Compassion

I'm reading The Active Life: A Spirituality of Work, Creativity, and Caring by Parker Palmer.


He speaks to me in many ways, but most acutely, I am drawn to his comments on how to show compassion and care.

"there is no "fix" for the person who suffers, only the slow and painful process of walking through the suffering to whatever lies on the other side...we learn that being there is the best we can do, being there not as cure but as companion to the person who suffers...There is no arm's length "solution" for suffering, and people who offer such only add to the pain. But there is comfort and even healing in the presence of people who know how to be with others, how to be fully there...I have experienced deep depression. Both times various friends tried to resuce me with well-intended encouragement and advice: "Get outside and enjoy the sunshine," or "You have such a good life -why be depressed?" or "I know a book that might really help you." For all their good intentions, these friends made me even more depressed...Their advice served only to distance them from me, leaving me even more isolated. In fact, distancing ourselves from each other's pain is the hidden agenda behind most of our efforts to "fix" each other with advice. If you take my advice, and do it right, you will get well and I will be off the hook. But if you do not follow my advice...I am off the hook nonetheless: I have done the best I could, and your continued suffering is clearly your fault. By trying to fix you with advice, rather than simply suffering with you, I hold myself away from your pain."


Com-passion,

sit with me

hold my hand

and do not

wipe away my tears.

For Bev

Our friend Bev Melum passed away early Monday morning, October 19th.  A mutual friend said that felt she never really found her spiritual center, but what so many of us have learned is that our contemplative selves are expressed in motion, in action, in our living.  Some are called to sit and meditate, Bev was called to live vitally in her spirit, in the delicate motion of her hula hands, in the joyous click of her tap shoes, in her attentive listening that made everyone feel like s/he was her best friend.  To our friend, Bev:

Mystic in Motion
I am the dance
the light of devotion
and the life of joy.
With my body,
I set in motion
a revolution
that reshapes the world.

I am the simple rise
of Isodora’s hand
to greet a curtain of sky,
an indispensable pale blue
cyclorama of mystery.
For 69 years
I have endeavored to fly.

I am the dance
the soul of the soil,
stirred by indigenous feet.
Once callously earth bound
with acorns, sticks and all the unseen
that conceive precarious landings,
I am now unshod and free.

I am the dance
costumed in rainbow hues,
both contrast and harmony
to gray grief and parched-brown Lamentations.
I am a light-haired Phoenix rising.
I billow and swirl in hula skirts,
launched only by merest accident.

I am an apparition
of butterflies, orchids, flames,
or what on earth imagination fancies.
I am a fleeting illusion,
painting the world as I see it,
still,
here and now.
Follow me,
for to dance is human
and to die is to have lived
fully in the dance.
I am the dance
still
here and now.

Autumn again

by Barbara Aglaia & Wendy Thompson


Beneath a tacit
moon, disquieting hours
amidst oblique rain -

last yellow leaves fade to brown
last of summer heat dies down.

The final labors
in gardens before school bells
crisply chime morning.

Hopes and dreams of endless fun
sound against work left undone.

Further north, lonely loons
cry against a Matisse blue
the unacknowledged -

traversing the great unknown
always and never alone.

This is the cycle
of love, spectrums of unknown,
twilight mystery.

Rhythms knock against old fear,
soul sighs, be still and listen.

Still as a snowflake
before landing on your tongue ~
a winter allegro.

Rise, soar to sunflower high,
summer glories full, replete.

Shadow self

I am reading A Hidden Wholeness by Parker Palmer. "I deny my inner darkness, giving it more power over me, or I project it onto other people, creating "enemies" where none exist." I'm really struggling with that right now...not projecting my darkness on to others. I dreamt that someone, a friend, and I were on a trip in France, having a great time until I said, "Oh, what time does my flight leave?" and the friend said, "You have to be at the airport in 15 min." I went into a panic trying to pack my bags in the tidy, organized fashion I was accustomed to while the "friend" sat off in the shadows laughing at my panic and compulsions and I got angrier and angrier that she wasn't helping me get my baggage in order.

Well, if everyone in our dreams is a representation of self...then I am must really be pissed at my shadow self for not helping me get my baggage together, to help me get home. It is not my friends' responsibility to help me clean up my act, carry my baggage, or even keep track of time for me. Need to find a way to stop that sabotaging shadow self keep seducing me away from self care.

