On Saturday, December 4th I began a conversation with Dr. Safron Rossi, author of her new book above. After speaking of images and themes that interested me, we invited in Drs. Joanna Gardner and Stephanie Zajchowski, who expressed additional themes and ideas in the book that Dr. Rossi amplified; as the conversation progressed, we all found connections with one anothers’ insights, making the conversation a true engagement of ideas and images. The next morning, and as one of the areas that I found most fascinating, the quality of hiddenness that the Goddess cultivates, the following poem began to take shape.
I share it with you now and will post on this blog where one can visit to witness the rich conversation we had that afternoon.
Virtues in Hiddenness
“Listen to presences inside poems
Let them take you where they will” Rumi, “The Tent”
Can we feel when
our identity wants to hide from us—
a hedonist of hiddenness?
Save part of your illusion of self
deep in the closet of what you think
your life means.
That itself is a means
to an end.
When speaking with others
keep some treasures back
for safe-keeping.
Don’t tell all to make a good impression;
once your past leaks out of you
it can never be retrieved.
So don’t let your words
become warriors that turn on you
in the darkness
demanding to return.
Impossible.
We don’t need others
to dig holes for us
to fall into.
We can do it ourselves,
only much deeper.
Peer into its depths,
see if shards of your myth
are buried there,
in the emptiness.