Category Archives: work

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.

Days long

29 Saturday Feb 2020

Posted by in change, Infinite, learning, Loss, pain, poems, poetry, prayer, the road, work

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Days long

become years

and one most loved becomes a harm,

and through protection and confusion you seek

understanding of drastic change,

and the heart must learn

Safe? Not safe?

Safe? Not safe?

While you search blindly for pillar of heaven,

with eyes playing no part in this pilgrimage,

Heaven rests closer than the newly loud beating

in your chest..

so it goes and on it goes and through you go

asking for direction to the River when it has sunk

far underground within life that continues on

always always life continues on

beyond twist, injury, death and journey toward Spirit

alone.

What has sounded

08 Friday Nov 2019

Posted by in community, home, honoring, learning, Loss, Love, nature, poems, poetry, the road, work

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What has sounded

to others

like endless gripe and grating unfinished complaint,

a chosen rageful fixation,

certain Pathology…

has been body and mind finding its way

through toxic darkness.

Nature being destroyed by humans

in blind arrogance and greed,

consumption wired into how many “likes” and “followers”–

those empty signs of worth and feedings of narcissism–

in ever-widening circles,

in rapid speed, increasing.

How.

How does a body and mind adjust to such devastation?

To home being pillaged and raped?

To the Temple filling with piles of trash,

masses of people,

noise and excrement along every path?

There is no adaptation to that.

There is constant heartache

and anger.

With home now being just another thing for sale

and silence and solitude disappeared,

what illness have we invited through our collective front door

in exchange for one more meaningless photo

gone viral?

It’s time we spend time on the virus

we have ignored

for entertainment.

Along the long road

16 Wednesday Oct 2019

Posted by in aging, becoming, change, community, death, home, learning, Loss, poems, poetry, release, the road, work

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Without a story to tell

who are we but people who have not lived.

Watching children play,

approaching hand in parent’s hand

to a park that is my front yard,

Spirit

is restored.

Sliver by sliver

and dose by dose.

While now there are trees that whisper and swish

in every kind of wind

instead of uninterrupted concrete and destructive voices,

I have the long view

knowing what it is to live between rage and despair.

And I don’t like who it made me.

Sometimes I realize,

when before I could not,

we may become who we do not want to be

simply to return, along the long road,

to who we are.

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.

This day

31 Tuesday Jul 2018

Posted by in aging, becoming, Body, community, fear, honoring, learning, Loss, nature, pain, poems, poetry, transition, work

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This day he walks slowly,

approaching in nearly a shuffle.

Handing me a candy- the kind once known as penny-

saying, this aging stuff, not so easy.

I used to think, he shares with a soft shake of his head,

I could stay a perpetual teenager. But not so.

His health, not good,

the poetry, music and culture

having always fed him

no longer enough.

Or so it seems to him, on this day.

Clutching a small handled paper bag, one somehow

always carried,

he steps away, looking emptily into distance

not physically there,

leaving me with a golden,

foil covered chocolate coin never to be eaten

and an appreciation for his difficult facing

of what he long imagined

could be outrun.

Through bright sky

06 Friday Jul 2018

Posted by in abundance, adventure, break out, change, Deliverance, discomfort, flight, home, learning, nature, poems, poetry, work

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The swallow dip of joy,

swift arc and cut through bright sky,

has been on lengthy migration

to lands unnamed.

Yet the time allotted here, however long,

confined in concrete, noise, requirement and excess

may finally break me of this place.

What follows out

of the daily abrasions of adjusting

while not giving everything and nothing away

may open space enough for that swallow

to return truly

home.

Come back

05 Thursday Jul 2018

Posted by in abundance, beauty, Body, home, movement, nature, poems, poetry, welcoming, wonder, work

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In search of meaning

but having to pay the bills.

Needing to matter,

but busy cursing the neglected dogs keeping you awake.

Reaching, yet thick in mud,

being with a sideways mess of months of days

and snarled in the wonderment of

what, in hell, this is all about…

Coming back, returning to echoes of your own one body,

again, again, again, again,

the home your fantasy conjured

minus the straightforwardness and glitter

of safe comfortable forever there

except it is precisely that in folly

and learning and diligent removal of concept

and heavy cultural residue.

This is home, your body, waiting,

waiting

for you to come back

to what is real, always with you, and still

strangely

not known.

Family legacy

28 Thursday Jun 2018

Posted by in devotion, family, loving, poems, poetry, release, Sight, story, strength, work

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Undefined,

perpetually assumed,

the answer to the question

of family legacy.

Is it money?

Name?

Philanthropy?

Power? Fame? Title?

Accomplishment?

Keep digging. It resides

well beyond the surface of things.

Might it be anger, abuse,

enslavement, enslaving, addiction,

a thick poison, barely visible

and acutely sensed?

Might it be secrets held, shames and generations of fear?

Likely, aspects of these remain

and are being carried-

whether chosen or not.

The question then emerges from distant,

unvisited places, whispered

as warm mother to sleeping infant,

And what would it be for you

to transform

such a legacy, slowly, steadily,

with loving devotion

so as to soften- just a little-

the burden of a misunderstood life

with a dash more kindness, and fist full

of intent.

Far from easy, and miles east of glamorous,

that work may be your simple, impossible,

and singular gift

with the breath you borrow

here,

one day at a time.