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The following are excerpted from: Brown, Judy. (2000). The Sea Accepts All Rivers & Other Poems. Miles River Press: Alexandria, VA

Answer

You build a bridge
you are afraid to cross.

You start a sentence
which trails to a
question never finished.

You sparkle like the
water in the sunlight and
then draw clouds around your
shoulders, and the light goes out.

You reach out in a thousand
genuine and human ways,
and then withdraw your hand.

What you most dream of
is reflected in the
way your bridges,
light and questions
touch a human depth in others,
draw them to you.

As I extend my hand,
I ask for nothing,
but your noticing, acknowledging
the gifts that you deny you have,
yet say you want.

The truths that
your gifts draw from others—
deep connection,
human touch, the pain and joy—
are not an accident.

They are the
answer to the question
you are asking.

Fire

What makes a fire burn
is space between the logs,
a breathing space.
Too much of a good thing,
too many logs
packed in too tight
can douse the flames
almost as surely
as a pail of water would.

So building fires
requires attention
to the spaces in between,
as much as to the wood.

When we are able to build
open spaces
in the same way
we have learned
to pile on the logs,
then we can come to see how
it is fuel, and absence of the fuel
together, that make fire possible.

We only need to lay a log
lightly from time to time.
A fire
grows
simply because the space is there,
with openings
in which the flame
that knows just how it wants to burn
can find its way.

Wooden Boats

I have a brother who builds wooden boats,
Who knows precisely how a board
Can bend or turn, steamed just exactly
Soft enough so he, with help of friends,
Can shape it to the hull.

The knowledge lies as much
Within his sure hands on the plane
As in his head;
It lies in love of wood and grain,
A rough hand resting on the satin
Of the finished deck.

Is there within us each
Such artistry forgotten
In the cruder tasks
The world requires of us,
The faster modern work
That we have
Turned our life to do?

Could we return to more of craft
Within our lives,
And feel the way the grain of wood runs true,
By letting our hands linger
On the product of our artistry?
Could we recall what we have known
But have forgotten,
The gifts within ourselves,
Each other too,
And thus transform a world
As he and friends do,
Shaping steaming oak boards
Upon the hulls of wooden boats?

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