Quiet Mystery

Words From Within the Whirlwind of Near-Tragedy

image by Giorgio Trovato

for my mother; with gratitude to John Lisko, MD

—

Over the course of the past few days, I have had every possible emotion to rumble through me. 

Rage: a sudden sword-drawn thunder. 
Grief: a slow, dark river. 
Levity: Like the warm glow of an autumn fire under a cool night of peaceful stars. 

These are poetic descriptions, but I don't actually relate to primal emotion from the standpoint of words. Odd, I suppose, for a hermit-leaning poet / a poetry-leaning hermit. But, I'm hard pressed to find words for recent experiences.

Emotions can sometimes be "realms of passage" where the only language is silence. It is precisely because I know words can't begin to describe the fullness of certain experiences, that trying to find words feels like a futile exercise. And yet, as the late Zen master Dainin Katagiri said, "You have to say something."

We nearly lost my mother this week. 

A survivor of cancer over a decade ago, she had a stroke last year.
Last week she had a heart attack. 
This week she had a risky surgery for a near-80-year old: placing a 12mm stent into her nearly completely blocked off coronary artery (one of two procedures that will have to occur). 

Once back in her hospital room, post-surgery, her blood pressure suddenly dropped and it was discovered that she was hemorrhaging from the entry site where the sheath, guide wire, and catheter enters the body and runs through the artery up to the heart. She had been bleeding for a while. 

After several minutes, the on-floor medical staff realized they couldn't stop the bleeding. A rapid response team was activated. With one person trying to apply pressure to the bleed, they rolled her bed, NASCAR-style, down the halls of the hospital to the cardiac cath lab. 

This was not the soft, attentive care she had been receiving in her room, complete with chatty nurses, warm blankets, and a meal. This was a Defcon 2 moment, one that ripped her from any semblance of comfort and thrust her into a very harsh circumstance: an ice cold room, skimpy hospital robe ripped off, and—without any anesthesia or pain killer—having to lay still on a cold metal slab while the doctor tried to save her life.

To give you a sense of my mother's spirit, which is characterized by tenacity, bravery, and humor, I will share one anecdote from the day.

The doctor who did the stent surgery for my mother is named John Lisko, MD. He is an interventional cardiologist at Emory, a professor on the faculty, and an author/co-author of 70+ articles and studies in medical journals. Translation: He is very good. When he broke the news that my mother had two major blockages in the arteries of her heart, it was undoubtedly a shock. At the same time, I immediately liked the doctor. No bullshit. Shoot straight. Tell-it-like-it-is.  

I'm told that while my mother was sprawled on the cold metal table, being sutured up without lidocaine as if in a combat situation, Doc Lisko said something to the effect of, "Miss Owen, I'm very sorry for the lack of privacy," referring to her being completely unclothed in a room full of strangers, albeit medical professionals.

My mother, who worked in hospitals for forty years, replied, "Well, if you see something you've never seen before, throw a brick at it!" 

                                                  room filled with laughter
                                           woman near death cracking jokes —
                                                       that is my mother

Today she is stable, recovering, and ready to get home after a ten-day stay at Emory/St. Joseph's Hospital of Atlanta. Her Maremma/Great Pyrenees, "Stella," her birds, her herbs, her humble landscape garden, and her familia await. 

Kampai moai!


>|<

"Quiet Mystery"   

Mysterious.
Spiral.
Time.

Mysterious.
Shock.

Collapsing walls.
Mysterious.

Shock.
Mysterious.

Weight bringing clarity.
Clarity bringing weight.
Mysterious.

Moments of departure.
Departure behind curtains.
Departure behind doors.
Departure behind closed eyes.

I think to myself: "This life has been nothing but departures."

Then, an arrival arrives. 
Arrival back into the Present Moment.
The precious Present Moment.
No past. No future. 
Only Present Moment. 

My saw-blistered hand
holding a cold hand of tender bones.

Hands cold.
Smiling eyes glowing warm mountain radiance. 

Smiling eyes.
Star Eyes.

A flashback to a sweat lodge.
Grandpa Black Elk pouring water.

A flashback to twelve: 
my mother teaching me 
about the I Ching 
at my grandmother's Winter table.

A flashback to a Blue Water Night at sunset:
sipping wine, 
gazing at the horizon line, 
watching an otter swim by.

Then, another arrival arrives. 
Arrival back into the Present Moment.
The precious Present Moment.
No past. No future. 
Only Present Moment. 

Her cold hand squeezes mine.
My traveling heart-mind returns to the room again.
Present Moment.
Only Present Moment.

We talk about coffee.
Healthy diets.
Art-As-Path.
The downed black cherry tree branches 
I had to cut from the storm.

We embrace.
I pull her socks up.
I tuck her in.
I leave her to sleep and dream.

I mumble to myself
as I leave the hospital:
May this not be the departure.

Hours later —
hours of Quiet-Sitting.
Plowing the depths.
Bright-insight, dark-ink.
Trying to be a lantern
to my own darkness.

The waves start.
Felt first as a breeze.
Then heard as a hiss.
Then arriving like a salt-wind whip.
Billowing winds of change. 
The sting of being-in-Being.

I feel the floor of the universe
fall out from beneath me.

Falling. 
Falling.
An endless river of memory
crashing in as waves.

I try to find a hand hold.
I end up grasping 
at the wily ol' Tibetan's words*
and turn them into a night-mantra: 

Falling. 
Falling. 
No parachute. 
No ground.

Falling. 
Falling. 
No parachute. 
No ground.
_______________________________
*The bad news is you're falling through the air, nothing to hang on to, no parachute. The good news is there's no ground. -- Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche (1939-1987)

© 2026 / Frank Inzan Owen / The Luminous Procession: Poems From Within and Beyond the World of Red Dust

soundworld: “The Beauty of It All” / Entering Elysium / Steve Roach + Serena Gabriel