Walk the Line

20 Monday Oct 2014

Posted by in beauty, courage, freedom, gratitude, Inspire, joy, learning, ramblings, work

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The pain life delivers carves us out, making space for an unalterable joy and a shareable wisdom, riches fed by both understanding and gratitude. If we let fear dam that transformative river, we can not embody our own power or light. The photographer not wanting to be seen, the poet feeling unheard, the model believing herself ugly, the lawyer not finding justice in her own life- we learn through what draws us. Within our challenges lie our gifts, and what seems a curse is often our blessing. Can’t walk the line without seeing ourselves and with undeveloped sight we are sleepwalking- lost not only to ourselves but to the world. Without celebrating our own Being the world becomes a little dimmer. By looking into the pain, whatever it may be, and sitting with the fear, we can rise above what diminishes us, and expand into being deeply present, inspired, spirited, instinctual, intuitive and alive. Let that be the enviable courage.

Wildness rattled

18 Saturday Oct 2014

Posted by in discomfort, lost, nature, poems, poetry, transition

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from bed i smile to see
two complete handprints
low
on a wall of glass,
an invisible companion kneeling
at the altar of treetop and sky

outside,
watering in crisp daylight,
wrapped in scented shawl of flowering ginger,
a pair of steller’s jays hops close,
the depth of my thirst mirrored by theirs

wildness rattled,
within drought, by human flood.
the growing challenge
to regain elements vital
to thrive

I hold the fire

16 Thursday Oct 2014

Posted by in courage, joy, pain, poems, poetry

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With your hand
touching my skin,
I see-
I hold the fire.
Through dulled eyes of regret
my passion seems especially alluring.
The spark you seek,
another can not give you,
And mine’s neither for sale,
nor being offered.
Your pain, that of faltering flame,
requires your own tender attention
to feed it
with the missing joy you look outward to find.
Tend your own fire,
no one else can.

…out of sleep

16 Thursday Oct 2014

Posted by in beauty, poems, poetry

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Dappled shade drops from grand sycamores,
Woman on bicycle pedals in heels
down cobblestone,
Small boy lags behind mother,
winding between outdoor cafe tables,
dragging one finger along peaks of chair backs,
Sunlight stretches past church spire,
flooding quiet shadow with wakefulness.
Morning traffic-
parents carrying children to school
on two thin wheels.
A gathering of friends with cigarettes,
building stories through accumulating years,
drinks coffee before work.
Man with cello. Man running to catch time.
Woman coasts past, adjusting shawl,
ears filled by private music.
Two monks in beige robes,
crosses hidden in folds of cloth at their waists.
Diesel engine. Rattling bike frame.
Pigeons take flight
into pale cloudless sky.
Bordeaux brightens out of sleep.

Fed by sky

12 Sunday Oct 2014

Posted by in freedom, gratitude, learning, poems, poetry, the road, vision

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Dismantling a life.
Kicking off old shoes,
the ones given-
once useful,
always ill-fitting,
finally worn through.
Taking bare to the contours,
sole to soul,
every granite nib and dusty stretch
fed by sky
and the penetrating scratch
of salt air.
Reaching beyond you,
I carry the minimum,
my skin soaking in what surrounds,
untouched by
what has passed or yet to be found.
I’ve wasted myself on an appealing lie.
These bright eyes aren’t for any other
than this splash of sunshine
and that long drink of water.
Sand, trail, roadside-
Terrain changes
in winding tales.
Think I’ll keep walking…

Smoke thickens

11 Saturday Oct 2014

Posted by in gratitude, nature, poems, poetry

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Smoke thickens-
the matter of lives, burnt.
Sky can’t prepare for the soot
of curtain, letter, painting, bed pillow, tea pot, photograph,
weighting its blue.
Telling a friend his home is gone, eaten
by flames,
another unexpected duty.
Yet, mercifully, living words can be delivered
instead of the shock
of a middle of the night escape.
Drought.
Tinder.
Negligence.
Nature’s force, fueled.
Green becomes black.
The redefinition of essential.
Memory reduces
to what a mind can retain.
Celebrating moments,
understanding the past transforms,
in time,
like wood and metal consumed
by extreme and uninvited heat.
Humans skirt the fire,
narrowly, and
for this,
surging gratitude.
From the ashes,
magnificence does find grit.

Upward

11 Saturday Oct 2014

Posted by in Inspire, learning, poems, poetry, vision

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Upward,
dry currents lift.
Time again for monarchs’ return.
Riding autumnal air, they flirt
between grass heads and needle tips.

Seeking quiet,
I look for you—

Once silencing the effort,
you show your face-
everywhere.

My exhale weaves with yours,
warm braided through cool..
eyes closed,
skin registering breath of wind.

Abandoning the search,
I found you.
Life stripped the longing,
beat out illusion’s yearning-
wool kilim struck until the dust stopped rising,
clean,
lightened of the burden that never belonged..

Close to mind,
an ongoing remembering,
the weightless flight of butterflies
reclaims.
Orange and black paper wings.
Buoyant bodies feeding on flowers.
May we all be so lucky.
And,
in truth, We are.

Take the hand offered

08 Wednesday Oct 2014

Posted by in learning, listen, poems, poetry, the road, vision, wonder

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Imagining ourselves to be unlovable,
Knowing not our own expansive brilliance,
We swallow our own light
and hide in shadows of our own making.
Like a foot longing to be a fingertip,
loss.
And, at what cost? As we tumble up the first stair to the coffee joint..
How could the nose yearn
for the gifts of the ear
when perfumed steam from a cup of espresso visits
on its way to meet ether,
or when resting on the hair at the temple of our lover,
or sitting with a new book, cracking it to page one?
Had coyote visited but once before sunrise,
the turning of its rounded, black-tipped furry tail
would not have been paired
with a seated yawn-
a send-off into the riches of day.
Sometimes we like blindness
for its familiarity, yet
settling for impersonations of ourselves
robs this life of the jewel we each are birthed to be.
Let us take the hand offered,
Enjoy coyote’s satisfied yawn, and
Erupt with a giggle at each reminder to stretch
into the Sequoian grandeur
of simply being.

Yellows Browns and Green

27 Saturday Sep 2014

Posted by in nature, poems, poetry, transition

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Tall lush rounds dance,
in silence-
the lotus pond full with leaf and pod.
Frogs leap.
Up the hill,
dry corn and poplar
clap their yellows and browns.
Shooshing oak,
decisive in sound, still
holds to its green.
Owl and hawk
alternate the night with day,
same as home.