Category: Poems

Take off your shoes,

or maybe your clothes,

and find a way to set yourself aside

without losing the fluid pulsing of your body.

Let the scrambling cease,

allow the fullness of the empty room

to sound like the silence of a cave.

Prepare to descend.

Know that she calls you deep into the earth,

listen to all the reasons you can’t go.

Pack them away like old sweaters you used to love.

Move with the trembling naked grace

of one who could choose another path, but won’t.

Allow the cold wet touch of fear in to your journey.

Lean into your rocks,

the slippery boulders that line your route down.

Know that you are lost.

Listen for the roar of the water,

the deep mother flowing underground,

echoing off the desolate walls of your soul

with an unrelenting invitation to love.

Sometimes you must leap

from your bed

upon hearing rain,

ignore the need to pee,

the fuzzy mouth and hair,

lurch drunkenly for the door

as you see the bright patch of sun

warming the wall.

Move from a place of desperation,

a yearning not to miss

the full colours of the rainbow.

She will not wait,

although she will return.

She will find you again at the borders of your life,

the sideways edges between dark and light.

But oh, today, why hold back from the mad rush?

What keeps you from staggering outside?

Go now,

bathe exultantly

in the resplendence of her serendipitous joy.

The deep hum

takes on a mournful note

when solitudes are silent at the edges

when voices are stilled

as the churches crumble away

and the cadence of community falters

when the falling apart has dropped its icicle shards

and the tinkling music of their smashing

has echoed its thrumming through the land.

The cornerstones that held our families

– hymns, justice, work bees –

have crumbled into necessary dust.

We need new bricks, new tools for building,

interlocking, sustainable,

mounted with flexible intent

by people who pledge allegiance to nothing at all.

These are my people,

the empty ones who make room for space,

who can hold each other as the walls fall down

in order to build with courage

a new tomorrow.

These are my sisters,

the ones who embrace my tears

because they hear the joy below them.

These are my brothers,

who find in their feelings a new honour

and share them with their sons.

These are my missing people,

hiding in the woods,

listening to the wind

so they can find their way.

Humming in the trees

so we can find each other.

Singing new songs in old ways

to celebrate the splendour.

I choose to believe in my body,

in its wisdom primeval,

the DNA of my ancestors

resting in my cells.

I choose to believe in my feelings,

the love and fear and trusted other signals,

the wisdom of my gut and the fluid of my joy.

I choose to believe in my right action,

the fire in my core,

the balanced heat between lazy and striving.

I choose to believe in the power of my planting,

a generous outpouring of seeds on rocky ground

where some will flower.

I choose to believe in my spacious heart,

an uncaged tenderness with room for all I meet.

I choose to believe in the transformative power of my lungs,

breathing in the pain of the world

to breathe out peace and healing.

I choose to believe in the deep resonance,

the joining of my ears and throat,

in listening to the complex music of the journey

and finding courage to sing.

I choose to believe in the empty canvas of my intuition,

the practice of wiping it clean to receive fresh vision.

I choose to trust in the beauty that arises,

the shared offerings that create our most communal meals.

I choose to believe in my divine insignificance,

the star dust that connects us all,

the deep empty underneath.

I choose to trust in the loving abundance

that spins the water wheel of creation.

There is a view of the world

where the chimneys all point down

and the birds rest with their feet on rooftops

so their heads are ready to dive

into the deep blue of the sky below them…

and in this place I feel the tremble,

real life coursing through my open heart

filling muscles with blood they’ve worked hard to restrain.

This place of quavering,

of learning to love wrinkles,

of wobbling into a new kind of strength

where nothing feels comfortable

and everything is held in love;

how quickly I want to move to the happy ending,

how much courage to stay raw…

Diurnal liturgy,

this dance of flesh and bone,

discomfort and spacious opening,

self-judgement

and expansive loss of self in a warm river…

living symbol,

outward and visible,

wrapped around space and time,

and then another breath.

This body a canvas,

an unplucked harp,

an intricate carving

dissolving back into tree,

sap flowing in spring

… apprenticeship in sand temples,

fleeting offerings to the sea.

And why is it only now

with the encroaching comforting midlife belly

and haggard love lines

and soft tolerant resignation

that I see the adolescent longing for company?

This teen who wanted to be known

and heard,

and merged and understood

and now must learn new gratitude

for the flickers

when faint whispers cross the chasm.

That day

when housework seemed the most loving act

of violence,

the best way to channel

creative destruction,

deep yearning restlessness and anger

provoked in a fury of sweeping,

a silent scratching at the pans,

a ripping asunder of bedclothes and the front hall…

the voices kept strident companionship,

carpet of history dusty underfoot,

shining taps of vision revealed

and even briefly washing away the grime.

You can turn your back on the sunrise

and still it grows,

so that with each burden you lift,

not watching,

it will flush more pink into the sky.

And every time you return to the east,

staggering,

to the place where you set your burden down,

the sky has painted a larger canvas

for blue and pink salmon to dance.

This net,

strung in the cold heights,

alone before dawn on the mountain,

just sits.

Or stands or waves in the breeze,

defined by its limitations,

supported by deep branches extending into earth.

Immersed in cold damp cloud,

it does nothing;

no subtle invitation,

no picking and choosing,

no rarefied invocation.

On days when the cold is cold

and the damp is heavily moist,

the passive collector

drips liquid

to thirsty villagers.