Resiliency — a poem by Allison Burnett, and Reflectiions

Resiliency

I’m weary of resiliency.
I want the kind of heart that breaks
The way a wafer cracks in two —
Along a fault.  Mine merely aches
And bends, as does an autumn twig,
Which, drenched by April rain and tossed
For dead, cannot be snapped in two,
Made deathless by the green it’s lost.
Each cruelty I withstand prepares
Me merely for the next one dealt,
Its shadow lengthening along my chest
To maim not cleave the world I felt.
Yes, time, the balm of suffering,
Does quite the opposite for me,
The grave, I fear, will only serve
To deepen my resiliency.
— Allison Burnett,
The American Poetry Journal, Winter ’04
When the paths
through the fields
of our lives become well trod and
worn traveling places and experiences
behaviors and beliefs and
emotional Ferris wheels
that no longer serve
the fullness, the wholeness, the wellness
of our dreams and desires and
deep wild joys
tearing one’s self free of the familiar
easing one’s self out of the rut
of all that has transpired before
to explore unknown territories of a Self
that is larger and grander
than the smallness of our petty self-judgments
and vanities of comparison and
ceaseless egoic hunger
for specialness and importance and security
Ah, for me…
this is to risk the heart cracking
open to itself – the vulnerability
of compassion for one’s self and for the world.
It is to inhale a breath of spirit,
of the wild resiliency that embraces, incorporates,
integrates and transcends,
the resilience of the living dead.
my 3AM reflections on Resiliency, by AllisonBurnett
Note: these movements of embracing, incorporating, integrating and transcending form what I refer to  and use in workshops as The Spiral of Transformation