Any suggestions anyone?

fall is coming and then winter

This poem is only about apples

and bucolic memories of autumn gold
during a Pennsylvania childhood,
where in early fall I would
climb craggy apple tree limbs to load
the skirt front of my tee shirt
with Braeburns and tangy Crispins for sweet desserts.
This poem is about a bushel basket between my knees
and mother teaching me how to pare Fujis
in a spiral toward my thumb leaving, in the end,
tiny rough pectin-brown cuts like on her thumbs.
I always wondered if my fingerprint would change,
if I could alter my identity by paring McIntosh,
leaving, in the end, a bowl of orange-red swirls
like the ringlets I tried to create every night
in my own thin hair with pink foam rollers.
I didn’t like myself then. I wanted to be beautiful.
I wasn't, but this poem is about apples.
I am tired of writing about a pending winter,
darkness, and love. I have had too much, bruised,
I roam through memories from the east,
where everything began.
I write about apples and fall and recall
the Amish apple-head dolls
with their shriveled faces set
above black aprons in miniature rocking chairs.
Would I ever live to be that old?
How many winters until then?
How many freezers full of applesauce, apple cider,
and apple pie with lattice top?
My mother taught me how to bake,
pick the fleshy pink, bruised or not,
they all have worth, but I don't bake much anymore,
not for one, living in the west, where everything ends.
Blossoms pass, Golden Delicious fades.
I have an apple tree waiting for me before winter’s sleep,
confident that I will step out of my darkness
soon enough to pluck the last fruit from its branch,
blushed on the sun side, I dip a slice in caramel sauce
and remember who I am, where I came from,
and I delight again in the inner sweetness of my life —
a great harvest —
the only life in front of me.

Full Moon

Reflections on sharing the one moon.

Under the Same Moon

midnight moon
the neighbor on his deck
I, on mine
he retreats to shadows
we share solitude


two moons tonight
one pocked with craters
one reflects
illusions off the lake
a slim, white trail to you


inconstant globe
mid this summer night
lust and shadow
the moon is in the man
impossibility rains


splinter moon
white and veiled like a bride
split at last
solitude at last
is yours. I sleep near by.

Only one day in time

A dancer understands that time is a product of space. Time is ungraspable. Carpe Diem

Will You Dance with Me?

In a chartreuse centrifuge of wholeness
we spin with silken integrity ~
a green chili greening into fullness.

Two alarm fire of boldness.
Will you, will you dance with me
in a chartreuse centrifuge of wholeness?

Tangos unveil a budding newness.
Away from center, we defy gravity ~
a green chili greening into fullness.

You know, that lush velvet twinning to oneness.
We swelter in salty humidity
a chartreuse centrifuge of wholeness.

Tend and trust the waltz of opposites
coupled in concrete fragility ~
a green chili greening into fullness

This biting salsa resists all dominance
through a supercilious depth of spontaneity
and a chartreuse centrifuge of wholeness
we dance a green chili greening into fullness.

Time as a tide

Defined by the moon, we paddle against or drift along with, thinking that by falling back or springing forward we can be aligned with nature or even control time.

Daylight Savings

What are we saving?
forcing this spring
three weeks earlier
like a hot-house experiment
while another mother dies
like winter, still
a young father, too
barely thirty-two
and yet
the air is thick
with hyacinth
suburban sidewalks
team with scooters
and bicycles
and walkers
and all ages
of activity
the man next door
and his invisible companion
re-seed the lawn
from dawn until
afternoon,
a 3x3 patch
of golf course grass
he aerates and oh so tenderly
brushes over the new seed
like covering an aging father’s bald spot

To Rumi & Beyond

My spiritual journey began seriously in 2003 when I met my anam cara, loving spirit friend, and we exchanged daily poems, scriptures, gospel and conversation. Like Rumi had Shams of Tabriz, I had my friend and we were immersed in the seeking, the questioning, the defining what cannot be defined. In 2005, we engaged in a month long study of Rumi poems. I was familiar with Rumi as a love poet, and not even knowing that his companion was a man, I relished in the daring sensuality of his words. Through that study, I came to realize that Rumi’s love of Shams was the human manifestation of his love for God and God’s love for all of us. His poems were love letters to God. I finally found my way in to the Bible and a framing for my relationship with God.

