Out of the Corner

I grew up and into a corner. All days were dark battles, and I was lost, wedging myself in, wandering down and out of my corner, and up and back again.

And then I had the fortune, the karma, to be exposed to you, who taught. You explained life and made it my favorite subject. I found out I was powerful and therefore worth attending to and improving. You invited me to be alive; to awake.

I was American, and you were American. You were here in my own land. You spoke my own language, and then you taught me your language, the language of Enlightenment.

I repeat and repeat within my being how I was blessed to have been in your presence for one moment, let alone one entire evening, let alone two, or 15, or 100. You opened doors into me, you taught why we are here, what we do, why. You innovated, you warned, you got hurt, you went completely out of your way to care.

You are gone now? Never. I give birth to your ways every day in my gestures, in my speech, in my courtesies, my writing, in my awareness, my laugh, subtleties people notice. They are watching you, not me. You are alive.

You are in my dreams which I awake from and return to in the daytime. Dreams. You are the dreamer, the creator and the doer. Pushing, growing, attempting, having fun, that’s you.

I gather myself in and bow to you, all the way to the floor, all the way down into the floor. I spread my arms out across the floor. Thanking you, remembering how much daring, and patience, and knowledge, meditation has blended and synthesized into the cells of this bowing being before you.

I remember to thank you, and thank you, and thank you, in my sacred space, until warmth burns my heart, destroying the illusions that fill my day. All of it melts away in the place I set up to remember you.

-- Dana Shapiro
February 9, 2000