Tag Archives: Trust

too too much (or as my daughter says, extra)

13 Apr

In days of distancing,

my body still

leans in.

Even though the space

is not breached,

I bridge the gap.

Forgive me

as I wonder

about you

at the edge of your shell,

counting the rings,

rolling you over,

tapping your belly

with a stick.

It is no use to tone it down;

the desire is too strong in

the ease of shared moments

while this body

at this time

today, every cell tingling alive-

breathing easy!

For us all.

My reach is forming still

in the field where we meet

beyond any possible harm

except love, that destroyer,

uncompromised

by any contagion.

Bless my forward heart

and join me as soon as you are able;

I’ll still be here,

grinning like the fool,

waiting–ready lava

here to there

magma joy joining us.

Found we are in sameness

recognized

amplified

into motion

in these hands.

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Clarity on the Mission of this Seedling

29 Mar

Oh learning,

may it never end;

how could it?

There is a sudden clarity this morning,

that I was made to confuse the most literal

beauties that god created.

It is very very good

to give creative writing assignments

with vague directions

to STEM students.

My clarifying emails

only confuse them further

because with good reason

they try to check the temperature

of the water

before jumping in the deep end,

unlike me, who flings myself

into confusing mystery

before the instructions are done.

We have so much to offer each other!

Love me in my frustration

when I have to start over

after leaping too soon.

Also love us

who shiver at the threshold

of just give it a go, rolling our eyes.

Together we fill the color wheel

meeting where somehow

purple bleeds into red.

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glowing on

24 Jan

 

Joy arrives in the smallest corners

without a script to find it.

Think a bird tilting its head to you in curiosity,

a cat curled up in your pine straw, allowing you close,

a deer pausing mid-munch to size you up

before bounding its fluff tail bum deeper into the woods.

Agenda toward joy can look alright to start with

but it soon becomes a grocery store cake in the mouth,

leaving you wondering how to spit it out with grace.

Grasping at joy is revolting, a fake laugh, an insinuation,

a glomping on – vicarious to the actual fleeting glimpses

we are gifted without neediness.

Don’t grab the kitty by the tail,

try not to join in when you haven’t heard the joke,

allow your own joy to arrive outside the attainment of others,

without needing to announce it to the imagined view of the world.

The original intention that you came here with

is still flickering – and it will not go out until you are gone,

even if you are in jail, or cast out, or inebriated

on the most common drugs of: figuring things out,

escaping your pain, making yourself important,

making yourself small, just

getting through the day, busy, busy, busy…

you know them all.

Even here, joy still visits, and fans your fractal candle.

Thank God, it is one of those trick candles, so blow away,

test it out; it will be here as long as you – waiting to light you

from within – and your inferno will be all your own.

My bonfire on a distant hill

connects the dots toward yours,

making the view overhead of all these fires a truer map

of who is down here,

remembering joy,

no matter where.

 

 

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how I spent my vacation

1 Jan

May you share my actual dream of a thousand birds released,

ten thousand balloons out from my grip,

going into the sky

without environmental impact.

My gripping hands have eased

and opened once again

into release and flight, oh my.

Watch out your window so not to miss it.

No story about it, but if there were one,

it would be about the body

where hidden spots of thought had turned muscles

into prisons.

Breath has gone there and released what was too familiar

and practiced as to not be seen.

Breath reaches into what feels like a knots, holding,

control, and eases what namelessly cripples

the entire body machine.

Simple and senseless is grace, thank you.

Visceral can extend where intelligence has no sway.

Breath goes into atrophy and life begins again,

with this body a vessel, yes, but also a map

with roads of scars and light.

Who helps light

the outed bridges

when our own blindness will not let us see?

Who offers their own shining scars

when whole sections go out and bring us down?

Is there a difference between a friend, a tree, a spider web, the chilly morning,

or breath? Use it all, as offered, to light the way.

Even Air, she in her soft hat authority can go every where.

May you find any and every where

the breath is not reaching

with help from the love mirrored here

reflecting back to you

in and from every corner

of our rounded body shells

of mystery–

separate yet shared and free.

 

 

 

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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.

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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.

 

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this or that

24 Nov

we dream that we are choosers–

that our minds can weigh

our lists of pros and cons

and offer us the way for

sensible action.

Lists and justifications and choice

at best

are curtain decoration

for the windows on the plane ride

through turbulence.

We can torment each other with plans for the future,

but we would be better off telling the truth-

that we are surfing

avalanches with briefcases

and nice shoes.

 

The trees have chosen,

after weighing their options,

to drop off the green,

and then to disrobe,

desperate for a little attention.

Those of us alive are choosing breath

after the pros came out ahead.