About that same time, I started studying with Marcus and Marianne Borg at the Center for Spiritual Development in Portland (http://www.center-for-spiritual-development.org/). The Borg’s lead an annual pilgrimage to Turkey to follow the journey of the Apostle Paul. Rumi was from Turkey and something clicked with me that this was a pilgrimage I needed to join. For four years I was either on the waiting list, didn’t have the money, or the trip was cancelled. Finally, I am on the list to go this next May (my 50th birthday) and even though I don’t have the money, I’m going. In preparation for this trip I’m re-reading as many Rumi and Shams poems as I can. I begin, of course, with The Essential Rumi with translations by Coleman Barks. Rumi suggests that the journey to God and self begins in the taverns (even though the drunkenness of spirit begins in “God’s Tavern”).

"All day I think about it, then at night I say it.
Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing?
I have no idea.
My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that,
and I intend to end up there.

This drunkenness began in some other tavern.
When I get back around to that place,
I'll be completely sober. Meanwhile,
I'm like a bird from another continent, sitting in this aviary.
The day is coming when I fly off,
but who is it now in my ear, who hears my voice?
Who says words with my mouth?

Who looks out with my eyes? What is soul?
I cannot stop asking.
If I could taste one sip of an answer,
I could break out of this prison for drunks.
I didn't come here of my own accord, and I can't leave that way.
Whoever brought me here will have to take me home!

This poetry. I never know what I’m going to say.
I don’t plan it.
When I’m outside the saying of it,
I get very quiet and rarely speak at all."

--Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi translated by Coleman Barks


I have had my time in the bars, I have had my time in the dark scream of depression, I have had my time uninhibited and numb, I have asked the questions there, in the narrow darkness and now I ask, “Why do you stay in prison/when the door is so wide open?/Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking. /Live in silence./Flow down and down in always/widening rings of being.”

In the spirit of the movie, “Julie & Julia” I am blogging myself through Rumi again with my own poetic responses. Your responses are also appreciated. This poem follows the Rumi form of a quatrain (four line stanza)

Look,

I am looking for one
who can endure me...
Sadly, I must acknowledge
you are not the one.

I am looking for one
who will step out
from dark bars
and drunken passions

where grapes split
and ooze and merge
with other similar grapes
settled in sealed vats.

I am looking for one
who will cross thresholds,
squint in light and seek
alongside but not in me ~

one who knows union,
comm-union without
fear. One who will
hold in a gaze of silence

until dusk and truth
emerge like cognac
passed bitter and burning
between our lips.

I am looking for ilm~
divine, luminous, wisdom,
an ocean expansion
with “widening rings of being.”

Time

I've been reading Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman. Beginning with time as a circle, repeating over and over through infinity on to time as river flowing over sticks and stones to the ocean, God, infinity. Then there is linear, one dimensional, flat time, parallel and 2D time, or 3D perpendicular time offering possibility and choice. Time without choice, pendular, a metronome of predetermined monotony. Or time amorphous, moving in fits and starts, reactive only to basic need fulfillment. I read on, sparked to note in my journal all the manifestations of time, one paragraph ahead of the author, every time.

I have my own theory of time as a double helix, which I'll write about later, but I was compelled to blog after reading this section, "It [time] is a world of impulse. It is a world of sincerity. It is a world in which every word spoken speaks just to that moment, every glance given has only one meaning, each touch has no past or no future, each kiss is a kiss of immediacy."

Do not fear it

Do not mark
nor mar that evanescent moment
Suspended
between all the hours of living,
the hours of purpose.


That moment
had nothing to do with anything ~
not your life nor mine.
Do not carry that kiss with you,
Nor calm
the fervent phantom touch.


Rather,
let the lambent flush linger
like rainforest air ~
Wet, sultry wet.
Let it be,
in the ancient, waiting air.


Let it be that single moment
when you breathe a coral-pink rose
or hear the lonely locomotive cry
on the other side of the river.
Let it be that moment
when the northern lights catch
your breath and toss it to the night.
Let it be the chicory Cabernet
that sharpens your tongue ~
or the cool glass contrast.


That moment between,
the one that whispered down our spines,
Was no more than the brief pleasure
of silk skirts dancing round your thighs.
______________________

I have a friend who seems brilliantly able to live in the moment. She is an artist, and like most artists ~ like me, I believe, is comfortable enough in the chaos that is the irrational universe. She does not appear to need to console herself with creating order or contemplating rational, scientific reasons, explanations for why. Strikingly satisfied with what is... is, she teaches me.

