Albert Huffstickler: "The Cure"

                   We think we get over things.
                   We don’t get over things.
                   Or say, we get over the measles
but not a broken heart.
We need to make that distinction.
The things that become part of our experience
never become less a part of our experience.
How can I say it?
The way to “get over” a life is to die.
Short of that, you move with it,
let the pain be pain,
not in the hope that it will vanish
but in the faith that it will fit in,
find its place in the shape of things
and be then not any less pain but true to form.
Because anything natural has an inherent shape
and will flow towards it.
And a life is as natural as a leaf.
That’s what we’re looking for:
not the end of a thing but the shape of it.
Wisdom is seeing the shape of your life
without obliterating (getting over) a single
                                                                  instant of it.

"The Cure" by Albert Huffstickler. Text as published in Walking Wounded (Backyard Press, 1989).

Art credit: Untitled image by unknown artist.

Gentle reminder: After a wonderful three-year run, this project will close on January 1. This website and associated social media will remain online as resources.

Albert Huffstickler: "The Edge of Doubt"

There is always
that edge of doubt.
Trust it.
That's where
the new things come from. If
you can't live with it,
get out because,
when it's gone
you're on automatic,
repeating something
you've learned.
Let your prayer be:
save me from that tempting
certainty that
leads me back
from the edge,
that dark edge where
the first light breaks.




"The Edge of Doubt" by Albert Huffstickler. Text as published in Journal for Anthroposophy (Fall, 1994).

Curator's note: This is an update to today's post, which presented the poem with very different line breaks and capitalization. I had been unable to locate a source for that earlier version. My thanks to subscriber Julie Roehm for providing a source citation so I could track down this text.

Art credit: Untitled image by unknown photographer.

Albert Huffstickler: "Don't Ask the Angels How They Fly"

Knowing there's only so much time,

I don't rejoice less but more.

Knowing how many things will now

not happen, I wish them Godspeed

and pass them on to someone

down the line. I honor my

regrets, the part of me that

never happened or happened wrong

and proceed on course though

the course is not known. Only

the end is known and some days

it's a comfort. We live on

love, whether it's there or

not and rejoice in it even in

its absence. If I had known,

I'd have come here better equipped—

but that's another one of those

things you can't change—as we

can't alter that part of us

that lives on memory, knowing

all the while that time is not

real and that what we are we

never were in the light of that

timeless place where we really

belong, have belonged always.

And what's left then is only

to bless it all in the light of

what we don't and will never

know or at least not here where

the light is only a shadow of

that light we almost see sometimes—

that light that's really home.

                 On my 69th birthday—Dec. 17, 1996

"Don't Ask the Angels How They Fly" by Albert Huffstickler. Text as published in di.verse.ity: an austin international poetry festival anthology, edited by Scott Wiggerman and Margaret Ward-Barrett (Austin Poets International, Inc., 1997). This anthology is downloadable.

Many thanks to subscriber Jazz Jaeschke for locating the source of this poem.

Art credit: Untitled image from a beautiful set of black and white photographs by Hengki Lee. See the entire gallery at this link.

Albert Huffstickler: "The Way of Art"

It seems to me that
paralleling the paths of action, devotion, etc.,
       there is a path called art
       and that the sages of the East would recognize
       Faulkner, Edward Hopper, Beethoven, William Carlos Williams
       and address them as equals.
       It's a matter of attention and discipline, isn't it?—
combined with a certain God-given ability.
       It's what you're willing to go through, willing to give, isn't it?
       It's the willingness to be a window
       through which others can see
       all the way out to infinity
       and all the way back to themselves.




"The Way of Art" by Albert Huffstickler. Text as published in Why I Write in Coffee Houses and Diners: Selected Poems (Authors Choice Press, 2000).

Art credit: "Delicate Arch, Arches National Park [Utah]," photograph by Thomas Piekunka.