Category Archives: gratitude

Egg rolls and IPA

28 Wednesday Aug 2024

Posted by in Earth, gratitude, grief, laughter, poems, poetry

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Egg rolls and IPA,

Agatha Christie, pop R&B and kids parading

in and out.

A strange and satisfying blend.

From a walk to the library to pick up,

among other things,

a copy of Winnie-the-Pooh

(multiple readings required) after news harsh enough

to melt one’s ears or harden one’s heart,

and stress enough to keep a person in bed,

I tip back my head to breathe in towering trees

and warm evening light.

It’s a funny world,

a funny, funny world we all share.

Awkwardly, magically,

and with plenty of bedevilment.

Keep laughter ever ready

in your blessed little back pocket.

It’ll never short-change you.

Failing

11 Wednesday Nov 2020

Posted by in becoming, discomfort, Expanse, gratitude, pain, poems, poetry, rage, undone, unlearning, welcoming, wonder, work

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What if you woke up each day pissed off.

Pissed off that you’re still here, that things are the way they are,

feeling impotent to change any of it,

that, somehow, crucial basic needs have not been accounted for

in the constellation of whoever is responsible.

What an enduring and repetitive hell.

And instead of beating yourself for–yet another–failing

you settle in

to an endless buzz of unspoken confusion

to wonder,

where could such constant pain come from?

And what, truly, is the soil to tree relationship

between rage and gratitude?

Don’t kid yourself,

those roots do tangle together

and grow in ways

so large and unarticulated you haven’t yet

begun

to trust the imagination entrusted to you

to welcome the discomfort of the discovery

Life is asking.

In the cross-hatch seat

28 Tuesday Aug 2018

Posted by in abundance, becoming, community, gratitude, honoring, joy, light, loving, nature, poems, poetry, prayer, weaving

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In the cross-hatch seat of the chair

wooden, dusted in time and use,

a cat

curled

and sleeping.

Looking over at her, floor boards below and sun

reaching through a far window,

doubt can not waver the sweetness

of a morning with feline, coffee, a book

and silence rising from the woods outside.

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.

Onward

14 Tuesday Nov 2017

Posted by in abundance, beauty, Body, devotion, gratitude, honoring, Love, loving, movement, mystery, poems, poetry, receiving, release, strength, transition, wonder

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Being caught by gratitude

between yes and no, by was and is,

between having and not,

brings the dance.

Heart suddenly solid, present and strong

like stone, not ice, with loving-

goodbye floods body with needed nectar

for not an awayness or an isolation, 

neither a grip nor a grab, 

not a mine or a missing or a fright, 

but a moving of grace 

onward.

Facing sunrise

18 Monday Sep 2017

Posted by in abundance, adventure, aging, beauty, becoming, break out, change, Creating, gratitude, honoring, learning, light, movement, poems, poetry, release, the road

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Memories are being given away,

space no longer for rent to the unwelcome.

A wooden chair with woven seat sits now

facing sunrise.

Closets have been emptied, drawers cleared out

and sold.

Neither vacancy nor void, but place has opened,

safe, dynamic, light and warm.

Not exactly

17 Saturday Dec 2016

Posted by in abundance, adventure, aging, beauty, becoming, change, Deliverance, discomfort, freedom, gratitude, honoring, joy, learning, listen, Loss, mystery, pain, poems, poetry, receiving, release, wonder, work

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It wasn’t through torn paper

blackened shoelace

or scuffed wall 

that I found You.

It wasn’t the constant push

circulating fear

or I-must-do-betters..

not even the inch between 

the sidewalk and me

plus a bruised knee.

Not exactly.

Add the non-starts,

regimented dreams,

what’s-wrong-with-me’s,

attempts to fit when fitting fed starvation,

and the broken heart- birthday after birthday-

with one shattering

nearly beyond recovery

that, finally,

I found You.

The joke being

that I’ve carried You in me

since before the first sunrise.

Except now,

when I say hello

I can hear You answer.

Fill our days

30 Sunday Oct 2016

Posted by in abundance, becoming, break out, change, courage, Creating, devotion, freedom, gratitude, honoring, Immortal, joy, listen, mundane, nature, poems, poetry, presence, Sight, vision

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What if we were as fierce
about seeing
finding
knowing beauty
as ugliness, fear, and lack?
Would we not become greater protectors
of the overlooked and precious?
Would our focus not
change
from what we want to avoid
to that asking
for further creation?
From being barefoot on rain-soaked earth
while sun breaks clouds overhead,
to cinnamon in coffee,
the perfect heat of a shower,
sustained note of a well-played cello,
to strangers reaching for each other’s hands,
and friends who have plenty to eat,
a car that starts,
the woodpecker we’d like to curse
for waking us out of sleep-only-
its tapping brought us a view of the sunrise,
and places in existence where peoples
are honored and heard.
Wouldn’t the goodness flood us
even if
nothing else could we sense but
the beating of our own heart-
wouldn’t miracles fill our days?