Tag Archives: Life

First Blessing

We receive our first blessing when
the boy living down the street
asks us to be his girlfriend.

My daughter came inside for the evening
glowing with all future possibilities
embraced into the joy of being cared for.

She shared the unexpected news
before taking off her shoes and we danced
together with the front door still open.

How many times have our hearts
been made whole and for how long
do we frolic before laying our heads down?

This Morning

This morning I write when I do not feel like writing
without thought of ought or should
or striving to meet any standard of perfection.  
The words are all there in the air and,
whether I pull them down through my typing fingers
or leave them for another day or for someone else
to use for me, they patiently do not call for attention.

This morning the busyness of the world can go ahead
and compete against itself believing one side
or another can and will prevail.  I choose not to be
in the press of such effort but in the rhythm
of small places where people once stood
thinking there was something more to all of this.

What I Should Have Done

I begin these poems from journal entries
made in small, black books before I noticed
time flowing by me faster than a rapid river.
Now I return to learn the wisdom for the day
by dipping fingers in the moving water 
of what went under the bridge so long ago.

I dance with suffering servants
who have come down from their cross.

I laugh with laughing, fat monks carrying
bags of gifts over their shoulders.

I bring other divines together to see
how close they lay upon one another.

I do all of this to discover once again
that there is nothing on the other side
of wishing for what I should have done.

The Far Edges

I asked, "If every moment 
is different from the rest 
then how come I feel the same?"

She answered, "Noticing differences 
between the usual and the unusual
is part of the livening process."

I said, "As a species we are programmed
to see patterns and arrangements
to promote our own safety."

She said, "Whatever distinctions we make
on those days when the reality of truth
remains immeasurable fashion life."

I said, "I like how you never capitalize
the 't' in truth when you talk about
those things which matter most to you."

She said, "There is no evolving possible
if the absolutes linger at the far edges 
of where we wish to go and to be."

The Cracked Door

I stand in front of a slightly cracked door
illuminated, casting an image of myself 
as a dark figure forward into the present.
Though I am in a different place now
the same door opens wider than before.
The traditions of the moment recede.
Pieces of scholarship and commentary,
once part of the light, fade to coincidence.
The eternal begins to fit itself into places
where I have never been before.
I need to go, not into any realm of the divine,
but back into the space where I was once blessed.
There I do not need fateful hope
to attend to me like angels granting my every wish.
Instead I find my blessings from within
and from without the slightly cracked door.

That Difficult Place

Yesterday there was a whole bunch of stuff to ponder:
How notebooks of various sizes hold writing on the walls.
And how stores no longer carry what I most treasure.

I have often asked, When do you expect more in?
Knowing that the form of the next several days
Of my life depends upon the answer I receive.

Holding little confidence in the word "should"
Is something I learned in childhood though
Now I often dare to peek around corners at dawn.

And there, standing alone with arms spread wide,
Is the one who started the divine and holy madness
Where I am asked to step into that difficult place.

The One Question

I remember summer days 
when birds crowded the feeder 
and more walked below 
pecking at fallen seeds.
Somewhere a preacher asks 
of those listening with ears to hear
to draw the meaning of scripture 
out of the mythical realm 
and into daily experience.
Do the birds hear the same words?
The secret given to us at dawn,
does it still remain quiet and secure
after we have given it away so many times?
Though the words of the questions
remain the same, they can be rearranged
in infinite ways to provide the answer
to the one question always being asked:
Will the birds feed today?