Category Archives: stillness

Pull

07 Saturday Sep 2024

Posted by in movement, poems, poetry, stillness

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Feels like sitting on a hip

at the edge of a pond,

circling a couple of fingertips in warm

greening water,

waiting. . waiting. .

waiting for the world to slow down.

But it won’t.

And you know it’s not going to.

Those singular fingers dipping

in the pool, though,

connect you to something sane, a rhythm

echoing through this swirling cosmos

of which you are part,

of which you are made.

While these days and nights

and days and days and nights and nights

are nothing short of the inside of a blender,

find where you and the water meet.

Somewhere within the movement, touch

and endless noise,

a stillness–

pull from that.

A little

18 Saturday Nov 2023

Posted by in community, listen, loving, movement, offering, poems, poetry, prayer, presence, rebirth, receiving, return, stillness, welcoming

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We save each other’s lives 

a little

every day.

Follow a pointing finger,

find the child.

Hear a cry never

bellowed,

resolve the ache.

Listen through hands,

to a quaking,

a breaking

of a heart yet again,

and turnings of ages will echo

through bone.

These are callings

answered by few.

Let the unmoved move

with slightest

kindest

deepening

touch,

reach stars buried

and waiting

for a return to dark sky.

We save each other’s lives

a little

every day.

In this is more

than enough.

The whole morning long

11 Saturday Mar 2023

Posted by in poems, poetry, stillness

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People walk the oceanside

with leash in one hand, coffee mug in the other.

Small waves lick the shore, clouds,

in a brief break between storms,

milk water to sky–

horizon barely a line.

Fog clings to the crowns of pines, the shoulders of hills,

mist rising,

sand grits beneath occasional footsteps.

Salt and wetness heavy the air.

Dawn seems to extend the whole morning long.

How to begin a day

13 Monday Dec 2021

Posted by in abundance, beauty, community, flight, honoring, movement, nature, offering, poems, poetry, stillness, wind

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The storm is making noisy mouths of the shingles this morning,

and pom-poms of the pine’s branches.

Rain beads the panes,

droplets meet socially, gather in their weight

and river down, down towards wet ground.

A limy glow. Needles sticking long on fence, on chair,

all throughout lavender’s hair.

Yesterday at this time crows were dancing in sunrise light,

pink orange, sorbet swirl of clouds,

save one:

She sat still atop a black fir, staring.

Our four eyes, in settled bodies, soaked in the welcoming arms

of our rising Sun–

now, She knows how to begin a day.

Without reserve

28 Friday May 2021

Posted by in father, honoring, learning, Loss, movement, pain, poems, poetry, stillness

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My father,

he was of the sort willing

and able

to kick me out of the family.

His threat came three times.

Not once, or, oops, twice,

but three times that cruelty was uttered, even written,

knives thrown not in spirit alone, but in substance:

To a child that is survival at stake.

And belonging.

And…so much and…

My hands tremble and my heart pounds with

the memory of it.

I grieve for her, the young one who had to stand there

and take it.

He forgot. I couldn’t.

His violence lives in me. I work with the wounds

daily.

What he was never given he could not give.

What I was never given, I intend to learn.

Some days it is a story, a living aspect

of history.

Other days I must rise up, in frightened fury,

to say no.

Absolutely not.

What family there is that is mine,

wherever they be,

their fullness of heart and vision and being

reside within and around me,

and my hands and heart can return the gifts

I have been given

in stillness and

without reserve.

Light the flame

06 Saturday Mar 2021

Posted by in companion, Fire, listen, poems, poetry, stillness, welcoming

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If your animal rhythm is faltering,

light the flame.

Light the flame at the altar.

Allow Her pulse to fish swim and bloom

back into skin, through muscle,

through lung;

that fur rises, ripples, musky and thick.

She contours your breath when breathing

can be forgotten.

Light the flame

sit

sniff;

Her rhythm returns to guide

along paths stony, unmarked

and yours,

to wander and learn

alone.

Tumbled like rocks

12 Tuesday Mar 2019

Posted by in fearlessness, mundane, poems, poetry, Run, stillness, the road

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I put myself down

sitting smaller after words from my own mouth

tumbled like rocks onto my own head.

I put myself down

so you wouldn’t have to–

having learned early if the insults would come

better from myself than anyone else.

Shrinking, inflated, making a joke of myself

before you could slip in, undercut, diminish.

Having grown up to be little

must break

at some point.

That point is now,

and I take it back.

I didn’t think I was special,

I knew I was.

Sing to the waters

06 Thursday Sep 2018

Posted by in abundance, becoming, community, devotion, honoring, Infinite, learning, listen, loving, mystery, nature, poems, poetry, song, stillness, welcoming

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Where salt meets sweet,

I sing to the waters.

Where sand holds wave, pelicans slap

great wings,

and solitary duck pops up from below

in a stilled bowl

waiting for winter,

I sing

and Wind joins in,

riffling the surface, ripples reaching

in patterns hypnotic and old.

Sing to the waters,

their reply waits for your greeting among reeds,

rushes, fishes and stone.

Where lies

26 Sunday Aug 2018

Posted by in abundance, beauty, becoming, break out, change, community, courage, crafting, Creating, devotion, dreams, freedom, honoring, listen, movement, nature, poems, poetry, prayer, release, song, stillness, welcoming, wonder, work

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If a push,

somewhere a pull.

Where taken,

pray it has been given.

The Western sense of community..

in itself a paradox?

We’re part–everyone–of centuries of history

cycling, tumbling, molasses-thick onward

with nanosecond “advances.”

No mystery that you, and you, and I

can not seem to catch our breath.

Faster is not forward,

as bigger not better, nor more money success.

Where lies the soul stuff making life

Life?

Now

01 Wednesday Aug 2018

Posted by in abundance, adventure, becoming, courage, devotion, discomfort, dread, fearlessness, freedom, honoring, learning, movement, mystery, nature, pain, poems, poetry, release, stillness, strength, transition, welcoming, work

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He slams the door behind him.

You think, Good riddance!

When next your heart stops and breath catches,

out comes a gasp, What have I done?

Melting down, falling to bits, the world goes

from complete sense to non-sense,

and it is on that iceberg of moment

(and each drifting ice island following)

when wondering, Is this true?

might most gather you back together in a form

strong enough,

wise enough

to hold all the sensations and feelings

threatening to tear you to pieces

to be with Now,

an actual fullness of Life

for which you have the grandest capacity.