Words
Poetry
Poetry was introduced to me through a dear friend when he handed me Letters to a Young Poet by Rilke. I was 22, living in London.
My appreciation for poetry deepened greatly during the pandemic as I spent time in green spaces — poetry books in hand — on long walks across open afternoons.
Mary Oliver, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Maya Angelou are a few writers who changed the way I see myself as part of the greater natural world, a larger process of becoming, and the interconnectedness of all things — how birth and death are notions of the mind, but not actual end points.
Poetry has become one of the ways I listen—to myself, to other people, and to the world. It gives language to things that are often difficult to name and reminds us to pay attention to what is already here.
Below are some poems I have written over the years.
Setting Sun
What if setting sun could take things with it to be cleansed, recycled, renewed…
Like a mud and blood soaked garment loosened from stain by mother’s knowing hands. Or, dried broken leaves swept from branch away by sunrise.
What if setting sun could take it all… our shame, our grief, our disconnection. What if sun, with her open rays, is asking us to give.
To give our misunderstandings, our losses, our violence, our broken hearts.
What would you give? What do you give? What broken shells of yesterday are better suited for sun’s setting embrace?
I lay down my doubts in being enough.
I lay down my fears that overcrowd my truth.
I lay down my anger that forgets that it too is loved.
What if all we have to do is turn over our used, our worn, our empty to setting sun…
What garments might Sun leave cleansed on your morning line?
There + Here
“With each step a gentle wind blows.”
The wind that is always there and here - under the swift thoughts of next and next and then…
The American Sign Language sign for soul directs energy right into the sternum, the heart.
There - here - is the practice.
The Dharma. The breath. The Life force. Appreciation.
The deep knowing of joy peering out our pupiled windows seeing how the light gives everything its own celebration waiting, or not, to be noticed.
The crumple atop the deep lake.
The deep dive beneath ideas of what needs improvement.
There - here - the flow of what I actually am. What we actually are.
Part of it all. Needing to determine none of it.
The space where the light tickles the surface calling the water skyward to remember how it is not just a crumple, but also a rainbow.
Always a new beginning.
Without having to know or choose.
There and here.
Little me
I'm sorry it took so long to remember what matters
To know that you matter
I'm sorry
I put so much into what hurt
Looking past what already was
I'm sorry
I left you there
To fear you were broken
I'm sorry
I made you doubt
That you are exactly what I've been searching for