Category Archives: presence

I will

25 Friday Aug 2023

Posted by in dance, grace, mystery, offering, poems, poetry, prayer, presence

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I will dance the confusion,

throw hands into smoke-laden air,

wreak the blockades of form imposed.

Dance the rage,

the rejection,

the finding when seeking’s not done.

Dance the diagnoses, the assumptions,

the warped expectations.

Dance the exploding starburst of my own heart.

What they hear

is not me.

What they see serves

their interests.

The shape of me,

the rhythms, my name–

I will dance it with fingers splayed,

feet lifting

off the ground.

I will throw down my broken song,

its weight and timing and edge.

This is my dance,

the only one I will ever get–

and no other can claim it

but me.

Talk, talk, talk

26 Wednesday Apr 2023

Posted by in listen, Love, poems, poetry, presence, silence, slow, song, sound

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While endless talk,

noise of commercialism, opinion,

celebrity,

fills too many spaces,

when chatter closer to home gets

incessant

remember

that is sound of a disturbed heart.

And we’ve far, far too many of those.

Step silently back

and recall what tender talk,

a creek rolling through, touching

sides, stones, roots

speaks of–

its landscape of blood, tissue and bone–

that which sustains, holds and guides it

along the journey.

When the child enters, or one of the countless

yet to be heard,

please,

listen.

Robins do not sing

for nothing.

The borderlands

11 Tuesday Apr 2023

Posted by in dark, death, fertile, laughter, light, Loss, movement, offering, poems, poetry, presence, transformation, welcoming

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I live at the borderlands,

between mountain and grassland,

river and sea.

Here, vultures gyre above the hollows, high

as the peaks

in gliding circles,

where death meets light

and darkness greets the sun.

I live the in-between,

not expected, not sane, full

in constant emptying,

I rise as others fall, gather while

the confused lose.

Accompanying all, I am ever ready

to catch the tender hand

finally opened

by life.

I can not be held,

you will never be without me.

In cracks cursed for tripping you up,

that’s my nestling place.

I can not be found where money buys me, nor

in the thing anyone else swears will conjure me–

but my laughter will.

Eventually,

you will feel within

the kindness in those peals

and the years of loss, confusion, pleading

shall mulch the most fertile ground

you could set restful, strong,

willing roots into.

Welcome the borderlands,

for in them I dwell

ungraspable.

Movement of a bone

12 Sunday Feb 2023

Posted by in adventure, approaching, becoming, change, discomfort, flood, Infinite, learning, movement, poems, poetry, presence, receiving, still, welcoming

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Movement of a bone.

Suddenly.

A gate I never thought I’d walk through

swings open–

access to land traversed by others

but never by me

spreads wide and borderless.

Vast, a savannah,

broad, an ocean,

hidden, intricate, bold–

a cave, universe of a moss, storm cloud.

Speechless, held still and utterly restless,

I do not know what emergence now includes me

but this smile keeps flashing across my teary face.

Visitations

06 Monday Feb 2023

Posted by in approaching, honoring, movement, poems, poetry, presence, welcoming, wonder

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Eagles have been visiting.

One Golden.

One Bald.

Their flight cups the sky in feathers,

wings like hills undulating in earthquake–

broad, liquid, generous,

a strength and self-possession of mountains.

Excitement, a sparkling water spring,

surfaces with their arrival.

Lifting my eyes to greet them,

my heart fills,

and I lower forehead to Earth.

What, then, is born?

28 Friday Oct 2022

Posted by in Body, devotion, Loss, offering, pain, poems, poetry, presence, slow, unlearning, weaving, welcoming, wonder, work

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What, then, is born

of disconnection that bleaches the Soul,

fragments Spirit and sends it flying

never to land,

to land in place where it may feed and be fed,

stoke the tender embers of Beauty herself?

What have we traded to get

things?

Things.

Paper money and all the rest, what is it

but nothing,

nothing, especially

when we make it everything and carve ourselves

and one another up

for more of it?

Call back,

Call back,

Call back yourself.

Call back every shard and ripple,

each precious drop, and voluminous chunk.

None but people bringing themselves back toward wholeness

can right this ship we share.

Please, let us remember,

let us remember all

to bring ourselves

Home again.

Walking the long road

09 Saturday Apr 2022

Posted by in new, poems, poetry, presence

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Cracked earth and fallen cottonwood twigs,

bare branches sweep the sky.

Walking the long road, heavy trucks rumble away,

away up dry hill.

Mountains embrace this flat place,

mud walls embrace the people.

Shuffling along wooden sidewalks

with a strange highway straight through the heart of town,

I am a fish out of water.

The dust that settles behind my scales,

lines deepening in dryness,

may show its true face yet and whisper

a magic too quiet

for a busy brain to hear.

A slowing grows

and this fish can sense that breath is still possible

where the sun shines continuously

and rain gathers in the prayers

of the ones living here.

Lights are richly set

26 Wednesday Jan 2022

Posted by in approaching, poems, poetry, prayer, presence, transition

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Ever dismantle a life?

Good lord, it’s a lot of work.

The giving away and selling, shuffling,

sorting, fussing and figuring.

Seems easy. Until you do it.

Then this liquid giggle burbles up

as you find you’d never intended to do

this thing that any spare,

and some not so spare,

time is suddenly dedicated to.

Now, leaning towards a future

you’ve not the faintest whiff of a clue about

as it pulls onward,

you stumble spin, slowly, staring out

in all directions,

including the one that’s got you in its tractor beam..

Zzzzzorp.

Dismantle, dismantle,

ditch this, heave that, pawn that,

huddle at this memory’s blast radius,

shake off the hold of that stubborn monkey,

you know–getting on with it,

despite the maniacal grip of safety,

security, and the other obsessions of mind:

Possessing illusions isn’t wealth, I tell ya.

So, here goes, scraping out the last from the burrow,

to leave only pounded earth.

What comes next rests just behind the heavy velvet curtain,

lights are richly set,

the theater hushes in the dark…

This is your life

19 Wednesday Jan 2022

Posted by in death, learning, poems, poetry, prayer, presence, the road, welcoming, wonder

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This is your life.

You will be abandoned again and again.

Until you stop abandoning yourself.

You will die.

Die before you die

and what emerges will hold you.

The way is long

yet it will end quickly.

What bursts through you like a flower singing

to the sun?

What cat are you curled beneath the moon?

Whatever you hold dear will be gone.

So,

how can the shimmer and spark of you

become

fully

in this moment?

From sleep into waking

29 Friday Oct 2021

Posted by in aging, approaching, community, devotion, digging, dreams, friends, Healing, honoring, poems, poetry, prayer, presence, weaving, welcoming, work

≈ Comments Off on From sleep into waking

A day arrives

during night dreaming

when you come to retrieve a child, an infant

in button-up full-blue onesie,

from a house expecting you

and, upon entry, you recognize the woman

whose house it is. She rises from a room sized table,

oblong, solid, warm and wooden. An enormous shined egg.

Around its edges sit monks, scholars, drummers–

elders all. It feels better than anything you’ve felt

in ages.

She not only welcomes you, while rising,

but asks you to stay.

Come join us.

She says that. . Come. Join us.

Somewhere, slung between infancy and elderhood, you stand,

at times barely, and then holy invitation is spoken,

warmly.

Keep hollowing out the space,

hallowing the place,

where the invitation can finally cross from sleep

into waking.