I was slowly walking short distances on the Atlantic's
shore during the period I wrote this poem…
I was nearly dead inside, and
hadn't yet faced that my 28-year relationship with my life partner needed to
come to a close—should have come to a close some years earlier. The shifting
shells on the shore created pale, dripping-like patterns that reflected my melancholic
heart. My toes wanted to touch the nourishing water as I remembered the Bhakti
analogy that the soul's nature is similar to the demarcation between the ocean
and the sand.
The line between water and sand—spirit and matter respectively—is
sometimes wet; sometimes dry. The self chooses where she wants to invest
herself and thereby is nourished from that nature.
Desperately wanting to be held by the
divine, I saw my steps leading me, slowly, painfully, indistinctly—like the
colors of the shifting sands—yet somehow surely, too, like each step I was
taking. I had a faint sense of trust in the intelligence of how life; I just
couldn't sense how it would look like as it unfolded.
 |
| "The Riviera Maya Sands" by Gabriel Bulla |
Stretched Canvas
by Pranada Comtois
White sand extends wide
the shore like shells flutes
in settlings of crunchy cockles
of soft sienna-amber
near low-tide water.
Tilted canvas pours wet, paints
flow in wrong direction:
fawn green, pale sandstone, tans,
whites
drip down by little rushes
the picture gives way
to unlimited scenes.
There’s something about
walking on the wet part.
It’s as if walking past
many seasons, many births,
one slid atop another
and the world
a thousand destinies
shift and transpose
forming one distinct
with the next step
set down.
set down.
Pranada Comtois is an author and spiritual teacher of Bhakti's Wise-Love: the spiritual
evolution of love in our daily lives. She illuminates this practice in her new
book Wise-Love: Bhakti and the Search for the Soul of Consciousness (Inword
Publishers, 2016) Pranada lived for 20 years as a contemplative-ascetic in the
ancient Bhakti wisdom tradition. She spent the following 20 years raising a
family and running two multi-million dollar businesses to exemplify practical
spirituality in the world. Her teachings draw from both experiences, and she
has published them in Integral Yoga, Rebelle Society, Elephant Journal,
Tattooed Buddha, Journey of the Heart: An Anthology of Spiritual Poetry for
Women and other journals. She is featured in the film Women
of Bhakti as she was one of the first to speak up for gender harmony in the
Bhakti tradition in the mid 80's and 90s, successfully organizing the first
steps against gender injustice while publishing Priti-laksanam, a quarterly
journal advocating women's rights. She served as managing editor for the Bacopa Literary Review for six years. Her passion to inspire women continues to fuel
her work to this day. Connect with her on her website here or facebook here.
~If you are interested in seeing your poetry appear in this blog, or submitting a poem by a woman that has inspired you, please click here for submission guidelines. I greatly look forward to hearing from you!~
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