Those Few Minutes
It’s mysterious, what happens on retreats. Or at least, what can happen.
Mysterious.
Fleeting.
Unforgettable.
But almost impossible to describe.
Unless you’re a poet:
The Promise
by Jane Hirshfield
Mysteriously they entered, those few minutes.
Mysteriously, they left.
As if the great dog of confusion guarding my heart,
who is always sleepless, suddenly slept.
It was not any awakening of the large, not so
much as that,
only a stepping back from the petty.
I gazed at the range of blue mountains,
I drank from the stream. Tossed in a small
stone from the bank.
Whatever direction the fates of my life might
travel, I trusted.
Even the greedy direction, even the grieving,
trusted.
There was nothing left to be saved from, bliss
nor danger.
The dog’s tail wagged a little in his dream.