire,

a tight-hot furnace.

Well, I know that one.

I apologize. Um, I say,

this may be a little intimate,"

and reach in, cradle the

driving tired chakra

and let Mr. Reiki flow out,

impersonal, colorless, kind.

He and I are now in

an intimacy so deep

that most lovers never

feel its ocean flow.

Go, Mr. Reiki,

let your flows flow.

Enough, now. Time is over.

Slow, pulsing WITHapart, withapart, withAPART,

saying good bye

I knead his shoulders again

and return to the poor house

of a solitary body.

*http://www.geocities.com/fascin8or/d_byosen.html

I've Gone And Given Reiki To My Wife

June 23, 2004

I got One from a Magician

Two from a space-musician

And some mantras and some symbols from them too

And that would have been fine

But I got my third online

And now, St. Mikao, what shall I do?

CHORUS:

    Oh the woman that I wedded

    is hard- and level-headed

   And she doesn't go where New Age stuff is rife.

    But I do, and I'll tell you

   that I'm in deep woo-woo

   for I've gone and given Reiki to my wife.

I knew Priscilla Stuckey

in which I was most lucky

and she taught me 'bout initiating pets

It made Fionn the cat-sans-pity

into a sei-hei-kitty,

And Bri the dog's as beaming as it gets.

CHORUS

My wife's indeed a skeptic

and she would get dyspeptic

if I tried to draw some symbols on her hand

But I thought, "Hey, what's the harm

if I use a distant charm

like them folks at Grassrootsreiki and their band?"

CHORUS

I just sat me down in town and thought

all the symbols that I ought

to make my loving spouse a first degree

And when she touched me on my heart

with her unknown new found art

she healed, and made a sobbing fool of me.

CHORUS

It works, I thought and then

gave her HON SHA ZE SHO NEN

and she was healing folks across the road.

So I gave her DAI KO MYO,

and she's passing on the glow

but you mustn't ever tell

how come she makes folks well -

she would change me to a very healthy toad.

Oh the woman that I wedded

is hard- and level-headed

And she doesn't go where New Age stuff is rife.

And I hope you'll help conceal her

conversion to a healer

for I've gone and given Reiki to my wife.

The Thought Behind The Pain

June 24, 2004

They brought him in

for slashing himself

with a great long knife

he had made himself.

Needs healing.

Yep.

We should take away his knife.

Yes. And he'll make another.

"Can we take away the urge,

the pain,

the thought behind the pain,

the fear behind the thought?"

Not The Peaceful Flow

June 25, 2004

The energy

leaps quite unbidden

between our bodies.

not the peaceful flow

of a healer's hands -

No, sudden, connective

flowing from midline

to midline, making us one being

across at first a few feet

and now across the Atlantic

And for all I am angry at you

I could no more leave you

then I could leave my liver

or my soul.

The New Initiate Lays Hands

June 26, 2004

Thinking

Can this work?

the new initiate lays hands

on back and heart.

And in the recipient

warmth blooms

not in the chest

but in the back of the head.

Good old

reliably unpredictable Reiki.

Hey Now I Weave A Little Travel Lamp

June 30, 2004

Hey now I weave a little travel lamp

of reiki, of energy that is not me

and set it in the future, hanging from a tree

so that one evening, walking in the damp

you will be guided, won't stumble, will not fall

and the light will see you home and all

as I would do, if we were still friends.

Let this energy-that-is-not-me go with and make

amends.

Warmth Penetrates Gently

June 30, 2004

Hands rested on the belly

warmth penetrates gently

and as warm spring rain

enters cold winter earth

softening softening

so Reiki reaches in

to the stress-filled gut

softening softening

Is it not mercy?

Dissolved In Her, And I Flow After

July 1, 2004

Tell me, teacher,

what the ethics would be

if I used Reiki

to make a hand and a long arm

and reached across

the cold grey sea

and touched the back of one I love

not one I am supposed to love

but one I most surely do love

One, of course I'm thinking of

And left my hand upon her back

as she rises in the summer dawn

to put her meditations on

most chastely there upon her back

and not follow down the track

of her mountain-spine...

But left my Reiki hand upon her skin

and then went with it as it went in

until the reiki and the hand

ran into her, stream into sand,

dissolved in her, and I flow after

until you hear me in her laughter.

Tell me, teacher, what the fact is -

would this be good reiki practice?

I Have Wrestled With Jealousy

July 1, 2004

I have wrestled with jealousy -

a fair fight. I lost.

And ridden by jealousy

drove away a well-loved friend,

a well befriended lover,

my loving-friend wellness

I drove away because I

could not could not could not

allow the one I loved

to love another

even though she already did

and loved me none the less.

Let us hope our God is

not a jealous god.

Too many times I have closed

the doors of my heart to the

one I have loved,

and not admitting that I could

never stop loving,

have taken myself into darkness.

I have a friend who said

with soft old eyes,

"You are one, like me,

who finds yourself to be toxic

to those you love."

Her eyes implied

it is a false finding

but hard to reverse

in the cold court of

self-condemning words.

Even Ravens Mourn

July 1, 2004

The ravens silent

by the bright shining sand beach.

Even ravens mourn.

Feathers are so black,

so shiny; their eyes are deep;

Their beaks curved and good.

But ravens do not

mourn for long. They see beauty,

and their hearts revive;

And strong wings are stretched

to catch the patterns, spread

to ride the space winds.

And throaty voices

comfort all who rest near them

with their lullabies.

May I Sit By You?

July 1, 2004

Just now, reports the world clock

they start the working in Ladakh

and while we wait here for the skies

to split and show us Drukchen's eyes,

may I sit by you?

At Six Pm On July First

July 1, 2004

At six PM on July first

I sat there feeling my heart burst

for all the corruscating reasons

that come in separating seasons

At nine PM , all went wide

with the rising dragon tide

It was not you it was not me

perhaps it was not even he

instead it was a roaring space

so wide it did not have a face

At eleven on the bus

a madwoman bathed in us

and her young face grew less old

hidden in her blanket fold

At midnight you were mostly gone

vanished in the dragon dawn

At six AM you seemed asleep

the woods are lovely, dark and deep

I lay beside a one I hold

in her warmth and her soft gold

and lightnings lingered in the sky

slowly drifting by.

These Heart Seas

July 1, 2004

Are we not all upon

the wide seas of heart?

Is there any place to fly

where we will not land

at last on these same seas,

and all streams run down to them

and all rains of blessing rise from them,

these heart seas?

A Tree Protects A Passerby

July 2, 2004

Between the Issar and the sky

a tree protects a passerby

and ah, I wish the tree were I.

The Flowers Before The Niche

July 2, 2004

On the paper, a report

of a Protestant town

of proper churches,

proper people,

proper ways.

Behind the church

a path leads back to a small niche

where once was worshipped

Hecate. Nowadays

everyone claims to have forgotten

her name, her face,

but the flowers before the niche

are fresh.

Just As They Had Been At First

July 3, 2004

Years after the great storms in the city

when most of the buildings were rebuilt

I was in an old part

and I saw an old man

sitting on a bench, looking

at an old wall

where some youth in That Time

had written in haste and red

KOLKO, KOLKO

TE OBICHAM?

MNOGO, MNOGO

He was silent, unmoving

the paint was old, flaking.

When I thought he had become

one of the vines that grow there

he stood and with a small brush,

a small paint pot, a careful hand

he wrote over the old words

just as they had been at first

tracing them with care

MNOGO, MNOGO

This Was Very Good

July 3, 2004

I asked Mr Drake

what the purpose is

of what you and I have been doing.

He's not given to answering much in words

but it seemed clear enough:

There was a roaring rising up

in/around/about us

and I got as well the feeling

that this was very good

but not easily reduced

to words and a slogan.

I Love Her Isn't That Enough

July 3, 2004

Many years ago we had

a cat named Artemisia.

She was very long, very lean,

very beautiful and beloved.

Eventually her body failed

and she was in more and more pain

and the time came to

put her to sleep.

We took her to the vet

and they shaved her leg

to put a needle in.

but it was not easy -

they had to try three times

to find the vein.

She was going to suffer

more and more if we did not -

but at that moment

I just wanted to scream

no no no no no no

I love her isn't that enough

to keep her with us, in her beauty?

This Is The Path Of Tantra...

July 3, 2004

Yesterday I had a tantrum.

Today I had a tantrum.

Someone short and feline

noticed I have not grown up -

Good cause, I'd say, to have one tomorrow.

This is the path of tantra...

The Smell Of Hay

July 4, 2004

Isn't it strange

how an animal smell can calm us?

The smell of fur, and dust in fur.

For me it was just a whiff

of a horse's breath,

the smell of hay.

Nothing Will Work Unless You Are Cold

July 4, 2004

With great craft

I built miles and miles

of distance to separate us.

It did not work.

Nor did silence, nor did vows.

Nothing will work unless you are cold.

And you are not.

Lily Blossoms Age And Fall

July 4, 2004

Lily blossoms age and fall.

Is nothing left except

timelessness?

Two Eyes Watch In Space

July 5, 2004

Two eyes watch in space

from outside time

into time where we are

together apart together apart

In a way no hard cobra eyes could,

these dark eyes have me,

by their soft intentness

Circe Made Men Pigs

July 5, 2004

Circe made men pigs

and then (Odysseus asked it)

made them men again.

So, I've been touched by the Tall Witch,

her of Aiaia, East-Dancer,

and run the forest

rooting acorns,

digging truffles

from below the hazelnuts

writhing in the fire

of Diamond Sow's desire

and now Circe has touched me again

and I begin to lose my snout

the tusks are falling out.

My shipmates welcome me to men

not knowing what I've lost,

not knowing the cost

of not being with the Dancing One.

That Pleasure Is No Sin

July 5, 2004

I have found

that pleasure is no sin.

But pleasure has many jealous courtiers

who fill pleasure's court with cruel gossip.

In The Aftermath, The Fences Were Down

July 5, 2004

I had always thought of guilt as a sort of fence,

like barbed wire. If I unrolled enough of it,

then I could keep my respectability here by the house,

my spirit in this pasture,

and over there my f-unblushing hunger.

I thought it very penitential - good, for a Catholic child.

Noticing the barbs, I had not noticed the utility.

Until one day a forest fire came

and in the aftermath, the fences were down...

Open And Quite Dry

July 5, 2004

Flat embroidered squares of