Flow
for Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
On learning of your passing
I’m shot back in time
to the discovery of your books
and concepts, to teaching
myself how to enter that altered
state of concentration
where creativity
spills into spontaneity
and overflows,
and the challenge before me
clicks like a lock
with my skills
to hold me engrossed,
no sense of time passed,
no worry about the future,
words pouring from my fingers,
fully in the now,
immersed in an unfolding,
delight without striving,
without struggle,
not conscious of myself
or demanding an outcome,
swimming toward something
like joy or happiness,
bathed in warm satisfaction,
I’m the river flowing,
time flown,
in the zone,
unfolding a hidden part
of myself
like a pink lotus
blooming
on black water.
Twin Oaks Knows How
to throw a party
or a funeral
to gather members
former members
and friends like me
into its arms
under the limbs
of old oaks
at the High South
among the gravestones
where the founders
and those who left
too soon
by choice
or accident
call us together
to sing and remember
laugh at quirks
and old grudges
are accepted
where anyone
can speak
and tell stories
of the dead
so that we might
live and party
a little longer
grateful
for the lives
we’ve made
not too close
but not alone
clustered
on red clay ground
our feelings rising
like quartz rocks
in the garden
after more than
fifty years.
Joan Mazza has worked as a medical microbiologist, psychotherapist, seminar leader, and is the author of six self-help psychology books, including Dreaming Your Real Self (Penguin/Putnam). Her work has appeared in Atlanta Review, Prairie Schooner, The MacGuffin, Poet Lore, Slant, and The Nation. She lives in rural central Virginia.