Category Archives: welcoming

All along

22 Friday Jan 2021

Posted by in abundance, fertile, giving, listen, offering, poems, poetry, receiving, welcoming

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Grieving the grandchildren never to be had,

I step back downward on the path

away from the peak wondering

what unborn children might become

among seeds of the treasured and unsung.

Tomorrow,

I’ll pick up a brush and dash color across

textured cotton and dried pulp

to interview an inner nobility I’ve yet to know,

to praise a blooming that’s still to come.

Come,

come unnamed seeds and show me your way,

we can cross the river, a bridge to stay,

at least until your voices are heard

whether in color, sound or word.

Sleep, you blessed ones,

a womb welcomes you now

whatever your form;

Sleep for now, you blessed ones,

fertile ground awaits you,

your brightness a bell, an arrival

celebrated ever and always along.

Allow her to move

24 Tuesday Nov 2020

Posted by in abundance, devotion, grief, movement, poems, poetry, rage, welcoming, work

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Grief stagnates

into rage.

Allow her to move;

Plant a stone,

Bury a broken song,

Sing another to a place on this earth dry

with sorrow.

Open to the endings,

without them nothing begins.

Unimaginable are the possibilities

for they

have yet to meet their own conception.

Offer the moistening river

your enormous grief.

Follow its movements,

dances are born in the currents.

Much has been taken,

now much can be given back;

Return grief to the Beauty–

tender Life may run again toward you.

Allow her to move.

Life is saying,

she needs her juice back

through the body of you.

If then

23 Monday Nov 2020

Posted by in poems, poetry, presence, welcoming, wonder

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And if God moving in us is

n o t h i n g

like we expect?

Not sublime or transcendent or ethereal,

but exactly the unrelenting pains and grief,

the dark slogging through what we hope

to shed, be done with and grow beyond?

If that confusion is the way

and all that separates us from God

is our rejection–

If then . . .

what?

Walk along beside

18 Wednesday Nov 2020

Posted by in abundance, companion, Creating, poems, poetry, receiving, thanks, welcoming, words

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Ever

read a book

and find yourself

stroking the page while tears drop,

uttering, “God, I love you,”

and wanting to wrap that author up in your arms

to say,

Thanks?

Today is like that.

Not sure how it is to relate with actual humans

but books,

books do walk along beside

between the breathing, the hefting, the washing

and all

the

rest.

Such kindness

17 Tuesday Nov 2020

Posted by in learning, mystery, pain, poems, poetry, shame, the road, welcoming, wonder

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Such kindness lives in “I don’t know how.”

Past a freedom of “I don’t know”

little HOW asks in the mystery tender

after years of silently absorbing assumptions,

a force feeding of belief that you are supposed to have

already

walked the path no one had shown you and

you hadn’t yet found.

How, on this fault line shaking, cracked

and dappled light lit earth

are we to know before we know

and who–back to who before who before who–

syringed that toxin into our bloodstreams

fueling generations of debilitating pain and shame

saying we are broken

and must fight a way through

simply

to

endure?

Failing

11 Wednesday Nov 2020

Posted by in becoming, discomfort, Expanse, gratitude, pain, poems, poetry, rage, undone, unlearning, welcoming, wonder, work

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What if you woke up each day pissed off.

Pissed off that you’re still here, that things are the way they are,

feeling impotent to change any of it,

that, somehow, crucial basic needs have not been accounted for

in the constellation of whoever is responsible.

What an enduring and repetitive hell.

And instead of beating yourself for–yet another–failing

you settle in

to an endless buzz of unspoken confusion

to wonder,

where could such constant pain come from?

And what, truly, is the soil to tree relationship

between rage and gratitude?

Don’t kid yourself,

those roots do tangle together

and grow in ways

so large and unarticulated you haven’t yet

begun

to trust the imagination entrusted to you

to welcome the discomfort of the discovery

Life is asking.

At the start

24 Friday Apr 2020

Posted by in change, courage, fear, listen, loving, naked, poems, poetry, welcoming, work

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When the worst in you climbs out

pale and slick from a basement of your own making

do you cower and freeze?

Do you move fast as distraction will whip you

toward anything,

anything at all but that?

Do you block the acquaintance with projects-type

fast, cheap, ugly construction,

forcing it into another, though now above ground,

prison?

Who are you in your fullness?

What do you do with the wretched creature who is, also,

you?

What if you stop your steps away from the intolerable,

turn in your terror,

and place a crown on that wretched head?

Even if, at first, it is made of paper

and sags a little.

Because one of gold has yet to be forged.

What would the welcoming of one forced down,

forced out and away,

move like?

At the start,

even a whispered hello

will do.

Until you can both bow

to the darkness in light and soften

toward light

in the dark.

Free.

Knots in the wood

30 Tuesday Oct 2018

Posted by in aging, beauty, becoming, crafting, discomfort, honoring, loving, nature, poems, poetry, welcoming

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The knots in the wood strong

hands might try

to force flat and out,

erase..

impossible.

The tree has earned those twists and kinks,

hardened, toughened grooves and bubbles,

bulged eyes skilled at a different sight.

Gentle the hand given access

to the yearning, sorrowed places-

they are not to be fixed.

Day opens

10 Wednesday Oct 2018

Posted by in abundance, Infinite, Music, nature, poems, poetry, prayer, weaving, welcoming

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She lays in bed, sheet lightly covering.

Out the window clouds of rain draw near,

without hurry or menace.

Slow jazz fills the room, no one else close

to breathe the same thick, gentle October morning

in her nest above the street.

Pumpkin pie awaiting baking,

lamb thawing on white tiled counter,

and the low-lit day opens towards everything

she loves.

New moon

06 Saturday Oct 2018

Posted by in change, nature, poems, poetry, transition, welcoming

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A phoebe sings now

from the next rooftop,

pumpkins are stacked upon hay bales,

and sunrise lights the sky in spreading fires.

At last, moments between tourists lengthen

and first drops of rain rise earth scents up,

up, around, and beyond.

Sleeping things wake, traveling ones return,

the cold sneaks back in cover of night.

More stars will be visiting

with the approaching new moon.