Tag Archives: Impermanence

a gift, living on a busy street

8 Dec

I hear the pulse beat of the humans

and the whoosh of their motion

as they go about their ways

in a variety of machines

and speeds

and mind states.

bless them all

not far from my small

and quiet movements

and variable mind states

a mirror to the not infrequent

police chase drama

flat tires

train crossing delays

a wreck on 526

a high wind on the bridge

death and inconvenience alike

backs them up

just out my front door

18 wheelers make the house shake

and help me to remember

that my feet are touching the floor

over a crawl space

that has me suspended over dirt

mixed with sand

from an ocean

which six million years before

expressed a different sort of highway

on this same spot.

Bowing to the size of time

and motion

and thoroughfare

heartbeats

within/without

in a dream

I might open my door

and instead of cars

there might be bellowing whales

once again

making their way

wailing a song about time.

Come back all my lovely

friends, who sit on my daybed,

patient question mark humans,

who drink tea and bless

the cars, the humans, the sea creatures

and ourselves, in timeless time marking

rituals of quiet love

for all who pass by here.

Tags: , , , ,

if a pile of ashes could speak

30 Jun

What if I just stopped

trying so hard

and just let the love,

knocking at the door,

inside?

A dangerous question…

Small gestures

are having Richter waves

in and out of this body-

a student’s obligatory email

wishing me a good day

suddenly is seen for the kindness it contains

and when some angry words are muttered

in the grocery store line,

out of her own pain,

I sigh, so kind!

Living in the seat of now

helps me to see all I overlooked before

but this seat is also hot,

an electric chair.

Will I burst into flames

sitting here too often?

It feels so, at the tender edge,

where death by combustion is certain.

Running from the fire

of our own beauty

and peace

is a silly and dramatic pretense.

It feels like

there’s nothing left to say

about anything other than that.

Now, I’m only able to return to the hot seat

10,000 times a day.

My charring is on the menu.

Every face that enters my world, my mirror,

every bee that buzzes and stings, as well.

Every watermelon too heavy to carry,

it’s thickness a testament

to the persistence and strength

for the will of matter and life,

inedible from my palate,

yet still holding up its end

of a cycle

from seed to fruit to seed

sown in soil

of waste turning into food,

given time.

I think I am.

I perceive this world as broken

but as I stretch beyond myopia

I see the world rightly aflame,

but really,  I am,

and

you are, aren’t you?

Life happens on the skin

and in the sinew

Down to the cells holding

an agreement of flesh together

which we forget to register.

Pat your belly

and eat the watermelon

and feel

what is here

now, right here

that close.

So simple,

the fire

of your existence.

Tags: , , , ,

how we all are waking

5 Sep

so many years

and tasks

it has taken

to get to a spot

where brief

and luxurious

days – mornings

open with breath

and dancing sun spots

behind the eyelids

before the self suit

gets put on –

self talk

ceases for whole moments

and when it comes back online

one small voice seems to say

wait, do you need the clothes of self?

there is no hurry,

stay in naked,

linger,

BE today

and tomorrow

and maybe

for the foreseeable stash

of nows

piled in the closet.

unseen is whether it

is a mountain of nows

or one last one

before the dawning that

now continues beyond

our ability to hoard

beyond any idea

of what is next

or needs to be answered,

For now

has oxygen

and nutrients

aplenty,

and needs no

peanut gallery of support

from the crowd

that used to live-broadcast

commentary and opinion,

silent outside

this head,

outside all heads,

tuned to a similar station,

now

signing off

for good.

 

Tags: , , , ,

now-wish

17 Jun

there is

no time,

no desire, but

someone is

hungry for completion,

while also still and happy,

mellowed out

hollowed out

laughing

and watching

whatever arises.

The now wish is

sharing parsley with my friend,

my trippy colored, hungry friend.

 

 

 

…

Tags: , , , ,

touching my toes

12 Jun

it occurs to me this morning

that flexibility is the higher order

of this earthy trip

from amnesiac birth

and warrior marching

through weed

and thorny ways

on toward an exit

back stage left

even as soon as tomorrow.

at the first sign of tightness

in thought and id

is the time to jump on that confusion,

(which creeks and aches like arthritis

in me, a short lived wow-man)

not when it gets too late

and I have cemented myself

into my own confusion.

does the world need my allegiance

to a side?

I hope not –

sides are always born

of confusion.

may the head to arms to toes of me

BE free of the tightness

born of rigid thoughts.

i like to linger in bed

and avoid the chill of morning

but the calisthenics needed

are not optional

if i want a lucid

view.