I am an artist, delighting in the unknown, the chaos, the thin mountain air space of time, but I am also a scientist, curious, and a theologian, anguished by, "Why? How? What does it all MEAN?" My friend reaches into the immediacy and tosses moments at me, which I then take and muddle and muse over until I have found its place in the grand jigsaw of my life, or its place in a poem. If I offer my order back to her too orderly, she says I have made too much of the thing. If I give the thing its gossamer due, then neither of us have to fear losing ourselves to the other and there is ease.
_____________________
It is the quiet moments that matter:
the cat stalking my pen as I write this page,
the rattle then hum of my old refrigerator,
signifying home,
laundry folded,
freshly cut grass,
one single candle lit for a simple prayer,
God, keep her safe, please.

I cannot

in that moment, last night at the party,
that moment between our fingers,
yours and mine, as we pass the stemmed glass,
wine and water shared,
as we pass the glass back and forth,
crystal rim moistened
by both our lips, our lips
(only we know have touched),
but last night, under the stars,
in front of friends,
when our fingertips touch,
the details of living explode like snapdragons
between us.
_____________________
These two poems were written five years apart, mused by different lovers, but both reflecting an anachronistic love, one, that would not, could not fit into the 3D order of either of our lives. Held in time, attached to place and space and person, these poems became secrets and the love forbidden. But today, I wish to release them, like a meteor shower above all the tides of our August 22, 2009, Portland, Oregon living. Time is not their gatekeeper, their ruler. They are of kairos, not chronos. No one can touch them now, tarnish them, claim them; they are available for all as all Inspiration should be. These poems are now released to time as breathlessness and a heartbeat, sincere, true, no past/future attachments, lost and found in a crescendo of infinite One.

Power of Place

My One Particular Place:

is it the exact center
of a boulder in the exact
center of a glacial runoff
in the inexact center
of a field of purple lupine
and red paint brush
below an exacting August sun
suspended over Elk Meadows?

or, is it this seem-less longing
for nothing between us
but lavender, cotton sheets
and Abba lyrics:
“…the sun is still in the sky
…let me hear you sing once more
like you did before.
Sing a new song, chiquitita.”

My place is wherever gardens grow
or need to grow, impatiens
and luxurious gladiolas, crimson
with passion and summer ending.
My place is the space between:
preparing for my first dive and the kiss
of lake water on nubile fingertips.

My place is not where I grew up
except for the horse stables,
sassafras roots, and wooded
wandering deer trails
that led me to contemplation
under apple trees
in fields of Black Angus cows.
“You were always sure of yourself.”

then, but now, place
is pain, “a blown out candle”
between love and declaration
“Will you try again?”
Between “patch it up”
and let it go,
between the first glass of wine
in the bottle and the last.

Then and now, place
is in the darkened stairwell
of the Hopewell Methodist Church
where an icon painting of Jesus
and an aged copy of Desiderata
expand my skin and detonate
my soul into the place between,
the white space, the thin place.

My place is where “heartaches
come and they go and the scars
they’re leaving. You’ll be dancing
once again and the pain will end.
You will have no time for grieving.
Try once more, like you did before
Sing a new song, chiquitita…
There is no way you can deny it.”

Tired, just plain tired

"This that is tormented and very tired,
tortured with restraints like a madman,
this heart.
Still you keep breaking the shell
to get the taste of its kernel!" ~ Rumi

This that is love.
This that is desire for companionship
under the moon.
Still I keep breaking open
with hope that it might be you.

A Single Person Dwelling

I am many roomed
and every year there are fewer corners,
less closets, softer lighting, and ceilings that vault and vault.
Songs whisper through my walls:
cotton lullabies that rock me to sleep,
velvet green ballads, safe in their loneliness, and sometimes
the floors quake with a Barbra Streisand sing-along.

Laughter surrounds my walls
like tree frogs in the garden. Someday, soon, I will open
the back door and those leggy frogs will spring into the kitchen,
fill the sink and we will all croak and chuckle contagiously.
But for now I am content in knowing they are just outside the window.

A formal entrance, the front door, opens to an orderly white.
Exacting angle of an ottoman and precise tilt
of the picture frames may cause you to pause and ask,
“Unapproachable? Cool? Elegant, but stiff?”
Do not hesitate.
Do not pause. Please, come in.
Turn my rooms upside down.
Leave your garden footprints on the China Silk carpet.

