Ingrid Goff-Maidoff
From the category archives:
I have a friend who came to see me,
who danced naked under the stars.
She brought a friend who is now my friend,
and who laughed with ease and joy.
Sweet unity.
This is what we had.
Today my heart is full
of moonlight and sunlight and dancing.
Today my life is brimming
with laughter and ease, and stars.
~Ingrid
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Give me a story
with a gorgeous
ebbing shoreline
a few green fields
a modest house
a garden and
enduring love
not the
Hollywood heat
that could
burn a village
down but a
love steadfast
faithful
aware
of its own
good fortune
love that is a
lamp unto
itself
trusting willing
longed for
and held
an inner ember
glowing
triumphant
in its knowing
told and retold
perhaps simply
offered given
received and
understood.
~Ingrid Goff-Maidoff
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Sometimes A Kiss Can Do That:
unhinge a rusted gate
to let the moonlight in;
send rain to a parched field,
to play the dust like a drum;
release a hollow ache;
warm a stubborn chill;
build a bridge, a raft,
a momentary trust.
Sometimes, through a kiss
we open
to the infinite world
that holds us.
I’m not saying all the time,
but sometimes.
And sometimes
this is enough.
~Ingrid
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You, Love, are my earthly joy,
My village and my song,
My reason, my belonging,
And the good that makes me strong.
With your arms around me
My heart knows blessings, blessed.
With you here beside me
Is how I love life best.
~Ingrid
I love you like a fiddle tune.
I love you like a jig.
I love you like the month of June.
I love you like a fig.
I love you like a hoppy brew.
And a warm down feather bed.
I love you like a dream come true
And berries and butter and bread….
( Ingrid’s note: I don’t actually love figs…but it went so well with jig. Now my secret is out, I promise I am still sincere. … These wonderful candleholders are made by The Mad Potter on Martha’s Vineyard. The video below was sent to me by my friend Heather. It’s so joyful and free and, well, it made me cry happy tears.)
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I rested into the morning, caressed,
deep pleasure, measureless being,
I rested until I heard
the song of the day call me out.
Come. Take joy. Awake.
Come and see my treasures.
Only then did I rise to take
my pleasure into the world.
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I love how Winter takes me
in its cool white arms, and
holds me in a seduction
of silence and elation;
full emptiness hangs in the air
after a night of heavy snow:
the breath of morning comes
a promise, or desire.
And I open as if haunted
for this deep and rich receiving,
inviting the seeds of darkness
to enter the mud of my womb
for a time of fertile waiting
I can not push or name, until
flows a spring of emergence,
celebration, birth, or fire.
Sometimes after months it flows.
Sometimes after one hot prayer.
~Ingrid Goff-Maidoff
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“Poetry is a life-cherishing force.
For poems are not words, after all,
but fires for the cold,
ropes let down to the lost,
something as necessary as bread
in the pockets of the hungry.
Yes indeed.” ~Mary Oliver
Our poem which is Infinite
(A love poem for my husband)
Tonight your words draw me back
into the poem in which we are living.
It is a rich and merciful poem
and it spins its warm story around us
drawing our bodies down
into the urgency of our belonging.
How is it that we, neither holy nor wise,
could live in this beautiful poem?
It is the fire we tend with our kindling,
the table we cover with bread,
the altar we make bare for offerings,
the pitcher we empty and fill.
~Ingrid Goff-Maidoff
This week I have been savoring Kim Rosen’s Book, Saved by a Poem. If you love poetry, even if you fear poetry, this is a beautiful invitation to enrich your life through poems. I am tongue-tied, in awe, and cannot recommend her work highly enough.
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“Birdsong brings relief
to my longing.
I am just as ecstatic as they are,
but with nothing to say!
Please, universal soul, practice
some song, or something, through me!”
~Rumi, from Birdsong, translations of Coleman Barks
I stumbled across Rumi’s poem this week, and it captures my sentiments exactly. In autumn, my attention often turns from the manufacture of books to the writing of them. I long to sit, idle, and have poems come tumbling in. I long to wander the landscape in intimate conversation with the soul of the world. And sometimes I do.
Last week I sorted through all of my starts and false starts ~ scribbled notebooks, interrupted reverie- to harvest a few poems if I could find them. I tore out the complaints, tossing many pages entirely. I had a splendid fire in the outdoor pizza oven. To release the old; the unsatisfactory; the ineffective; the mediocrity….I could go on. It was exhilarating to turn the burning pages with a spade, feeling the heat on my face. It felt wonderful to let it all go in plumes of ashes and smoke.
Now I am ready, open, and empty- longing for the universal soul to practice some song, or something, through me.
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I blame it on the summer whirl- that my latest Joy post-card contained a typo. It’s a small thing really: too many of the word “for”, when the word “to” was intended. As a poet, I am disconcerted. The lines don’t sound pleasing; the repetition is jarring- the blessing becomes much less somehow, and easily dismissed. And so, here it is as it is written in my book, Eternal Song, Blessings for the Path o f Love.
BLESSING
Do good things for each other ~
small kindnesses every day.
Be a comfort to each other ~
a calm shore for turbulent times.
Be good friends to each other ~
remain compassionate and tender.
Lend a thoughtful ear, a gentle shoulder,
an open heart, and a strong hand.
And do good things for each other.
Thank you!
Ingrid
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