Tea with Nina Simone

There is a sound...a sound that opens my being and inhabits my bones for a while...and when that sound...meets a mood...and that mood meets a way to write...the lines fall out a certain way...like a picture of what I feel.  

“Nina Simone” by Stanley Chow

Tea with Nina Simone

Singer woman with a lived-in voice,

how I ache to climb the steps of those piano keys,

bending into the curve of your voice and

riding upside on the slide of your top note wail.

Mm. From there, that view, 

oh I’d throw my arms open and 

dive in dancing, I would...

Confident that air would catch 

beneath the canopy of my soul.

I will sigh when the song

is done, I will. Sigh

and sip my tea steaming

on the coaster beside me.

Me, in a wingback chair,

eyes closed and heart still swaying 

inside that waterfall 

of sound and liquid soul.

Kimberly M. King, RSCJ

What Others Notice

A couple from Ireland stopped in front of where I was seated on a bench, having lunch in the shade at the Public Gardens.

“That looks absolutely amazing…,” they said to me of my meal.

I looked up at them.

“Honestly, it is…Every single thing about it is divine. The juice, the colour, the taste, the texture, the context…(I laughed) I am so enjoying the pleasure of my lunch…”

“It’s why we felt like we could stop,” said the wife.

“?”

“You looked like you were so happy, simply eating a beautiful plum.”

Vacation in my Backpack

I Carry Vacation with Me

My brain needs space to rest and roam; my heart needs room to feel. 

A book in hand is a key to a place where ‘away’ becomes the real.

Wizards, mansions, and moors and trains; detectives, urchins and spies,

this and that and now and then and here and there, all fly.

With a turn of the page, the tuck of a chin, a settling into the chair,

I am elsewhere for a while, I am breathing different air.

So should you see me gazing off and not quite where I appear,

I’ve gone inside this elsewhere place…I’ll be back in a bit, right here.

When you find me, wherever you find me, may it seem when you cast a look

that I am refreshed for the journey I’ve taken with the passport of a book.

Kimberly M. King, RSCJ

The Gardens

Halifax Public Gardens

It’s textures that captivate me, and colours.

And nature’s infinite compassion 

for me still having this idea

that not so secretly pleases my spirit: 

if I look long enough, could let go

just so, I’d be on the inside and know

the interiority of a stone, the expansiveness

of blue, and the shiny tingle of perfection

when light and shape and Beingness align.

People 

tend to mind if the eye dwells too long 

on a line or a curve,

on a sway or on a softness.

Other wild elements invite me to stillness,

to a looseness of mind and grandeur of heart

that sees the tracery holding panes of divinity 

in the molecules that call to me 

in the raw spectacle of a garden.

Beauty in the simplest; radiant complexity.

Harmonies to make me weep and contrasts

that leave me breathless and believing still

that being caught-up in wonder is 

an ache of the senses and accessible glory.

It is good for the soul

to have a place to wander free,

to behold and be permitted

the revelation of awe.

Kimberly M. King, RSCJ

Buechner and the Beach

Over the years, I keep returning to two quotations... One by Walt Whitman--Do I contradict myself?  Very well then, I contradict myself.  I am large and I contain multitudes.  And this one by Frederick Buechner.  Both speak of letting fullness dwell within; of letting what is most real dwell within.  And that living with fullness, living with the inner multitudes--our own and those of others, is living a life that knows something of the depth, the honor, the difficulty, of what it is to love.

A visit to Lawrencetown Beach

Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. 

—Frederick Buechner

The news and a walk afford

half-assurance of this truth:

Bombs, borders, detentions,

inhumanity, insufficiency, 

desperation, aching humanity.

The other portion,

that is our work of discovery.

To believe a shell can hold the sea if I hold her to my ear;

that time has birthed geodes and fossils and you and me;

that simple is both elegant and enough.

And don’t be afraid.

Of either. Beautiful or terrible.

And how could I,

here with you, not alone.

With the sky and the tides and open horizon.

With apples and strawberries

and clean cold water for lunch;

with laughter and music and a road with a view;

with the lived truth that weighs in pockets: Beautiful and Terrible; 

and with unafraid hearts that have heard the ocean tumble across the stones.

Have heard her tumble and found her sublime.

Have felt the grit and the smooth she leaves

and tasted her on the wind.

Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible.

Courageously alive.

—Kimberly M. King, RSCJ