Category Archives: welcoming

The tumult is our own

10 Wednesday Jul 2024

Posted by in generations, global, human, poems, poetry, welcoming, work

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The tumult is our own.

It happens out there but in here the real storms play out.

We take action, response comes, repeat.

Sometimes a looooong stretch of waiting shows

what changeable beasts we are;

How to set down outcome

and reside in the lively space between this and that…

Sturdy land goes liquid, tables collapse, chair tips over,

the cat catapults herself to the top of now crooked refrigerator.

Yes, the happenings.

But, oh, the tumult.

Work with the shiftless, restless, beautiful

beast.

The rest takes care of itself.

Cafe

17 Friday May 2024

Posted by in abundance, beauty, community, poems, poetry, welcoming

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She barks at him

bitterly

across two tables and a faux fire

(real flame, no wood),

he nods,

yuh, yuh,

nose angled toward his paper.

They’re married,

the cafe their living room.

Meanwhile, Nina Simone

and a squealing cappuccino machine.

A man, clearly successful,

speaks at air,

bluetooth lodged in both ears.

Opposite,

women burble of this and this,

while another couple, thick grey locks

lidded by heavy cowboy hats,

laughs together.

At a single,

a young one,

pale and half asleep, sits alone,

the lower half of her face parked in her palm.

Two dogs, wide eyed,

wait.

Spanish wafts over from the counter.

With warm cup held in both hands,

I drink it all in.

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.

Shadow

29 Thursday Jun 2023

Posted by in community, movement, poems, poetry, rebirth, receiving, release, return, shame, transformation, welcoming, wonder, work

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Wrestle your shadow until sweaty and limp,

stand up,

press powder to forehead and cheek,

adjust pants and what’s in them–

whichever or both or none–

but set yourself right for the outer world to see

that nothing is happening, not a thing is at stake

and amble down the road as if not fully consumed

by what you almost let slip.

Your badness, your weakness, childishness and

ugliness and incompetence.

Tattered cloth, disheveled hair

they give you away but more

the look

on your face

of shame, perhaps shrouded in pride,

with taste of bile

flooding your tongue

Ah!

What effort and energy wasted

on the inevitable.

Rather than hide and deny,

cover up and clean up,

try turning,

turning toward your shadow in greeting..

Soften instead of wrestle,

invite instead of deny,

look gently, giggle and come to know…

in the folds of great being–wonders and understandings,

unexpected magics and compassion.

Light, dark, braided.

Depth.

Beautiful.

Sweep the threshold

12 Friday May 2023

Posted by in freedom, generations, ghosts, grief, home, honoring, movement, poems, poetry, ride, unlearning, welcoming

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Sweep the threshold,

unlock the door,

put the busyness away–

what comes is far

too important.

Build a fire,

quiet the house,

all your sensing is required.

Hear the hoof beats?

The full horse breaths?

Mice may scratch in the walls,

spiders rattle the roof,

you’ve nothing to do

but be home.

Movements beneath your skin,

flashes of thought,

quickening heart,

allow them.

This is a welcoming.

You don’t know who approaches

only that they must.

Freedom blooms

as we set

a place for everything.

What you carry in your blood

has voice–

Let her sing.

Into the arms

27 Thursday Apr 2023

Posted by in approaching, becoming, change, poems, poetry, welcoming

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Shaving my head on the mesa,

white sun rising behind juniper hills,

I became myself again.

I did not know I’d been gone.

With each new song of bird, new ray of light

and dropping hair,

freedom lifted, heaviness fell.

I did not know I’d been gone.

Voicing thanks to Sun

and all goodness that surrounds,

I also fell,

fell fully into the arms of Spirit.

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.

Yesterday

15 Wednesday Mar 2023

Posted by in movement, nature, poems, poetry, welcoming

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Yesterday,

I walked the streets through heavy snow,

wet lumps falling

slowly.

From across a large pasture,

a footstool of a goat, wide as long and

well-furred in big bodied apricot eruption,

ran straight to the sparse metal fence in greeting.

I stopped, realized he really was trotting over for me

and broke into laughter.

Excited to make his acquaintance, I squatted down.

He arrived, turned his butt to the fence,

tore large mouthfuls of long grass, chewed in exaggeration

and ignored me completely.

Laughing so hard I nearly fell over, I stayed.

He never did introduce himself.

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.