Prartho Sereno
Photo: Michael Sudheer
Prartho Sereno |
Photo: Michael Sudheer |
|
| Prartho studied meditation and creativity in India for four years. Currently she is a California Poet in the Schools and teaches at the College of Marin. She is author of a book of essays and a chapbook of poems, has received several awards for individual poems, and was a 2003 recipient of a Marin Arts Council Individual Artist Grant. She is also a watercolor artist; her work is on book covers and CDs. |
Nobody Makes It Up that Mountain
The truth is nobody
makes it up that mountain,
no matter what the guidebooks
and signposts say,
and each time you slip
it seems such a simple thing
that brought you down:
your shoelaces need tightening,
the load adjusting,
you must not let that thought
come to distract you again.
But if you really want to reach
the promised land, fall back.
It lies behind you;
it is where you go in the afternoon
when you lean away from the world
and watch the sun sink
behind the trees.
It is the meadow you left
in your childhood, just to see
if you could find it again.
What I Brought from India
for my Brother Greg
Seven years of water
had gone down the Ganges
before I came to you again
in the rain, empty-handed as ever
with my two kids and a mountain
of duffel bags on the train platform
on Easter Sunday in the dark.
I asked myself how I could
show you these eyes that hold
less and less when I so wanted
to bring you something. A map
a tapestry, a wonderful story,
and not the only thing I have
which is a little bit of nothing,
a space inside the jungle
where the silence sits
and sings its strange song.
I've found that whatever
I've found in my life
is no good to anyone,
except perhaps as a nudging elbow
into the ribs of the reticent angel
that she might whisper:
go on, go on,
into your own deepest hopes
and find
or lose
whatever you can.