Category Archives: change

Flock

26 Thursday Jul 2018

Posted by in becoming, break out, change, community, courage, family, movement, poems, poetry, release, the road

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He

a sheep

like us all

walks, one day,

in a new direction.

Sheep don’t do that,

leave their flock.

In this he becomes a black sheep

turning away from name, money, easy street-

which isn’t so easy.

With him, now, he carries weight

of blame, criticism, and no one bothering to ask

why.

Years, many, pass.

His children grow, not knowing the stories he never told,

seeing him as just another sheep folded into the flock.

They wander for a path of their own.

One, separating from the rest, looks back

wondering

why he never asked why.

Through bright sky

06 Friday Jul 2018

Posted by in abundance, adventure, break out, change, Deliverance, discomfort, flight, home, learning, nature, poems, poetry, work

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The swallow dip of joy,

swift arc and cut through bright sky,

has been on lengthy migration

to lands unnamed.

Yet the time allotted here, however long,

confined in concrete, noise, requirement and excess

may finally break me of this place.

What follows out

of the daily abrasions of adjusting

while not giving everything and nothing away

may open space enough for that swallow

to return truly

home.

A slurry of nettles and skunk

26 Tuesday Jun 2018

Posted by in becoming, break out, change, Creating, discomfort, learning, nature, poems, poetry, release

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While sitting in a slurry of nettles and skunk,

a confused mess of fury and grief,

I had to remember,

remember those I know well who will do anything not

to change.

Clenching to what doesn’t grow,

but metastasizes, brings more comfort

than trying it all, somehow, differently.

Yet the questions have yet to be born in them,

and time, with practice, has taught them not to find any stirring

since the familiar is the balm that keeps the abyss

from glistening up and pulling them under and out,

as it is for me now from the slick, hard cornered rock

I seem desperate to hold.

Time and body say, release this faithless fight and self-loathing,

those committed shackles of the past,

and give in, set adrift and enter

what is unimaginably larger than the Seen.

Symptoms

13 Wednesday Jun 2018

Posted by in becoming, Body, change, Found, learning, listen, movement, poems, poetry, presence, receiving, release, welcoming, wonder, work

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Aching back, pounding head,

weakening eyes, softening memory,

anger, nightmare, spasm..

Symptoms.

What loves to be complained about

over tea, through the phone,

aloud aloud somebody hear this, oh please.

Imagine turning attention around,

bear chewing his tail-

Wake to me!

Symptom becomes lotus

opening

from murky waters into light.

Manifestation of inner

to outer,

an offering

a medicine

a gift.

Pain is not for pain’s own sake.

With suffering,

we alter to listen.

Awareness reaches up,

roots down,

grows.

Work of the chrysalis

27 Sunday May 2018

Posted by in beauty, becoming, change, discomfort, flight, movement, mystery, nature, poems, poetry, transition, work

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The transformed steals the love-light,

not for greed

but for our preference.

What’s left behind in grit and dust,

even discarded in rank alleyways,

is the work of the chrysalis.

The

cramped

confused

identity-erasing

dark

of wrestling for the next life form,

of flight,

of nectar,

of tumbling in gravity’s wave

among flowers, bees and blue.

Remember what beauty lies in ugliness

before walking away from the misunderstood.

A fire, a wave, a mountain

23 Wednesday May 2018

Posted by in becoming, break out, change, courage, discomfort, dread, fear, Fire, home, learning, movement, poems, poetry, work

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The basements, bathrooms, shrouded corners,

narrow, black to seem endless, alleys,

the Do-Not-Enters,

these are the intended places.

Go to them.

What courage lies docile and low

will rise up, a fire, a wave, a mountain

to have your back even as growing fear

dissolves

what you think holds you together.

Stumbling

10 Thursday May 2018

Posted by in change, listen, movement, Music, poems, poetry, receiving, release, the road, welcoming

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Stumbling,

having missed a pebble for the story in your head,

breaks the monotone

in favor of dripping notes tangled, soft,

attentive.

Dipping into that honey, the stream beneath the firehose flow,

entices a hidden music into the aching

and sharp places, wounded from too much narrow focus.

Broadening,

that song- touched by your welcome-

changes things.

That kind of alone

20 Friday Apr 2018

Posted by in change, family, movement, poems, poetry, work

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Nothing to hold onto,

the castle crumbling,

narrow a ledge, heavy the stone, cracking

walls and the mind hunts

for where to land

and it leaps to worry, no,

Fear projected onward, forever, helplessly.

Alone, like this, a sore eating away flesh-

and not real.

Grasping does haunt,

bite in and seep out, a rising fever.

But

it is a snarling shadow dog.

Sit,

solid, alive, and watch the demolition-

you’ve brought about the Fall,

soak up its awesome, fleeting

magnificence.

Clearing the pasture

17 Tuesday Apr 2018

Posted by in aging, change, community, home, movement, poems, poetry, the road

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I’m surrounded by endings here.

And I came back,

came back

to where what can grow

I don’t know.

The ties, bindings, wrappings and scenarios

they’re old,

done, hardened and strange.

Perhaps the ghosts need herding,

finally clearing the pasture for

what belongs beneath this patch of sky

of salt, and pine, cypress and stone.

Too much concrete dulls the senses-

Sun aches to touch earth,

it may be my time to help her do so.