Category Archives: learning

In the saddle

06 Saturday Jan 2018

Posted by in adventure, becoming, break out, change, discomfort, honoring, learning, listen, movement, mystery, nature, poems, poetry, prayer, transition, wonder

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At a beginning,

with the closest solitary prayer being

“I don’t know,”

my hips work to keep the rest of me in the saddle.

Movements in the sky-

valley fog, and clouds weaving high through the hills-

live their nature in waves, currents, and vanishings,

grand teachings of the cycles of continual change.

Sometimes, I wish I knew.

But, unintentionally, artfully, that greatest illusion

has been set on the shelf-

a furry trickster friend

who flashes me a smile, and snaps his tail

at the most wicked, and absurd times.

I don’t know becomes

a delicate, gritty daily worship.

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.

If you need more time

23 Thursday Nov 2017

Posted by in becoming, change, discomfort, learning, listen, Music, mystery, nature, poems, poetry, story, strength, vision, welcoming, work

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If you need more time

for the new birds to find you,

take more walks with your awkward, fledgling self.

Squawking and flight, a generous song now and again,

will always surround you.

Being the only of a kind in a place

opens more relationships than you might think, while

flavor of faith develops

with your stronger listening ears.

It is needed as you continue, seeing ahead

and noticing the talon prints you’ve left behind.

Human walking

21 Tuesday Nov 2017

Posted by in becoming, family, honoring, learning, listen, nature, poems, poetry, story, the road, weaving, work

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Born from uninitiated folk,

as most Westerners are,

creates holes in knowing that let icy winds enter.

Weaving oneself back together requires attention,

a briny commitment, earthly,

sight of an old fist-width rope tying the now to a millennia of then:

the family line.

Mostly invisible shoulders carry

the wobbling essential unformed

human walking known as you.

Start asking questions.

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.

To its nature

05 Thursday Oct 2017

Posted by in abundance, beauty, devotion, joy, learning, nature, poems, poetry, welcoming

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A coral bell hanging

brightly

amongst its neighbors,

a bear trundling along

alone,

a cricket sounding an evening concert

loudly

in the kitchen,

each, perfectly, to its nature.

Were the bear turning this way and that

wondering

how he looks in his bearness, his gait,

his hunger,

or the coral bell wishing mightily

it could be a lily,

or the cricket seizing upon the desire to stomp

like an elephant through jungle-

Where would we be?

Thankful to the trueness of things

may we seek only

our own magnificent, and fleeting, natures.

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.

A fence-crashing

27 Monday Mar 2017

Posted by in abundance, aging, becoming, break out, change, learning, Loss, movement, poems, poetry, transition

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Having never felt this old,

nor so young and inept

– and simultaneously –

well, 

there’s a fence-crashing, a home-burning, 

a finding-one’s-own-nose-on-someone-else kind of mess.

What is to be done with a tension like that?

Bear it.

Stretch with it.

Let be torn loose the decayed, the ineffectual, 

follow the twisting into the twist,

watch new movements be born.

I guess.

Still, if I’m a living version of a mr. potato head,

could I waddle in those shoes a ways?

It might do me some good.

If suffering

10 Friday Mar 2017

Posted by in becoming, courage, Creating, devotion, honoring, learning, Love, movement, mundane, poems, poetry, release, the road, wonder, work

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If suffering is the path laid down for us, by us

stone by stone,

How might we love

not only each one but

the trying burden of laying them

on the surface of this Earth

(could as easily be the moon. still, it’s not)

for our own feet to walk upon?

If meaning is found

simply

in carrying our suffering

in devotion

– not as martyr, but pilgrim

with full unknowing of why,

or even how-

to the making of a life,

by virtue of its having been given,

then

might we lean into the expectations

life holds for us

and do right by them

by our own true Selves-

that Essence buried

beneath all the heaviness requiring our backs, hearts, hands

which knows what it is

to burn brightly

for no reason

what

so

ever?

.

.

* with thanks to Viktor Frankl