Yes, the toothpaste is neatly rolled from the bottom up.
Yes, spices and books are alphabetized, magazines fanned
on the coffee table, and socks color-coded in their drawer.
But, poems fly across rooms in random chaotic scribbles,
furniture shoved aside when the need to dance arrives.
Passions stack up for the weekend
when a mere word like “mellifluous” can extend the day
into a ‘never get out of my bathrobe’ flurry,
a Tigerlily tangle, an elegant mess.

Orchids bloom in steamy bathrooms, but die on precious shelves.
Can you smell the wet carnations, vanilla, violets, and bread?
Do you notice the ladybug on the light switch -- in my many rooms?

In my many rooms there is moonlight that slides in
through partially opened blinds; moonlight like memory
that lays in blue-white streams over elbows, wrists, and fingertips—
moonlight like memory that cannot be held.

Oldy, but appropriate for today

As I walk this trail again

grant me the draft
of a thousand butterflies under my skin.
Let my mouth water
at succulent clusters of purple lupine,
clover and blackberry blossoms.
Let each bite of picnic bread
tingle my lips,
kisses from the divine.
Let me hear the mourning dove
above bulldozers
rumbling in a straight line.

construction deconstruction reconstruction
grant me release

Let me float on this trail
above the iron cold weight of uncertainty.
Raze my life
and grant me peace.
Raze me down
so that I might rise.
Raze me down and recover my soul
then let me fly
through a towering cedar mystery.

Finding Form

Put your hands in the clay
Put my hands in the clay
Let the heat of our hands
the heat of our histories
sculpt the cool amorphous mass
Let the heat of our hands
our fingers
curl, stretch, dig,
unfurl our lives
sculpt our love
Let the heat rise above the coolness
of fear and unknowing
Rise and shape the new
now

Saturday Morning

It's noisy here today:

1)The slap, slap, slap of a basketball in the neighbor boy's driveway...an occasional thwang on the rim;

2)the morning crow, there's just one, the same one, every morning at 6:00 a.m., caw, caw, caw...thrice warning,,,I have a poem somewhere on this blog about the ominous crow and a pall over my life...I think I was reading Shakespeare at the time;

3)lawn mowers, chain saws, edgers...the busy sound of sweat and Saturday chores;

4)the yellow lab next door barks at the morning jogger, the mailperson, the bumblebee, and the crow.

I can't sleep in and have a lawn to mow before kayaking. I'm looking forward to the droll flap, flap, flap of the Heron's wings over the Tualatin.

Dog Sees God

I'm going to the play tonight, "Dog Sees God." I find the title a bit ironic because I've been playing with palindromes all week with my writing students and just this morning I was reflecting on how and where I "see" God. I know the play has, on the surface, nothing to do with God. It is about the Peanuts/Charlie Brown comic strip characters growing up. By the time I finish this post, I will have seen the play and may have more insight into how it is about God.

Why was I teaching palindromes in writing? Well, we were working on character sketch, vernacular, speech patterns, and I told students that Barbara Kingsolver's book, The Poisonwood Bible has a character who only speaks in palindromes. So I brought in some examples and challenged the students to come up with their own literary palindromes. One student brought in, "Madam, I'm Adam." I remembered Weird Al Yankovic's song Bob, dedicated to Bob Dylan, that is entirely made up of palindromes, "I, man, am regal a German am I.......Go hang a salami, I'm a lasagna hog." You can see the entire poem at (http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/Bob-lyrics-Weird-Al-Yankovic/64A208DBB08E381D48256D2E000AABEA). So we challenged ourselves all week to create those literary palindromes.

We also challenge ourselves in writing to 'show don't tell', which is a classic literary technique involving the use of concrete images to show what abstract sentences tell. Ex: Telling sentences: Al Yankovic is weird. Showing sentences: "Al's hair sticks out like he stuck his finger in a socket. He speaks in a crazed, caffeinated voice, and wears stripped bell bottom hip huggers even in 2009."

My friend and the president of our church wrote about the challenge of showing her 5 year old where God is. Where God isn't is a heaven where the boy can visit his sisters and get home in time for dinner. I began to think...how do we show don't tell a five year old where we find God?

This is what I came up with:
God is in the friendly wave from a neighbor who would help me jump start my car even though he doesn't know my name.

God is in the crow who wakes me every morning: caw, caw, caw. We need you.
out in the world
awake, awake, awake.
There is life
for you to live.
There is work
for you to do.
There is joy
for you to feel.
There is love.

