Category Archives: learning

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.

Sitting in the ashes

18 Sunday Mar 2018

Posted by in becoming, change, courage, learning, movement, poems, poetry, Sight, strength, work

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And what are those skills

sitting,

unkempt, ignored, without mastery,

in the ashes

much as you’d like to abandon them there?

Only your gifts, the spells and support

needed, castable with no other’s voice or hands,

the workings for which you were born to suffer

and give.

Step, rich and slow, into your place.

A gyre of vultures, forty strong,

turns ’round at the base of the mountain

pushing remembrance of how small

you’ve been playing it, and

how large you now must be.

Grief so light

17 Saturday Mar 2018

Posted by in beauty, becoming, Body, break out, change, Deliverance, Fire, learning, movement, poems, poetry, Run

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Grabbing at her skirts with reaching manly hands

uninvited

toward a desired body-

not hers (the particular) but any-

that flipped the switch, dramatically,

from her naive Oh I’m Wanted

to the real He Thinks He Can Take Whatever He Wants,

and she wheels around, out of his greedy, cruel grip

leaps out the window onto a roofline she knows like a cat

and stops doubting her worth, while learning

to doubt his,

and smiles with bare feet hugging the tile crest

of a building she’s perfectly willing to leave, bearing

a trail of grief so light it brings only

a rush of relief.

Born hungry

16 Friday Mar 2018

Posted by in abundance, adventure, becoming, break out, Creating, discomfort, fearlessness, freedom, learning, movement, poems, poetry, Sight

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A princess in the tower,

at a distance looking down,

wishing

and kept.

How to get out? How to get away?

Desperate for rescue, a puddle of tears

and fury.

Why me? This terror and despair.

But, one sunrise, a light switches,

the kaleidoscope shifts,

her untapped power surges

along with the sight that she is on the inside.

An inside most would never know.

Following the sun

with fingertips searching slowly

the walls that keep her,

Somewhere, like the chink in the dragon’s scales,

a crack in stone

will bring the first ray of wisdom,

and freedom for which she was born

hungry.

Thirteen-step boogie

06 Tuesday Mar 2018

Posted by in abundance, adventure, beauty, break out, discomfort, Infinite, learning, movement, mystery, poems, poetry, release, wonder

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Having lost touch with the beauty of chaos

a fogged vision sewn of fear

and the iron-grip of hoped for control

eventually forces bursting rolls of laughter, or

sphincters tight enough to pop

(not so pretty- quick, turn toward the pansies planted to your left).

If remembrance of having a tail to shake breaks through,

that romp, leap, roar and thirteen-step boogie

will plunk soul back in wild order

and life’ll flow naturally once again.

Status quo

20 Tuesday Feb 2018

Posted by in aging, becoming, break out, change, courage, Creating, family, fearlessness, Found, freedom, learning, movement, poems, poetry, release, the road

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A conditioning of impotence,

reaching for the salt when another swipes it first,

mounting silence in heavy boots, step upon step,

crags of volcanic history ignored by all

but you.

Buttons pop in flights of frustration,

and the weight of carrying baggage,

generations of status quo,

threatens to break your back

until

the ludicrous heart-heaviness and surge

for a real place in family becomes visible

for the impossibility it is.

Pitching the straps off your shoulders,

searing sight of that graveyard of the forgotten

rising skyward

into memory, you shake your head

at the Sisyphean absurdity,

turn around

and walk away.

The mendacity of the Father

28 Sunday Jan 2018

Posted by in break out, change, courage, family, freedom, learning, movement, pain, poems, poetry, release, Sight, vision

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The mendacity of the Father,

the for-your-own-good, you’ll-

understand-one-day,

spank you on the ass ruler of the house,

might there not be another way?

Look the white shark in the eye and see

what he claims to be is none other

than the abuse he forgets

once brought him to his knees.

Question where you came from,

you may find there’s a curse

invisible, iron gripped,

you alone can shake off.

Pain, unaddressed, is only fed

to the next generation who cling,

cling to the same pedagogy

that poisoned your once Free spirit..

Now’s the time-

reclaim it.

The naked Emperor

26 Friday Jan 2018

Posted by in becoming, break out, change, Creating, family, learning, movement, poems, poetry, release, song, words

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To what cost,

this silence?

Protecting normal, the naked Emperor,

who rots your bones of its mineral support,

your heart of its song,

your pelvis of its dancing motion,

your mouth of its natural speech.

Stop pretending.

And, with it, generations of loss.

Open the vault.

You may find yourself alone.

But the outcome

will be possession of your own soul.

Her own

21 Sunday Jan 2018

Posted by in adventure, aging, beauty, becoming, Body, break out, change, discomfort, freedom, honoring, learning, movement, pain, poems, poetry, welcoming

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At forty

she felt seventy.

Experience’s weight

had sunk posts deep into the landscape of her being.

Ache and limitation, an undertow of fatigue,

confusion at the seeming permanence

of the uninvited, the resisted,

lead this human to take possession, fully-

and for the first time-

of a life unwritten, free of guarantees,

and her own.

Entirely her own.

Her landscape now is a garden,

loved and wanted, with posts that may disappear.

Or not.

With their origins recognized, appreciated,

and their presence finally respected,

perhaps a hammock will be slung between them

in honor of spring’s arrival.