Category Archives: community

From sleep into waking

29 Friday Oct 2021

Posted by in aging, approaching, community, devotion, digging, dreams, friends, Healing, honoring, poems, poetry, prayer, presence, weaving, welcoming, work

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A day arrives

during night dreaming

when you come to retrieve a child, an infant

in button-up full-blue onesie,

from a house expecting you

and, upon entry, you recognize the woman

whose house it is. She rises from a room sized table,

oblong, solid, warm and wooden. An enormous shined egg.

Around its edges sit monks, scholars, drummers–

elders all. It feels better than anything you’ve felt

in ages.

She not only welcomes you, while rising,

but asks you to stay.

Come join us.

She says that. . Come. Join us.

Somewhere, slung between infancy and elderhood, you stand,

at times barely, and then holy invitation is spoken,

warmly.

Keep hollowing out the space,

hallowing the place,

where the invitation can finally cross from sleep

into waking.

Autumn

19 Sunday Sep 2021

Posted by in change, community, poems, poetry, water

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Today thanks also falls to the light;

Autumn light may be my favorite food.

Rain keeps trying to come. We’ve been without

the rains for far too long.

I can feel rain in the clouds, smell it,

though a little sideways.

The trees’ roots are hungry for it to fall.

They are far from alone.

The equinox approaches but, here,

Autumn stretches her paws in August. My heart feels

more full then, my bones begin to rest.

Maybe the big rabbit with wild eyes will come through

the fence again soon.

My bet is a different visitor will usher in

the first official days of the season.

Day enters

11 Wednesday Aug 2021

Posted by in community, dark, light, poems, poetry, prayer

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Day enters, the birds have yet to wake.

Outside, settling in beside stone and succulent,

greetings begin.

First, to the distant trees.

My, they have much to say

and they know what it is to hold it

in silence.

To the white faces of flowers, turned up

towards a sky leaning in,

I whisper hello.

Hummingbird swoops through the half-dark.

Surprising to see her beside me on a branch

this early.

Are you here for poetry?

It seems to be so.

Owl hasn’t stepped into dreaming,

and he calls, and calls, and calls…

Out there

06 Sunday Jun 2021

Posted by in becoming, change, community, land, nature, night, poems, poetry, unlearning

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Seems I’m becoming the neighborhood wild one,

unkempt, bedraggled, living out of pile and box,

a two-legged more attuned with the four and winged,

becoming something I can’t yet recognize,

likely to speak a language closer to the birds and loping raccoons

than the stuff that’s tangled my brain until now.

Night walks are introducing those I live with,

swooping bats among them.

There’s lots of soft chatter out there…

Next door

18 Saturday Apr 2020

Posted by in change, community, nature, poems, poetry

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A cat has moved in next door.

Tuxedo.

White whiskers and a spot at the window.

Lace curtains always closed now stay pinned aside,

for his sleeping and watching perch depends

upon the ever-changing sight of visiting creatures

for peanuts.

To the railings and porch boards come jay and squirrel

and crow, large as the cat zeroed in

with green eyes shining in face of black fur.

And lucky for me, this virus-induced foster

and I visit with eyes watching

through two panes of glass.

Provided, of course, no wildlife prevails.

In the new quiet of town,

sound of the bells reaches the house every quarter hour.

The big trees, strange as it seems, have yet to leaf out

like a reminder of the sickness slowing life down

even though spring

is in full swing.

Emptied streets

04 Saturday Apr 2020

Posted by in adventure, community, courage, dark, global, light, offering, pain, poems, poetry, song

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A man walks beneath black umbrella,

Calla lilies bloom in the rain;

A woman stands at the kitchen window

staring out with soapy hands and sponge,

singing,

“And you look at yourself,

pacing the cage…”

The playground is taped off in yellow tape,

A child speeds home on scooter with no cars in sight,

“All the spells I could sing, it’s as if the thing is written

in the constitution of the age…”

Grass is greening, lungs ache,

and hearts are breaking,

“Sometimes the best map will not guide you…”

Stay strong and bend, be well

We are in this together together together

We are all pacing the cage–

Not alone not alone

As we walk thin line between birth and death

Now and here

Now and here

Together

Not alone

Hold that thin line dear,

Dear,

Hold it dear.

What has sounded

08 Friday Nov 2019

Posted by in community, home, honoring, learning, Loss, Love, nature, poems, poetry, the road, work

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What has sounded

to others

like endless gripe and grating unfinished complaint,

a chosen rageful fixation,

certain Pathology…

has been body and mind finding its way

through toxic darkness.

Nature being destroyed by humans

in blind arrogance and greed,

consumption wired into how many “likes” and “followers”–

those empty signs of worth and feedings of narcissism–

in ever-widening circles,

in rapid speed, increasing.

How.

How does a body and mind adjust to such devastation?

To home being pillaged and raped?

To the Temple filling with piles of trash,

masses of people,

noise and excrement along every path?

There is no adaptation to that.

There is constant heartache

and anger.

With home now being just another thing for sale

and silence and solitude disappeared,

what illness have we invited through our collective front door

in exchange for one more meaningless photo

gone viral?

It’s time we spend time on the virus

we have ignored

for entertainment.

Along the long road

16 Wednesday Oct 2019

Posted by in aging, becoming, change, community, death, home, learning, Loss, poems, poetry, release, the road, work

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Without a story to tell

who are we but people who have not lived.

Watching children play,

approaching hand in parent’s hand

to a park that is my front yard,

Spirit

is restored.

Sliver by sliver

and dose by dose.

While now there are trees that whisper and swish

in every kind of wind

instead of uninterrupted concrete and destructive voices,

I have the long view

knowing what it is to live between rage and despair.

And I don’t like who it made me.

Sometimes I realize,

when before I could not,

we may become who we do not want to be

simply to return, along the long road,

to who we are.

Much more

03 Wednesday Apr 2019

Posted by in abundance, community, craving, discomfort, Expanse, mystery, poems, poetry, wonder

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Women, warm, round and expecting,

wandered my dream, greeting me,

and I wondered how

how;

Three before me, at three drugstore registers,

buying sodas, and sodas and alcohol,

at 8 a.m.

and I wondered how

how;

Baristas, happy, welcoming, enjoying

each other, customers, both and

still… how

how.

Knowing fullness, itch for escape, joy,

and my own irritation with life that,

conveniently, hasn’t been included in the list,

leaves confusion with a half-smile at how

all this exists now

along with much, much…

much more.