I whistle at the squirrel

and dance with walter the cat

and stomp confusion out as

i plunge myself into the frigid bath

of truth

breathing into the spacious air

shaking off all my thoughts

on a constant refresh rhythm.

for now, tea is still waiting

with heavy cream to boot, rich my life.

i’m getting it while i still can

and i’ll have no regret

as breath leaves this body bag

alone alone and together i am

with every worm and vulture

waiting to clean my bones

that served me well.

 

 

Tags: , , ,

garden metaphor exhausted

5 May

I’m letting the root rot open to the air.

holding the shovel at bay,

not ready (yet) for the tender hug

of mulch.

Dirt under the fingernails for days.

The smallest of shifts felt

while I trace a line

between self-indulgence, fertilizer,

and truthful, detached seeing-

walking the rows at sunrise.

 

The birds’ songs and chirps

an invitation to now

to breath

to exposure of even the slightest

inkling of maladjustment,

browning leaves

wilting old growth –

(loved

even so

on her way out).

Meeting needs

as they arise

in the garden outside

and the garden within

is enough.

The world is allowed to die back,

so paradise (undergrowth) can be exposed.

 

 

Tags: , , , ,

longing is a secret door

8 Feb

We only need to long

from our lower bellies

and our furnace hearts,

not from the jumpled frenzy of our thoughts.

Each moment

is the longing for breath,

and blood in veins

to carry what the breath brought in –

to keep us alive to long some more.

However, we are thinking animals

who have wallpapered over desire

with complex patterns.

We’ve forgotten where

impulse

comes from.

At the bottom of all complexity,

we can codify.

Tell me, is this list accurate?

Humans desire:

  1. to keep on breathing
  2. to pleasure the flesh
  3. to distract from the horror that comes from knowing we will die
  4. to keep on breathing

However,

breath will end; it will.

…

(enormous, this!)

…

Then and only then,

desiring the air of another realm

will pull us out of this life —

and though I can not prove anything to you,

I practice breathing and ending breath both;

for when my moment comes,  I desire ease.

I imagine our work on this larger breath can be gifted

to whomever needs it ~ when.

Use it with my blessing,

for I love you

in this breath

we share.

Tags: , , , , , ,

good kind of paradox

20 Jan

life goes by so incredibly fast,

and still there is no hurry.

Tags: , , , , ,

You dropped a bomb on me, baby

28 Dec

I asked for it,

and it was given;

I feel ice

and see fire with it’s dropping.

I knew a year ago,

that I needed an explosion

but I couldn’t stop

pretending,

and so a bomb was dropped.

(I am loved that much!)

After the realization

of certainty is lit

in my head

the world is moving

slow-motion and

my ears will not stop ringing

just like in the movies.

Every move beyond check mate

is pretense.

My prayer:

May I have the courage

to not bury the dead.

Tags: , , ,

riding on the fumes of grace

27 Dec

Grace is ever replenishing, but I wonder about this truth when I wake up into my dead end steering, my tank empty with no fueling stations in sight. My little body scooter carries me so wonderfully, but the mind, unexamined, tells a different story of where I find myself. I think of Job when my thinking runs me into ditches. Comparatively, my demonstrations have nowhere near the drama of his story, but I thank Job for playing out extreme, existential, hyperbolic loss loss loss.  I would like to talk about Job more often, but somehow he doesn’t make his way into many conversations. So helpful it can be to see the human in extemis for our learning; here now with me I do not have a body full of deep sores; there is no burned-down, total destruction, but it is my own gracelessness (actually, thoughts about my gracelessness not actual gracelessness) that leads me to suffering. What am I to do when I feel like I am riding on the fumes of grace, that I have diminished myself in some way and I can’t seem to rectify with any thinking or doing.  Job’s total loss example helps me with the way I can spiral into the same conundrum over an over again, the way faith and loss seems to repeat. Am I courageous enough to live in a way that leads to the total loss and resetting again and again?  At my reset point — grateful, humbled, and open. Grace flows into my tank upon this admission. Grace is running out of gas for my own good and accepting the full tank,  both.  Grace is acceptance of the headache, the rejection, the wobbling, again and again, yet still returning my (loved)bum to the daybed in my case, but could be the yoga pad, meditation cushion, curb:) too, and making room for stillness to be seen, seeing without defining. I hold you close, heart sick companions, in the flow of graceless and graceful, only ever in this now, grasping not at what was or is going to be. Whew! Compassion increases exponentially now in my own admission for myself, and thus everyone. Awkward am I in this life. And thank god for that. Once seen, grace brings laughter and lightness again.The return to my own ridiculousness and freedom are never far. I live this truth, too: the path always returns to laughter and ease no matter where it seems to be occurring now. It cannot not. Truly.

 

Tags: , , , ,

← Older Entries

%d bloggers like this: