Letting the Angels Back In

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This is one of my favorite poems by Rumi. It reminds me of the weightless invisibility of the tender heart that Chogyam Trungpa writes about.

Stop the words now.

Open the window

in the center of your chest

and let the spirits fly in and out.

                                       Rumi

Poetry, music and art can express the numinous regions of soul that we all feel but that are so difficult to describe in ordinary language. My motivation to write poetry comes from a need to express my pain, my despair and my immutable faith. I feel it's very important to acknowledge the transcendent, spiritual side of being seriously ill, but it's also crucial to express its shadow sides. I tend to be very hard on myself, expecting nothing less than perfection. The polarity of perfection and imperfection is really the polarity of spirit and matter. By accepting imperfection, we accept matter, we accept the grit that comes along with the grace. I write poems to express the struggle of this paradoxical situation we're all in. I hope you are touched by this poem, which was written after a particularly difficult chemo day, when I was struggling to find the solace of spirit.

Letting the Angels Back In

Letting the angels back in

to breathe light into the

closed chambers of my heart,

this rank dungeon, this

frightened tenderness of flesh.

Letting the angels back in 

to dissolve the cage

of persecution, its bars

adorned with thorny

black roses that never forget.

Letting the angels back in

to forgive the stones of my sins,

my radiant, shattered vows,

my failure to flourish,

my betrayals of the

goddess Aphrodite.

Letting the angels back in

to raise a fallen queen,

her land in shambles,

her soldiers confused

and wildly hacking at no

particular thing.

Letting the angels back in

to lead me beyond this 

fortress of grief into

a meadow of freedom,

a place where there 

is no impossible, where

photons entangle and 

birth universes.

Letting the angels back in

to anoint my feet, to kiss my hand,

to show me my body of

crystalline light.

Letting the angels back in,

angels too kind to disown 

a woman for often casting them out.

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