Poem: Buoyancy
from our poet of the month, Deborah Anne Quibell
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"When you find yourself in turbulent waters / tie a rope to your center / and loosen your hold.
BUOYANCY
When you find yourself in turbulent waters
tie a rope to your center
and loosen your hold.
Your tight grip
only fastens to fear
and chokes your flexibility.
Trust the buoyancy of your heart.
It knows these waves
and the elasticity it takes
to weather the storm.
In your moment of distress
don’t frantically stiffen
but invoke the deep malleability
that only the holy wisdom
of the heart
may beckon.
There is no other rescue
in this moment, my darling
than this.
Until the storm subsides.
Listen to Deborah read Buoyancy:
Quibell explained her approach to poetry to Spirituality & Health:
In depth psychology, we talk about the Self—the numinous ordering principle within the psyche. In some eastern traditions, this is known as the Atman or god within. The terminology mattered less to me. I just knew that I had to cultivate a relationship to the holy part of my being and the holy aspects of my existence. Call them what you may.
To this day, I don’t quite understand the mechanism of my poetic expression. And I don’t think I am meant to. The same way we never truly understand what happens or where we go during deep meditative practices. The experience (and its residue) is what matters.
Read more poetry from Deborah Anne Quibell:
Select poems from Soul Bird: Poems for Flying by Deborah Anne Quibell. Copyright © 2019 by Deborah Anne Quibell. Reprinted with permission of Mandorla Books.
About the Author
Deborah started writing poetry at the age of five. She fell in love with the mystics in her teens, and began a life of insatiable spiritual inquiry. She lives in Rome, Italy with her husband and son, and is constantly...
