Flock

26 Thursday Jul 2018

Posted by in becoming, break out, change, community, courage, family, movement, poems, poetry, release, the road

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He

a sheep

like us all

walks, one day,

in a new direction.

Sheep don’t do that,

leave their flock.

In this he becomes a black sheep

turning away from name, money, easy street-

which isn’t so easy.

With him, now, he carries weight

of blame, criticism, and no one bothering to ask

why.

Years, many, pass.

His children grow, not knowing the stories he never told,

seeing him as just another sheep folded into the flock.

They wander for a path of their own.

One, separating from the rest, looks back

wondering

why he never asked why.

Broadness of day

26 Thursday Jul 2018

Posted by in family, light, poems, poetry

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What must she have done upon discovering

her husband’s sexuality

with their daughters?

At which point, what year, and how-

in broadness of day, in sneaking through night,

along whisper, twist, and shadow never confirming?

And complicity? Suspicion?

Imagine the toxins pumping, daily, through veins

related, betrayed, confused, abused.

Where,

its beginning.

How,

its end.

How.

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.

A slurry of nettles and skunk

26 Tuesday Jun 2018

Posted by in becoming, break out, change, Creating, discomfort, learning, nature, poems, poetry, release

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While sitting in a slurry of nettles and skunk,

a confused mess of fury and grief,

I had to remember,

remember those I know well who will do anything not

to change.

Clenching to what doesn’t grow,

but metastasizes, brings more comfort

than trying it all, somehow, differently.

Yet the questions have yet to be born in them,

and time, with practice, has taught them not to find any stirring

since the familiar is the balm that keeps the abyss

from glistening up and pulling them under and out,

as it is for me now from the slick, hard cornered rock

I seem desperate to hold.

Time and body say, release this faithless fight and self-loathing,

those committed shackles of the past,

and give in, set adrift and enter

what is unimaginably larger than the Seen.

The clay we’re given

15 Friday Jun 2018

Posted by in abundance, beauty, becoming, courage, Creating, devotion, Infinite, Love, poems, poetry, wonder, work

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Someone told me today,

“You have great energy.”

Someone else

turned out to be my middle school literature teacher.

Another day, perhaps, I’m terrible,

and a familiar stranger might not be

who I think at all.

Ground is uneven.

Earthquakes come, volcanoes blow.

A life is a creative act,

parceled out in retrospect,

birthed forward through chaos.

Unformed to the end

each of us shapes the clay we’re given.

The world will think

whatever it thinks,

what matters is speaking God straight back

into God’s own ear.

Symptoms

13 Wednesday Jun 2018

Posted by in becoming, Body, change, Found, learning, listen, movement, poems, poetry, presence, receiving, release, welcoming, wonder, work

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Aching back, pounding head,

weakening eyes, softening memory,

anger, nightmare, spasm..

Symptoms.

What loves to be complained about

over tea, through the phone,

aloud aloud somebody hear this, oh please.

Imagine turning attention around,

bear chewing his tail-

Wake to me!

Symptom becomes lotus

opening

from murky waters into light.

Manifestation of inner

to outer,

an offering

a medicine

a gift.

Pain is not for pain’s own sake.

With suffering,

we alter to listen.

Awareness reaches up,

roots down,

grows.

White on blue

12 Tuesday Jun 2018

Posted by in poems, poetry, transition

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At dawn

a church steeple, white on blue.

Down metal pipe railing

bathing suits and towels, ocean wet,

drape pink green red.

Hour after hour,

into day following day,

these months fill with surface disturbance-

construction, scheduling, maintenance,

scramble scramble scramble while

low currents move unfelt.

Details have a way of eating time.

Sitting by the water before sunrise

dips mind slowly back into mind.