Category Archives: devotion

Devotedly

12 Monday Jul 2021

Posted by in devotion, friends, grief, Loss, poems, poetry, wonder

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At 8 I lost my best friend,

with the end of the school year she skipped right up two grades,

and there without I continued on,

no one near.

At 11, overnight, my best friend decided she hated me

and the girl to whom I’d tied my heart,

living right up the sidewalk at the top of the hill,

was gone.

At 15, my best friend, girl who searched with me dark star-filled skies

and distant philosophies, disappeared

right in front of me. On a path

between two pines, she separated,

saying it was over. No reason given. And walked away.

Years passed. Each returned

for a moment.

The first in a market near a pile of avocados,

wandering through with friends on a visit home from college.

Word reached me later

she died of cancer far too soon after.

The next circled back simply to say

she’d left me because everyone in her life had left her first

and she was keeping that from happening again.

The last found me by phone, states away,

wanting to say she’d ended our friendship

because I asked too many questions

and she, being confused enough on her own,

couldn’t take it.

More recent losses diminish even those crushing endings,

hitting harder still than death–

that visitor being inevitable, embraceable and understood.

How loss does shape us,

at times the shape taking decades to decipher.

Wonder steps in,

the companion who never rejects or abandons.

Wonder walks alongside, reverently,

devotedly.

A reminder comes in the morning song of hummingbird…

turn towards wonder, always

she sings,

towards wonder.

When you think you are failed

11 Sunday Jul 2021

Posted by in adventure, becoming, companion, devotion, fear, nature, poems, poetry, water, words

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When you think you are failed,

a shameful gash of a human,

misdirected, twenty years off course

and without a single storyline resembling your own

to take to your dreams, to warm a milk of recognition,

read a poem aloud to the trees.

They lean in, I swear it.

And when waters rise to your eyes

maybe your throat catches on memory

and disorientation fogs your vision,

pick up a stone, full with its permission,

and ask if it would like you to feed it the tears.

Springs of salty waters rainbowed with cares

are precious,

not to be wasted on regret.

There’s a much bigger world beyond the fears

binding you to confusion.

Cry a while with sweet words forming upon moving lips.

Walking a path others have not will wipe you out,

no need for surprise there.

It will also leave you, eventually,

soulfully

in the welcoming arms of Spirit.

And isn’t that always where you’ve wanted to be?

The River

25 Friday Jun 2021

Posted by in devotion, poems, poetry, welcoming, wonder

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And if the River guiding you IS the ache

bruising your deep, seeming no end,

where might She be bringing you?

Taking you, I mean?

It feels to be a taking, I know,

but come a day,

come a day,

there will be a giving to this blind journey

and it will show

the Becoming of who you truly are.

Let be with the River,

She is holding you…

Allow her to move

24 Tuesday Nov 2020

Posted by in abundance, devotion, grief, movement, poems, poetry, rage, welcoming, work

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Grief stagnates

into rage.

Allow her to move;

Plant a stone,

Bury a broken song,

Sing another to a place on this earth dry

with sorrow.

Open to the endings,

without them nothing begins.

Unimaginable are the possibilities

for they

have yet to meet their own conception.

Offer the moistening river

your enormous grief.

Follow its movements,

dances are born in the currents.

Much has been taken,

now much can be given back;

Return grief to the Beauty–

tender Life may run again toward you.

Allow her to move.

Life is saying,

she needs her juice back

through the body of you.

This is not

09 Monday Nov 2020

Posted by in death, devotion, honoring, Loss, nature, offering, pain, poems, poetry, prayer, presence, undone, work

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This is not stick feathers in your hair and prance round

the earth as if you are one. You

couldn’t not be if you tried. You

can, however, think it, feel it, behave it as if

it were so. You aren’t here

to earn it. To remember it, Yes,

and to work it through.

Mass microbes work upon you–feathers

are the cartoon version (blessed though they be).

