Poetry

Passage

And it was cold… so cold,

and it was dark… so dark,

this cave of me.

Mother I thought I would never return,

deep jagged shadows consuming me,

then molten lost memories

rising through the freeze

to enveloping my skin,

shrouding me in a fiery cape.

I was slow inside of it,

confused and frightened

within this keeper of the gate.

Then a sound. Out of me came tears

hissing water on smoldering fire

like salty seafoam on liquid lava.

They were droplets at first, eaten up by heat

but they grew and flowed,

trickling, then streaming from my eyes

to meet liquid rock. read more

Still Learning

I have learned to stop moving,

slowed the mad-dash pursuit.

I have held on for dear life,

thinking I will learn stability

if it kills me

and it does,

but it is no death to mourn.

Now that I have learned

to hold still,

now that I have chosen

comfort,

now that I have learned

to speak

without saying anything,

maybe I will move to a

third condition

and embody what is real

beyond search

or seizure.

Tara Practice

I am one in a circle of many
who enter the sacred night,
who find what is given freely
in the spaciousness of beyond
and within.

Through my crown, Dakini light
saturates organ and skin,
throws itself deep into ground
through my feet,

leaving one white disc
spinning in this astonished heart,
waking quivering chakras,
spraying tenderness out in all directions.

I am the Moon’s bidding.
I am sister disc to She-who-invented-reflection.
There is nothing that cannot pass
through me,

so light is this spacious heart
when touched in the night
by Moon, by Tara, by Sangha,
all saying yes and yes
to each and to all who live.

For a moment at least,
I am, most simply, clear.

Lamplight at Dusk

Why is a clothespin clamped on
that lampshade whose lamplight
graces the white up-curled hair
at the nape of his neck?
Maybe to hold down
the burning glow within,
maybe to hold it carefully in shape
to keep flaming light from flying about
like sheets on the line.
This clothespin, this lampshade glow,
both hold steady
while the blue graying of dusk
paints window panes
with a promise of darkness I do not want.
Because soon I will not see the trees.
I’d rather this moment remain just this.
Let the yellow cast of one steady ray within
speak gently to the swirl of change out there.
Let the beauty of twilight blue and clothespin yellow
hold together the time and the timeless.

Silt of Soul

Divine light
seldom enters shining from above.
Almost never are harps in the lead.
It rises through muddy waters,
saturating the silt of soul,
releasing it to downstream flows
because an act of
flurry
mercy
courage
or patience
stirred a place
where divinity would hide.

Practice

Without friction

there is nothing

yet

in the presence of abrasion I freeze.

I fill with heat then to defend,

and it never matters who or what.

People call it fragile.

I call it practicing melting.

Journey

Permission granted,
we flew through some mist
of our making
or was it an ancient
vapor we found
following freely
the everso delicate space
between fingertips
and yielding palms,
headwings feeding the air
we shared
lifting us in alternating currents
through one another’s rise read more