Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg
“Reach your long hand out to another door, beyond where
you go on the street, the street
where everyone says, “How are you?”
and no one says, “How aren’t you?”
— Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks
What life have you forgotten?
Or whose? The hungry cardinal
echo yells his food song. The nest
the wind has made collapses
in the heat, sometimes an airplane
low above us, hand-built in a garage
over many years by a man in love
with gears and wings. Or a long distance
trucker eating one horizon after another,
his right knee pinned in pain the whole ride
that never leads to anything he would call
home. Sometimes you, passing by
all the witnessing stories as if all that aren’t
you anymore or ever actually could be.
Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, Ph.D., the 2009-13Kansas Poet Laureate is the author of 24 books, including How Time Moves: New & Selected Poems; Miriam’s Well, a novel; Needle in the Bone, a non-fiction book on the Holocaust; The Sky Begins At Your Feet: A Memoir on Cancer, Community, and Coming Home to the Body. Founder of Transformative Language Arts, she leads writing workshops widely, coaches people on writing and right livelihood, and consults on creativity. Her new podcast is Tell Me Your Truest Story. Find out more about her at CarynMirriamGoldberg.com, YourRightLivelihood.com, and Bravevoice.com.