God is in your hugs and in my good night kiss.

God is in your friend's hand, offered you when you fall down.

God is in the tears of the mother who misses her lost babies.

God is in the moon, the same single moon that can be gazed at by every single person in the entire world.

God is in the minuscule spider scampering up a thin strand of web...why?...for the same reason she repels back down five minutes later.

God is in the earthquakes, the tsunamis, the fire at the Dougy Center and in the troubled heart of the arsonist who set that fire.

God...where is God? How do we find God?

God is in the courage it takes each of us, every day, to rebuild our lives.


So the play was interesting. CB deals with the death of his dog and the death of his lover "Beethoven." He asks his friends about life after death. There is a bit of Buddha, a bit of what the Bible says, a bit of outrage, and a bit of love. Where do we find God in life and in death? In the pain and the sorrow, in the love and loss, in the life sometimes not worth living, in the death that came too soon. Life can really suck canal water, but good grief, wasn't that part of God's plan?

I LOVE to teach

Okay, so this isn't really poetic, but the last post came from a daydream about the life we'd be living if we weren't living the life we're living. I put that question on my blog and one friend said, "Same song, second side." I have to say that that is where I am today.

It is only Tuesday and my week is full. I'm teaching two writing classes this week and I ended up texting my friend to say, "Teaching makes me feel centered and whole." I've had almost two years with limited teaching. My friends keep asking why I'm not teaching because I sound happiest when I am. I am not only happy, but also motivated, centered, challenged, engaged, and most of all, feeling like I am fulfilling a purpose in life, which is not what I feel when I am typing data entry all day in a computer under florescent lights, in an ergonomically unsophisticated chair.

So I thanked my boss for giving me more teaching assignments out of the office. I emailed some friends the following:

Amy, your imagery is palpable, your longing even more so. Claim your life, girl. Interestingly enough, I've been teaching again this week, using your poem you contributed to Caryn's blog, and I am beginning to re-claim my life as a teacher. Happiness is a heavy oak desk, with a stack of dreams written on torn notebook paper, and 13 students eager to please. Happiness, for me, is the 7th grade boy, who barely makes eye contact through his extra-long bangs and is embarrassed by his father's presence on the first day, slumps in his chair, but finally speaks out. He cracks a literary joke that all the other awkwards get, smiles a sideways smile, still no eye contact, but now, he knows he is a writer. Happiness is the ESL (English Second Language) student who returns the second day even though he had no idea what I was talking about the first day. Oh, and happiness is the other ESL child who produces an introduction to his story about his future that is so provocative I get goose bumps, and he grins when I tell the class that his first three sentences could be read in a published novel. "Three out of five children in Taiwan don't know what a blue sky looks like. I gaze at the half-dead sky through my little window and wonder."

Those amazing two sentences happened simply because I asked the students to start their story in three different ways: dialogue, fact, or description.

So I know I'm a teacher when I can get students to produce words like that. Yet, i am humble in this knowledge. It's a channeling sort of activity, it's, dare I say, God's work through me.

When we engage in our calling, we are whole. We are satisfied. We are content to put aside the excessive television watching, the addictive habits of the evening, and we continue on in our giving of gifts.

I asked to live the life I dreamed; same song, second side. I received.

The Life I Still Dream of Living

The Home I Long to Return to

was re-discovered
today in the pages torn
from Architectural Digest – glossy
photographs of room, after room, after room

and a Mediterranean
light through blue-white
curtains that swayed in the morning
breeze like Edelweiss or chiffon kites

blown onto the veranda
(also white and aged with salt water).
Bedroom, livingroom, kitchen, garden, bath,
photographs, patched together into a home, torn

from a magazine
during stolen moments
when we dreamed of the life we
wanted to live if we were not living

this life, with
only a trail of sweetpeas
and philodendron to remind us
of sea-green fantasies in the south

of France,
where lemons roll
in cobblestone streets
below lavender scented Alps,

while you
stack Caprese, fresh
basil always lazily in reach
from our rustic kitchen window.

Two glasses
of Bordeaux on granite
countertop, your bright camellia
lips, outside the photographer’s frame,

in the white space
for me to imagine: this house,
this life, this scrapbook of our future,
now sepia-toned with age and neglect,

these pages
of the house that never
lived, except for in our dreams,
these pages fold in on themselves today.

