Category Archives: courage

Them

11 Monday Jan 2016

Posted by in becoming, courage, dark, devotion, fearlessness, freedom, gratitude, honoring, listen, movement, mystery, poems, poetry, the road, vision, wonder, work

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The sensitives,
the permeable, the dancers, the strong,
knowers of medicine,
open-eyed dreamers,
familiars of the taste of tears,
hearts wounded in ache of loss
buoyantly loving all the same..
whose laughter is song,
whose feet go bare,
who chew leaves and talk with hawks,
whose ocean tides move both blood and moon,
ones as fiery in temperament as in flame,
courtiers of the unknown,
inviters of ancestors,
those who were a problem, a scapegoat,
an assigned patient…
The sensuous.
Creators and celebrators of beauty.
The manifest.
You.
Come.
We will follow the dark of our bodies
along serpentine trails
into growing light.

 

 

*with special thank you to James Hillman.

Borderlands

04 Friday Dec 2015

Posted by in abundance, aging, becoming, change, courage, discomfort, Inspire, listen, lost, poems, poetry, receiving, release, the road, transition, work

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Along the borderline,
territory between nowhere and here,
a no-woman’s land.
As the barbed fence you’ve been following
runs out,
wire hanging,
wind and boot crush
contain the remains.
Stop walking.
Look far, gently,
in each sparse direction,
above and below.
A kiss will press your cheek,
hair will lift out of your face.
Even desolation carries Spirit.
Perhaps, especially.
Where the winds blow uninterrupted,
dry sweat into salted white rings,
room for Her grows.
Beneath an open range sky she spreads wings,
hovers,
inspires your scent.
In the borderlands, a map is only hope-
drop it.
You are being breathed-
oh yes, bigger journeys beckon
and instructions no longer apply.

Each day

29 Sunday Nov 2015

Posted by in becoming, courage, devotion, family, honoring, listen, poems, poetry, Sight, strength, vision, work

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The rock,
the dense coldness you carry, can’t put down,
shift endlessly hoping
for a more comfortable position-
that stone you think is solely yours
as it mopes and drags and cautions and weighs and snivels,
all while closeting the real pain?
Think it belongs to you?
Turn your head,
look back down the line.
Greet your inheritance.
It is simply your time.
Now, begin the work-
call forth the generations of people
whose blood you share, and
who’ve given you each celestial day
to awaken again.

Ask them to tea

19 Thursday Nov 2015

Posted by in abundance, becoming, change, courage, dark, devotion, discomfort, dread, freedom, gratitude, honoring, learning, listen, movement, pain, poems, poetry, release, strength, wonder

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Shame is a dark and sticky thing.

A hole we never see.

A bottomless, unnameable void.

It snatches us in the unlit alleys of our minds.

Ghastly,

what it thinks it can make us do-

shrink ourselves to the smallest brittleness

of an undesirable,

worthless,

lifeless

outcast

who cannot get anything right.

Immense power we give to one with no hands,

no face,

not even a nose.

And, how lucky we are

to have the nerve

to turn and look,

to sniff,

to get to know

the lurking bogeymen, the paralyzing Medusas,

behind the fence

and around the bend.

Come, come-

Let us ask them to tea

to learn what it is

they really want.

Into the black pocket

16 Monday Nov 2015

Posted by in abundance, beauty, becoming, change, courage, devotion, discomfort, Inspire, learning, listen, peace, poems, poetry, receiving, release, vision

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I reach softly into the black pocket,
wrestle with butterflies-
these are prayers
and this is Mary Poppins’ bag.
What arises hasn’t feet
or end
or concrete idea to control comfort.
This is roll of tongue,
whisker of remembrance,
waft of cinnamon from grandma’s kitchen long ago.
Your divinities are found here,
as are everyone’s.
We enter alone,
exit the same,
but billions of hands reach
to hold us in between if
we choose
to let them.

Return

30 Wednesday Sep 2015

Posted by in abundance, becoming, courage, devotion, emotion, freedom, learning, poems, poetry, presence, release, the road, work

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For those running running,

forget holding onto your hat-

that which has you trying to flee,

with its tangles and barbs and gashes and claws,

can outrun you

and knows every shortcut

to come out ahead

again

and again and again..

Face what you plead with silently

to go away

Return return

Hold onto your heart instead.

That intricate webbing of blood coursing its way

through all of you,

into toes, and eyelids, and knees.

Your heart, you,

the one constant partner-

wrap tender fingers around the unwanted.

For those working through terror,

For those tending to their rage,

For those who turn, who return-

Your life is yours.