A Poem: Encircled

God catches me looking through windows,
opening windows.

He catches me walking up hills, past doors,
tripping myself up in ribbons.

He sees me shifting deadwood.

And he watches me, lost in a forest,
forgetting the seasons.

God, my confidante,
my absoluter,

watches me looking through windows.
Gives me reason as my stable anchor.

Reminds me how the river ever flows
in one direction.

How the seasons change,
not in retrospect,

but sometimes when
we’ve not readied ourselves.

But God, catching me looking
through windows,

is the drawer of blinds,
is the locksmith, the hill leveler,

the gardener,
the shepherd.

God sees me
throwing stones for attention,

or lost forgotten in a forest,
guessing the season.

That he circles over me,
in a great cloud of golden leaves,
a sea of barren limbs,

a cluster of green tipped branches,
an avalanche of blossom.

Ana Lisa de Jong
Living Tree Poetry
November 2021

When we understand,
we are at the centre of the circle
and there we sit
while Yes and No
chase each other
around the circumference.
~ Chuang Tzu

The place where you are right now
God circled on a map for you
wherever your eyes and arms and heart can move
Against the earth and the sky,
the beloved has bowed there-
The beloved has bowed there knowing
You were coming…
~ Hafiz

I don’t trust the truth of memories
because what leaves us
departs forever.
There’s only one current of this sacred river
but I still want to remain faithful
to my first astonishments
to recognize as wisdom the child’s wonder
and to carry in myself until the end a path
in the woods of my childhood
dappled with patches of sunlight
to search for it everywhere
in museums in the shade of churches
this path on which I ran unaware
a six-year old
toward my primary mysterious aloneness.
~ Anna Kamienska