An Afternoon in Tomales Bay

There is a hush now while the hills rise up

and God is going to sleep. He trusts the ship

of Heaven to take over and proceed beautifully

as he lies dreaming in the lap of the world.

He knows the owls will guard the sweetness

of the soul in their massive keep of silence,

looking out with eyes open or closed over

the length of Tomales Bay that the herons

conform to, whitely broad in flight, white

and slim in standing. God, who thinks about

poetry all the time, breathes happily as He

repeats to Himself: There are fish in the net,

lots of fish this time in the net of the heart.

Linda Gregg Fishing in the Keep of Silence

This is one of my very favorite prose poems. The image of God settling down for the night, of leaving the owls on guard, while the ship of Heaven continues to sail steadily on course--it all conveys a wonderful sense of trust and assurance. Besides, even if you have trouble with the selection of a masculine pronoun for God, what can be bad about a guy who thinks about poetry all the time!?

This picture is from a trip I took to the coast of northern California and southern Oregon this past December. Arriving after dark to the hotel after a much longer than anticipated drive through a maritime forest full of switchbacks, I didn't realize what awaited me until the following morning. The view of the small bay in the early morning light is what you see here. Isn't it wonderful?

Not long after finding this poem, I had a dream about it. Instead of Tomales Bay, I was looking out over the marsh close to where my family has vacationed for years and years. It was night. I could see three brilliant white herons gliding in to land quietly on the shoreline. The sky was full of stars. A few months earlier, in the middle of a gorgeous spring afternoon, I had been assaulted in my garage. I believe that dream was the universe's way of deeply assuring me that there is an order and purpose to the world even when terrible things happen to us. God, who may be listening to poetry all the time, is still at the helm.

The last lines about the net of the heart are some of the most meaningful to me. After struggling for my life, I stumbled out of my garage into the net of the heart. Looking back over those moments, I see how I was gathered up and sailed away to safety. So many kind hearts, from so many unexpected places, carried me in the following days, weeks and months. The deepening of my own life which grew out of the violence on my body and spirit, continues in ways sometimes beyond explanation. I took the gaping tear it made in my life and wove it back together using threads I did not know I had. The net is different from before, but it is strong and true. God, who might be thinking about poetry all the time, still flings it wide and far across the sea of my life. It holds.

In our world, violence and terrible endings are happening every moment somewhere. But if we believe our existence is powerless in the face of that, how could we go on? Something in us trusts in the net of the heart even when we cannot grasp it. We continue to seek the possibility of a heartfelt life. With our poetry and music and art, laughter and dreams, we weave it day by day. We are able to bear life because we begin to see the strongest and most beautiful places in the net are woven from hurt and pain that we have mended with these precious and often fragile, outpourings. Sometimes our weaving work is hard and slow for the threads can be thin and our hands and hearts bruised and clumsy. But the gentleness and forgiveness we offer to each other, the funny jokes, the tears, poems, stories, songs, paintings and endlessly more, are the hemp of our daily lives; all woven, strand by strand, into the torn places and loose knots of the net, which grows wider and wider every day; dragging us at the close of our lives, flipping, shimmering,and gasping, onto the deck of Heaven's ship.

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty

and frightened. Don't open the door to the study

and begin reading. Take down the dulcimer.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.

There are hundreds of ways to kiss the ground.

Rumi