Words now

27 Sunday Sep 2020

Posted by in poetry

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Words now

come a half-step short of the stair,

one breeze shy of the butterfly,

for a blink of my eye carries too many stories,

too little sense heavy

inside bones that make me

and keep me

here,

now.

Words might dribble out. . .

missing the earthen nobility of their rise;

Instead, quiet

sensing

initiates movement forward,

outward

into something that has never yet been.

Following body first,

leagues of time,

thirsty and bent grasslands stretching

horizon to horizon,

pass,

pinning me to learning that

Life

depends upon.

Golden key

04 Thursday Jun 2020

Posted by in beauty, break out, dark, devotion, global, listen, movement, offering, pain, poems, poetry, prayer, presence, the road, transition, work

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A big moment arrives,

likely without your (intentional) bidding,

when no Golden Key arrives.

You swear you aren’t looking for one,

assure others you know there isn’t one,

and yet?

Yet, when you open that door

none appears.

And everything comes up short.

Where is your way through?

Surely, following such pain and strife,

with the endless effort and hope,

some

Thing

will

raise its head and wag a greeting

of arrival.

Because your faith needs food.

Instead, you are told

humanity is a shithole

with moments of beauty between.

And how that isn’t trauma added

to the heartbreak is beyond you.

Because Faith needs not only Beauty

but connection.

Not unending loss

and rage,

but nutrients for the lost souls and

the begging souls who try,

try,

try

for a beautiful life founded on self-respect

and a worth unquestionable,

unquestionable by color, origin, belief,

or day alive navigating a difficult and messy

and Beautiful world.

Finding the faith within to keep on

may be the magic

all of us seek.

Full circle

25 Saturday Apr 2020

Posted by in becoming, home, honoring, learning, Loss, loving, mystery, offering, pain, poems, poetry, receiving

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A full circle closed today,

from expectation to loss,

from pedestal to the fall..

A journey made time and time

again.

Bound to a nature of its own making,

the question of when the final turn

arrives being that eerie shimmer

at the horizon.

With delusion’s slap in the face

what you do with the broken fantasy

remains the treasure

at the end.

What shall be created from the rubble

and bruises?

Can you be what fed you?

Could you embody what your heart was sure

you couldn’t live without?

At the start

24 Friday Apr 2020

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

≈ 1 Comment

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.

Next door

18 Saturday Apr 2020

Posted by in change, community, nature, poems, poetry

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A cat has moved in next door.

Tuxedo.

White whiskers and a spot at the window.

Lace curtains always closed now stay pinned aside,

for his sleeping and watching perch depends

upon the ever-changing sight of visiting creatures

for peanuts.

To the railings and porch boards come jay and squirrel

and crow, large as the cat zeroed in

with green eyes shining in face of black fur.

And lucky for me, this virus-induced foster

and I visit with eyes watching

through two panes of glass.

Provided, of course, no wildlife prevails.

In the new quiet of town,

sound of the bells reaches the house every quarter hour.

The big trees, strange as it seems, have yet to leaf out

like a reminder of the sickness slowing life down

even though spring

is in full swing.

Our utmost

12 Sunday Apr 2020

Posted by in change, Love, loving, poems, poetry

≈ 1 Comment

They’ve opened up the moon to mining.

We have opened the moon to be mined.

The news rakes my insides raw.

Somehow it, amid the chaos of now,

pushes so far beyond the line

I can barely stand.

Yet

this is where we are.

And what tiny thread appears for me to follow,

thin as for sewing on a button,

is in total,

Love it while it’s here.

Love it while it’s here.

And, really, might that truly be

our utmost in the end:

Love it, whatever it is, while it’s here.

Emptied streets

04 Saturday Apr 2020

Posted by in adventure, community, courage, dark, global, light, offering, pain, poems, poetry, song

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A man walks beneath black umbrella,

Calla lilies bloom in the rain;

A woman stands at the kitchen window

staring out with soapy hands and sponge,

singing,

“And you look at yourself,

pacing the cage…”

The playground is taped off in yellow tape,

A child speeds home on scooter with no cars in sight,

“All the spells I could sing, it’s as if the thing is written

in the constitution of the age…”

Grass is greening, lungs ache,

and hearts are breaking,

“Sometimes the best map will not guide you…”

Stay strong and bend, be well

We are in this together together together

We are all pacing the cage–

Not alone not alone

As we walk thin line between birth and death

Now and here

Now and here

Together

Not alone

Hold that thin line dear,

Dear,

Hold it dear.

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.

Generative

15 Saturday Feb 2020

Posted by in becoming, change, Creating, home, poems, poetry

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A box marked EXPLOSIVES

sits beside my front door.

Red paint on wood, hinges on lid;

a trunk for ammunitions

holds my shoes.

Today the light dawns,

it’s time I walk possessing

that kind of power,

reside within what transforms

not through simple destruction

but vast imaginative

Creation–

Stepping forward not one, but two.

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.