If no brook bubbles beside you, neighbors’

televisions blare craftless tales, and your mother

is dead, Remembrance,

work though it must and will take,

is what these days reaching toward your own death

are for..

Slow into morrow, into marrow..

not only could you lose everything–

you will.

With that might your cellular awakening bring glimpse

before the end

Gold of what you are made.

Golden key

04 Thursday Jun 2020

Posted by in beauty, break out, dark, devotion, global, listen, movement, offering, pain, poems, poetry, prayer, presence, the road, transition, work

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A big moment arrives,

likely without your (intentional) bidding,

when no Golden Key arrives.

You swear you aren’t looking for one,

assure others you know there isn’t one,

and yet?

Yet, when you open that door

none appears.

And everything comes up short.

Where is your way through?

Surely, following such pain and strife,

with the endless effort and hope,

some

Thing

will

raise its head and wag a greeting

of arrival.

Because your faith needs food.

Instead, you are told

humanity is a shithole

with moments of beauty between.

And how that isn’t trauma added

to the heartbreak is beyond you.

Because Faith needs not only Beauty

but connection.

Not unending loss

and rage,

but nutrients for the lost souls and

the begging souls who try,

try,

try

for a beautiful life founded on self-respect

and a worth unquestionable,

unquestionable by color, origin, belief,

or day alive navigating a difficult and messy

and Beautiful world.

Finding the faith within to keep on

may be the magic

all of us seek.

Bloom

09 Thursday May 2019

Posted by in abundance, becoming, change, Creating, devotion, discomfort, movement, nature, poems, poetry

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Wild rose

has begun her bloom once again

held safely within bower of thorn and halo

of virile and lustrous poison oak.

She reaches toward fullness,

touched by bee and blue,

balanced in sun and flickering shadow.

We, too, grow into bloom,

toward heaviness of fruit

and bounty of seed for generations to come.

All in time,

all in good time.

Sing to the waters

06 Thursday Sep 2018

Posted by in abundance, becoming, community, devotion, honoring, Infinite, learning, listen, loving, mystery, nature, poems, poetry, song, stillness, welcoming

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Where salt meets sweet,

I sing to the waters.

Where sand holds wave, pelicans slap

great wings,

and solitary duck pops up from below

in a stilled bowl

waiting for winter,

I sing

and Wind joins in,

riffling the surface, ripples reaching

in patterns hypnotic and old.

Sing to the waters,

their reply waits for your greeting among reeds,

rushes, fishes and stone.

Where lies

26 Sunday Aug 2018

Posted by in abundance, beauty, becoming, break out, change, community, courage, crafting, Creating, devotion, dreams, freedom, honoring, listen, movement, nature, poems, poetry, prayer, release, song, stillness, welcoming, wonder, work

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If a push,

somewhere a pull.

Where taken,

pray it has been given.

The Western sense of community..

in itself a paradox?

We’re part–everyone–of centuries of history

cycling, tumbling, molasses-thick onward

with nanosecond “advances.”

No mystery that you, and you, and I

can not seem to catch our breath.

Faster is not forward,

as bigger not better, nor more money success.

Where lies the soul stuff making life

Life?

Now

01 Wednesday Aug 2018

Posted by in abundance, adventure, becoming, courage, devotion, discomfort, dread, fearlessness, freedom, honoring, learning, movement, mystery, nature, pain, poems, poetry, release, stillness, strength, transition, welcoming, work

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He slams the door behind him.

You think, Good riddance!

When next your heart stops and breath catches,

out comes a gasp, What have I done?

Melting down, falling to bits, the world goes

from complete sense to non-sense,

and it is on that iceberg of moment

(and each drifting ice island following)

when wondering, Is this true?

might most gather you back together in a form

strong enough,

wise enough

to hold all the sensations and feelings

threatening to tear you to pieces

to be with Now,

an actual fullness of Life

for which you have the grandest capacity.