What’s next tees up

while we color,

like earnest children

with fancy, art store pencils,

in our sleep.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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mercy may rain down

20 Oct

I pulled the entire damn thing  off

and started again –

and for a few days I breathed easy

resting on the pillow of my roofer’s assurances –

his reshingling was foolproof he said–

and I wrapped myself in his confidence and

my homework.

this roof is only one thing in a long series of large playings out

for the necessary things

such as air and heat

and water and waste–

a difficult year

in a decade of years

that has me asking the sky

what is the message?

what is the metaphor?

what do I not see that I need to see, please?

Is there a message for me here?

or should I open an umbrella to the raininess of life?

mercy mercy me oh why.

we surrender will

and continue until the last

drop

enters and destroys

what was temporary anyway.

we rise up again and again

against the elements

relearning how to shelter

against the relentless turning of ages

oblivious I am how short my moments are to the trees

to the hills

to the ocean who used to own this land

it is no wonder

me no bigger than a drop

in all of this

that I can not understand

why the roof

will not stop the rain

or any blessed thing

before I’m gone.

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we’ll see, won’t we

4 Apr

The bell of truth will never stop ringing.

I may try to silence it, hanging out where I hear no truth, trying to mingle and fit in, but the authentic self will never let me settle for less than what is real – BUT real is strange.

Real can look so many different ways – real can look the exact opposite of what was expected or wanted.  The me who went to the party and met the expectations looked more the part. I’m addressing that one.  Nope.  Not it, not for you.

Praying certain prayers, signing up for the truth at all costs, handing over the reigns to the ineffable, brings about a certain intensity.  The one who makes this prayer finds herself first in line for the ride that starts at the mouth of a dark cave with an imperceptible track, which starts out with a stomach dropping descent  – which would be exciting if it didn’t look and feel so much like death.

My path doesn’t let me hide in my bed,  for long.  My trajectory doesn’t allow me to tie security down or live a life for safe keeping – it allows the reality of what naturally unfolds to rule – which might mean giving away my last dollar, or giving up the dream of what I thought would happen, or standing at the fancy party unavoidably in dirty, inappropriate clothes, sneezing embarrassingly in public so the woman next to me can hand me a tissue, crying in empathy or standing open yet unmoved.

This path might give me a million dollar house and have the wind carry it down into a gaping abyss the very next second.   There is not a way to keep all safe, to bank it away, to know what is next.  I cannot know.   Rhyme nor reason cannot be had.

To not know what is next is the truth for everyone – but there are certain ways of being that seem to shield one from that reality.  Uncertainty will visit everyone, nevertheless.  For those involved in the reckless signing over of the control, there is a flow found in stepping into the great unknowing in every minute.

I woke this morning to find that my college roommate has cashed her chips in for this life.  She had a series of events in a short time that caused her to employ her human right for self-determination, and now she is gone.  I send her and her family love and peace beyond what seems possible to muster, beyond the boundaries so seemingly solid on this locked-down earth.

Defining of what is good and what is bad is way beyond my skill level.

The old buddhist teaching about the farmer and his horse comes to mind; We’ll see  is always the clear view of the swings of good and bad fortune.

Who can ever really know anything at all, with certainty?  Isn’t there great freedom in this not knowing?  Do you ever meet anyone along the way who looks you dead in the eye, full tilt into the I don’t know, one who is more enticing than the ones who think they know, the accredited, the acclaimed?

I would like to meet you in courageous unknowing!

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walking on the fields of slaves

24 Jan

Closing eyes while facing the setting sun,

over marsh and salty creeks,
provides a primitive script
on the inside of my pink-skinned lids.
i was the cave dweller who carved
notches for the ones I’ve been.
i run my cursor over the alligator skin
encoded with the story of all time,
left here for me –
thinking there is no way
she will miss it, this time.

i see the structure of my mundane thoughts
solid like walls built on each side – but i can
push them back with my
shadowy arms.
my house is
a cardboard house, with folding lines preset
to make it gone in a new york minute.
WOLF may huff and puff –
but i tell him,
put your predatory mind at rest:

i

give you my house
and my piggie flesh too
no need for a scene.

i
listen to the drone of rush hour traffic
while my feet touch the land of original settlers.
blood and sweat in the dirt and air,
they are for dinner, whole.
I am thinking again
and the mind conjures
up a rule that I am only pulled down
by that which i have not healed – what
does that mean?
do I/i remember my days as slave,
as master,
beast and bird?

when i move in the world,

i have become
a piece of the sky
in a sports bra.
there is room for every
crazy thing that i can imagine.
the I has forgotten,

but now i remember

the very next person/animal/plant/or insect that i cross
has chosen to cross my path for a holy encounter.
There is only now to

pray as i enter the post office –
talk to my sliver of chocolate –
and study the morse code of the dishwashers whirring
moving my hips to the swoosh:
no need to escape to the cave
any more.
The cave moves within me
as dark and silent
as can be –
a black hole
in motion –
swallowing
time behind her curving path.

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