Category Archives: devotion

Family legacy

28 Thursday Jun 2018

Posted by in devotion, family, loving, poems, poetry, release, Sight, story, strength, work

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Undefined,

perpetually assumed,

the answer to the question

of family legacy.

Is it money?

Name?

Philanthropy?

Power? Fame? Title?

Accomplishment?

Keep digging. It resides

well beyond the surface of things.

Might it be anger, abuse,

enslavement, enslaving, addiction,

a thick poison, barely visible

and acutely sensed?

Might it be secrets held, shames and generations of fear?

Likely, aspects of these remain

and are being carried-

whether chosen or not.

The question then emerges from distant,

unvisited places, whispered

as warm mother to sleeping infant,

And what would it be for you

to transform

such a legacy, slowly, steadily,

with loving devotion

so as to soften- just a little-

the burden of a misunderstood life

with a dash more kindness, and fist full

of intent.

Far from easy, and miles east of glamorous,

that work may be your simple, impossible,

and singular gift

with the breath you borrow

here,

one day at a time.

The clay we’re given

15 Friday Jun 2018

Posted by in abundance, beauty, becoming, courage, Creating, devotion, Infinite, Love, poems, poetry, wonder, work

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Someone told me today,

“You have great energy.”

Someone else

turned out to be my middle school literature teacher.

Another day, perhaps, I’m terrible,

and a familiar stranger might not be

who I think at all.

Ground is uneven.

Earthquakes come, volcanoes blow.

A life is a creative act,

parceled out in retrospect,

birthed forward through chaos.

Unformed to the end

each of us shapes the clay we’re given.

The world will think

whatever it thinks,

what matters is speaking God straight back

into God’s own ear.

Twenty-five years on

19 Saturday May 2018

Posted by in adventure, becoming, break out, dark, devotion, freedom, friends, gratitude, honoring, Infinite, learning, mystery, nature, night, poems, poetry, receiving, release, the road, welcoming, wonder

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Not until the attentive itch

do they exchange glances to mean

It’s Time.

And off we pile into the car, heading deep

into night and whatever flight waiting

with breath, rolling, in the wings.

Winding round and up and up and round

through dark and sensation

into rolled down window sweetness of valley grass and oak,

Stumbling, graceful, grit of dirt road scuffing,

spinning under 2 a.m. sky and flopping across hillsides,

the stars, sharp and grabbable,

become a spiral

spiral

spiral

as alive to be tucked in a pocket,

as hover, massive and in reach, directly overhead,

as rest in mind twenty-five years on.

The rest

06 Sunday May 2018

Posted by in abundance, becoming, devotion, family, honoring, movement, mystery, night, poems, poetry, prayer, presence, receiving, release, welcoming, wonder, work

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An initiation ritual,

in the dusk-scape of dream,

of shared finery, costume, camaraderie,

and non-blood family

emerging from here, over there,

here, here, there

unexpectedly,

for the me before me,

with a gathering of eager others,

to mark time with life.

Saying no, no but I am not she

not anymore

no–

But as beads pass over head, and colors add up,

layers of feather, bone, cloth

none mine

each display on this body

currently

a light in mind shifts-

not for me

but she

who may pass through, closing

beginning years, finally,

in step with those knowing when it is meant to happen.

Dressed, prepared, without doubts,

I walk the procession.

To celebrate.

To say goodbye.

To welcome all the rest.

Halfway through

10 Sunday Dec 2017

Posted by in aging, becoming, change, devotion, Expanse, poems, poetry, story, the road, wonder

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And what if it turns out,

or turns in or turns about,

that you find yourself starting over

-o-v-e-r-

at roughly (obscurely) halfway through

-as best you can tell-

the life you’ve been given?

Did you miss something along the way?

A flowering path, a waterfall dive, a hollow

to watch stars fall?

A tricky switchback, a higher climb, a conversation

with a person you ignored

(or whose shoes you noticed but whose words you never met)?

The questions fill every available basket.

Meanwhile.

An unobscured landscape has poured itself out

before you.

Maybe there,

there is the place to begin.

Ghosts

26 Sunday Nov 2017

Posted by in devotion, learning, light, poems, poetry, vision, work

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If the light in you diminishes, wanes,

withers,

and you become a shrunken version of yourself,

be sure of this-

Ghosts are feeding.

If confidence gets tugged into the nearest pit,

and mockery replaces spark-

cynicism having leaked its silent poison into your veins-

ask not what is wrong with you

(a honed Ghost hunting tactic)

but sharpen those warrior skills to track,

sight,

and disarm the immaterial and deadly specters.

You can start by slapping a sign

on the inside of the front door saying,

Ghosts, piss off!,

while laughing at their familiar, but fruitless, methods.

Hunger

20 Monday Nov 2017

Posted by in becoming, devotion, learning, mystery, poems, poetry, presence, vision, welcoming, wonder, work

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Wanting to know what satisfies

an ancient hunger you’re not even certain is yours,

countless streets, endless questions,

bottomless pans, and tears of frustration

over a lifetime

have added up to a hillock of humus,

dark, fertile, and remembered.

The sought after whatsit, the toil of time and love,

may or may not ever amble up to you,

paws dirty with devotion.

The wanting filling your carved out places,

a blue, swirling smoke scented from the beyond,

is itself required elixir

drawing you deeper into life.

Cursing that desire away, and aimlessly trying to fulfill it

means trading your own gold for dull, already forgotten tin.

Feather etchings

17 Friday Nov 2017

Posted by in aging, beauty, becoming, change, death, devotion, freedom, honoring, mystery, nature, poems, poetry, the road

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Feather etchings of wrinkles,

our tributaries of experience, deepen

towards more

not less.

Must we forget what the soul always knows,

that appearance is not worth

and youth is not to be strived for

but grown beyond?

Instead of living seventy years

as wobbly egos forever hungry and

needing to be bolstered,

we can throw our arms, like thick-barked tree limbs,

around death,

our constant friend teaching us

the riches of storied contours and

what it is to truly live.

Re-weave

16 Thursday Nov 2017

Posted by in abundance, adventure, beauty, becoming, devotion, honoring, listen, Love, loving, movement, night, poems, poetry, receiving, release, weaving

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Maybe it feels like standing forever in a head-high river current,

yearning.

Yet, igniting moments drop the belly

and lurch steps-

songs jump into hiccups, the nights being

so long.

And the syrup drip into sinews brought about by

–fill in the blank here–

well, if that thing, that other

is not what it’s really about,

what more enticing invitation could possibly surface

asking you

to re-weave yourself

into God?