Author: James A. Pearson

As I watched the wave of COVID-19 build I felt a deep sadness growing in myself.

There would be so much suffering.

And now that wave has started to break. I have friends who’s livelihoods are threatened. I have acquaintances who are sick and fearing for their lives. I have friends of friends who’ve already lost people they loved.

And there are so many people I don’t know who are right now living their own stories of fear and loss.

But I can’t go to them. As someone with asthma I can’t even volunteer for simple things like trips to the grocery store. Or I could, but I’m choosing not to. Choosing to protect myself.

And I can feel the gap in my body. The gap between how my warm mammal body wants to respond and what I’m actually choosing to do.

Because we show up for the hurting not just to hold them, but to hold the parts of ourselves that feel their pain.

And as this wave of suffering rolls through the world I can feel that I have a choice. I can close my heart and try to protect it like I’m protecting my body. Or I can hold my heart open, even though I can’t go to them, even though I don’t know how long this will last.

This (very) short poem is a reminder to myself which choice I want to make.

A New Practice

To not be able to move
my body towards the scared,
the lonely, the grieving—
this is a new practice
in holding my heart open
longer than I know how.

Click the thumbnail below to download a larger image of the poem you can share on social media:

A couple weeks ago, as the full weight of this crisis started to settle on me, I organized a meeting of a small contemplative group I’m part of. But with only an hour left before the meeting I couldn’t figure out how to open it. What words or images could possibly meet people where they’re at right now?

Then I remembered a line I’ve heard David Whyte use in various talks. It’s the first line of Dante’s Divine Comedy where he says, “In the middle of the road of my life I awoke in a dark wood where the true way was wholly lost.”

I felt my body relax. That was it.

We’ve all suddenly found ourselves in the middle of an uncharted wilderness.

This poem grew out of that recognition. And the further remembering that we are not separate from the wilderness around us. That there are deep, wild parts of ourselves that know how to live with danger and uncertainty.

I hope it helps you feel a little more grounded in this time of swirling uncertainty, as it did for me.

Surrounded

In the middle of the road of my life I awoke in a dark wood where the true way was wholly lost.

-Dante

Look how this wilderness
swept in around us—
while we slept,
while we paid the rent,
while we ordered another round.

By the time we looked up
all our paths were gone. The forest
presses in on all sides,
every direction an equal mystery
of tangle and dark.

Breathe now.

Breathe down into 
your wild body, 
into its sudden alertness, 
its burning need to keep you safe.
There are parts of you that know
how to stand still in this place,
parts of you that will know
which step to take.

Click the thumbnail below to download a larger image of the poem you can share on social media:

My body’s been holding a lot of anxiety lately. I search for information, get anxious, so search for more information, and the cycle continues.⁣

Last Thursday I took a break and went to a local park that has a few hundred acres of old growth forest. This poem came out of that short trip. I hope it gives you a deep breath in the midst of it all, as it did for me. 

Meanwhile

Meanwhile the world’s still doing spring
like nothing’s happening. There was sunlight
on the forest floor today, and the sounds of birds

welcoming themselves home to another place
they still belong. My fear found no corroboration
in the old growth Douglas firs, who seemed

as steady as ever. Not even the swarms
of little hemlocks clawing towards the light
echoed my alarm. They all just let me be there

with all the hornets buzzing in my chest.
Some mirrors are big enough to show you
how even the end of the world really isn’t.

Click the thumbnail below to download a larger image of the poem you can share on social media:

Mary Oliver died one year ago today. I think Wild Geese might have been the first poem that spoke to my adult self. Not that my adult self knew what to do with it. But it called from just over a far horizon that was barely coming into view. It gave me something to muddle towards.

It’s hard to imagine a better compliment for a piece of art. Giving each other something to muddle towards is—at least in my experience—about the best we can do. And Mary Oliver has given me many.

