No / Suffering Is Lost

Jean Valentine: Happiness (3)

The moment you turned to me on W. 4th St.
Your gentleness to me

The hard winter grass here under my shoes
The frost

I knelt in the frost to your parents

.                                                                             The warm
light on the right hand side of your face
The light on the Buddha’s eyelids

I knelt to my parents
Their suffering          How

much sleep there was in sleep         How no
suffering is lost

I adore this poet. Usually I just leave it at that, but in this case I’m urging you to go and visit her website. You can find all kinds of stuff there, including a lot of poems, audio documents, workshops and links. Since the NBA is going to be awarded one of these days, maybe it’s also a good idea and opportunity to take a look at a poet who won it deservedly, for her extraordinary collection Door in the Mountain: New and collected Poems. The poem above is one of the new ones.