Touching Down Into The Deep

On a Zoom call
with Dr. Isabelle,
my Jungian analyst
in, for heaven’s sake, France,
I read from my dream journal,
the most recent version
of a dream I have been having
for years…

In the dream, once again,
guests are coming for dinner…
they are due at any moment
and I don’t have enough food.
I am scrambling, panicked…
how did this happen?
what will I give them to eat?
I don’t have enough food
to make a meal.

I finish reading.
Dr. Isabelle nods.
“This is not a dream about food,”
she says. “It is about feeling
what you have to give
is not enough.”

I fall slow-motion
into the liminal space
between what-was
and what-is.
On the surface
I am stunned to silence,
considering my lifetime
of constant comparisons,
feeling less-than,
not measuring up.
While deeper down
below the surface
a new thought is taking form.

I say, “But not my poems.”

No, not my poems.
I marvel, this is true:
Perfect or imperfect,
whether long-labored
or leaping to the page,
my poems feel essential,
they are enough to me,
needing no apologies,
no publishing or praise.

Writing a poem
I descend
into the deep end…
taking with me
all my words
and life experience,
the weight of some question
and what I need to express…
I descend deeper
as I work…
drawing nearer
to a Mystery I call
Magnificently Creative Life Force—
a pure, unmitigated Reality
that is both me and not-me
where the poem takes shape.
Each poem is me
working out my truth,
my connection to Life.
Each poem is enough.

And then I see
the same is true
for the Medicine-Cabinet
healing-art I make
for other people…

…for this work
I also drop into the deep end,
swim down with all my words
and life experience
and the added ballast
of someone else’s life stories.
Again the descent takes
me nearer to that
Magnificently Creative Life Force…
and the colors, themes,
and contents of another’s
Medicine Cabinet
will begin to emerge.
As small and plainly handmade
as each Medicine Cabinet is,
each one is enough.

I speak of this.
There is a pause.
Then in France
Dr. Isabelle says,
“And when you are tired,
it is enough to rest.”

In my interior,
I am in the deep end
I feel the water lap,
the lotus bloom bob
on the water’s surface,
the bottom-mud
like a certainty
between my toes.

And I know.
When I touch down
into the place of the
Magnificently Creative Life Source,
I anchor into awe and wholeness.
I become congruent with Reality…
what I do
or know not to do
is enough.

When I am tired,
it is enough to rest.

Ann Keiffer
September, 2024

Image Credit: Digital Collage by Ann Keiffer