When I heard she‘d died I had a visceral sensation of something huge and essential crashing down. So I started this poem that day. But it took coming back to it a few times over the past year before it felt shareable:

There are trees
in the forest near my home
that hold the world together,
their roots married
to the bones of the earth.
The little boy in me knows
they are eternal.
The man I’ve become
has seen them fallen,
their ancient trunks
softening, the borders
between themselves
and everything opening,
slowly opening.
If only she could tell us now
what it’s like to fall.
How would the sharp praise
of her breath shape
that long, slow exhale
of becoming what so
astonished her?

On Saturday some friends and I marked the winter solstice together. We met just before sunset in a local forest, with the darkening waters of the Salish Sea just visible through the trees.

Winter was the first season I ever felt in my soul. Or at least the first one I was aware of feeling.

And since then the seasons have become a deepening source of wisdom and consolation in my life. They’re an inheritance we all share. Something in you knows how to winter, just like the deer and the eagles and the bigleaf maples know.

This poem speaks to my soul-level experience of winter.

I started it a few weeks ago and finished a workable draft just in time to share it for the solstice. But part of me has been writing it for a long time.

—

Now the leaves have fallen.
The trees are pulling their aliveness
back in from their branches,
down into their fortress trunks
and the dark, subterranean closeness
of their roots.

Every year they let go of
exactly what everyone says
is most beautiful about them
to save their own lives.

The time will come
when you, too, have to drop
all the ways you’ve made yourself
worth loving,
and finally learn how
to sit quietly
right in the center
of your own small life.

Only there can you cry
the tears your life depends on,
as everything you thought you needed
rots into soil.
Only there will you find
the tiny seed
that holds the whole mystery
of you, and cradle it
in the warmth of your body
until the spring.

This little poem is about a shivering little tree near the top of a mountain (see a video of the actual tree below). But it’s also about giving yourself a break.

There were taller trees lower down the mountain that swayed more elegantly in the wind. And even lower were old growth Douglas firs—timeless giants rising out of rich forest soil.

Imagine teaching that little tree that it wouldn’t be worthy of love until it was more like those other, bigger trees.

If you’re like me you’ve probably absorbed a lot of messages about striving to be great, to have impact, to live the biggest life you can. And that’s okay. But it needs balance.

Not everyone is a Douglas fir planted 400 years ago in deep humus. 

Spend time getting to know the real shape that’s hidden in the seed of you. Notice how that shape adapts to the soil of your life—your honest history, the truth of your circumstances, the gifts and limitations of your own body and mind.

Look closely at the whole of yourself without comparison. How beautiful.

Let the Wind Dance You

Imagine
if all you had to do
to be beautiful
was to let the wind
dance you
where you stand
as you grow into
the only shape
you ever had.

When I first wrote this poem I thought it would be the beginning of a longer piece, something with more of a redemptive arc. I tried and tried to find the rest of the poem, but nothing else fit.

Reading it now, I love that it stops where it does. That it doesn’t try to soften the terror of watching one of life’s autumns sweep in around you.

And now I can see that the redemptive arc is the poem itself—just the fact that it exists. That there’s a person called Me who survived the annihilation, who endured the long wait for spring, who can look back with deeper eyes and say, “I remember when…”

Tomorrow is the autumnal equinox, so I’m sharing this poem to honor the autumns we all experience in our lives:

When That Fire

The destroying fire
is coming into
the leaves
again—

oranges and deep
reds gathering
around the
edges,

preparing to consume
whole trees,
turn forests
into

boneyards. I remember
when that fire
came for
me.

I wrote this poem about a month ago while watching the sky one evening. It was based mostly on an intuition and a gathering sadness about all we’re losing in the world. I wasn’t sure if or how I was going to share it.

But then today the New York Times published this article: Birds Are Vanishing From North America

And suddenly the poem took on new relevance. So I’m sharing it today because it helps me feel the sadness behind the statistics, instead of letting them numb me.

Look to the sky
while there are still birds.
Who knows what we’ll lose first,
or last?

Note how the crows
all fly the same way
in the evening,
flapping and veering toward
a collective dream
of home. Imagine how
you’ll describe them
to your children’s children.

Or the seagull that shoots
across their path,
so full of purpose—
an arrow into the coming night.