Becoming Composed Poem by Alla Bozarth

How long it takes to wait for the hummingbird to hover in front
of one’s lens, luminous purple and shimmering fuchsia blooming around it.
Unless one is a bear, how long it takes to pick enough blackberries
for a substantial cobbler, all morning to walk the roadside or out to the middle
of the pasture where the foxes live, and ask permission to take one after another
carefully from the bush, so as not to mix in blood with berry juice, or take away
a painful, thorny memento. A bear could take all morning, too, filling her furry oven
until she falls into the grass in a drunken noonday slumber, while sweet, dark
purple pearls of fruit inside her turn from berries into bear.

To become composed as that dozing creature, to become composed
as a Turner seascape with turbulent light in the sky, churning energy
from within made visible in heart-raising color, yet whole, complete to itself.
To become. Finally, something like color, something like music,
something like wind— something like light.

From birth we are told to become something else, or less, or more—
become calm, little baby, become composed, young man or young lady.
Become more disciplined. Become more tidy. Become less anxious.
Become yourself. Become your best self! Become all you can be.
Become— and this is the soul-killing one— become punctual.

For the quick trip through time, I do not want to be distressed
by the tyranny of calendars and clocks, but unmolested by haste, free.
I want to take my time to become everything~~ a lifetime becoming kind.
I want to watch the weather become better after a week of heaviness and heat.
I want to notice how a poem or painting or music becomes a composite, while
its human conduit is taking a shower, walking uphill in rain, reading the paper,
visiting a friend. I want to be immersed in living, drench myself in life, become
aware of its detail, like the awesome precision of a classical painting or polyphonic
fugue, or a blue morph butterfly wing. I want to become alert to the distinct voices
of the late afternoon concert— the cricket, the frog, the goat and the dog,
the crow and the goldfinch, with bright water falling over rock.

I want to become tuned to them, join them with my own mammalian noises
and sounds, sighs and laughter, even with singing. I want to hear deeply when
it’s time to become light again, return like the sated bear to the earth, dissolve back
into the Great Mother womb of creation, become that original thing,
that hiding photon, that wisp of air across the skin. Then my friends can inhale
my presence, find me in what they see when they open their eyes to the day,
to the night, when our beings mingle, light to light.

From My Blessed Misfortunes by Alla Renée Bozarth, copyright 2011.
All rights reserved.