Rhythm & rhyme of healing

Recently I attended a song writing workshop (http://www.bravevoice.com/), not really sure that my poetry would translate into song because I rarely use rhymes. I did manage to get a spoken word piece put together with an amazing R&B artist, Kelley Hunt (http://www.kelleyhunt.com/). She was graciously open and generously found a hook line and a gospel rhythm for me to sing my poetry to. Kelley and Kansas poet laureate Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg (http://www.carynmirriamgoldberg.com/) have co-created some brilliant work on the CD Mercy. And some of the lyrics don't rhyme.

This weekend, as I dug away at the neglected dirt in my garden and reflected on the Law of Attraction, I listened to Jewel. Many of her songs stand alone, without the music, as poignant poems. There's a place for me, I thought. My poems do have a musicality to them that I'm certain reflects my former career as a modern dancer. One of the reasons I took this workshop was to be able to move and sing with my poems. Rhythm and rhyme help to make words stick with us (as in mnemonic devices, nursery rhymes, and hymns).

In my morning meditation, I challenged myself to write at least three rhyming poems that I could remember and repeat throughout the day like an affirmation. I've been working hard to shift my thought patterns from depressed and negative to positive, hopeful, affirming, with a desire to attract more positive into my life. Most of my spiritual lessons I learn from nature, so I decided to write short "songs" about the seeds I had planted the previous weekend. I'll refrain from over editing and intellectualizing. Below are three simple poems:

Portulaca Portulaca
What a funny, sunny name.
Portulaca Portulaca
will you join me in a game?

I planted you three days ago ~
how about we make a bet?
By the time I see your tender stems,
a gentle lover I will get.


Once upon a time
I planted Columbine ~
tiny seeds hidden in my hand.
Life line creases
palmed possibility,
sifted through fingertips to the land.



I asked the impatiens seeds, "What will it take
to release me fully from this sorrow-filled wake?"

Sunshine and soil, sweat of the brow
Tend to your needs, water us now.

Time is all, let the wait be your bliss.
Be patient my friend and you'll be kissed

by joy as verdant as my sprouting leaf.
It took so little, less than a week

for me to reveal what's been seeding underground ~
new life, new life, this morning you found.

To Mina Loy~

just for fun, across time and space, through my acclivity

...for a declivity
into depravity
there is no first or last,
only equality,
which is, perhaps,
why it appeals to me ~
we are all the same
at the bottom
of the slippery slope,
no One better
only worse
for space and time.
We can merely hope
that our propensity
for Liquor, Love and Lust
is just a side Bar
with little immensity
in the thrust toward Absolute.

Tell Me

How is it that the first sighting of delicate, new blades of grass can bring me such pleasure. I actually gasped with excitement when I saw that the seeds planted 10 days ago actually sprouted in nubile wonder...and on May Day. Happy verdant Beltane to all.

Leisure

by William Henry Davies

What is this life if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs

And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,

Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,

Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,

And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can

Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

Cape Disappointment

You broke my horizon,
claiming a noble neglect,
"I don't want to hurt you
like others have hurt you."





Yet, we became a tragedy anyway,
one of recognizable proportion.

Now, knowing the sorrow
of waves on ragged rock,
wounded shorelines,
and a seagull's scream,
the ocean is no longer a lullaby
unless this song was our last.

I have loved, oh God, the beauty...Psalm 26

Why is that not enough ~
loving the beauty, oh
when everything else is gone
does the etching of love remain ~
yellow lips deep within
open petals of violet iris,
echos of a poet's heartbeat,
cello vibrations, strummed,
rippling out, faint but still
audible, attainable
when all else is said and done?

The sword fern awaits
my planting.

My Nephew Grows Up

From dressed to charm at 4 months to dressed to...protect.

I yam what I yam

THAT SORT OF WOMAN
by Jan L. Richardson

She is that sort of woman
so annoying
not content
to let the truth stay hidden.
Discovering
is her forte,
revealing the masks
that others choose,
reminding those
who dwell near the holy
fire will find them
shadows will take form.

Restless Spring

The first hummingbird buzzed by
yesterday late ~
fluttered in place
against an airy wake
and sucked the sweetness
I’d put out for her.
Essence

yesterday late
afternoon ~ a brief visit
from an old friend ~
And the ebony crow, too
cawed his thrice warning
about the ache of love,
as he bent a lofty bough
with a scold, then flew away
as shadows fell.
How straight the crow flies.


This morning, a riotous flock
of starlings commune
in the camellia bush.
It’s warm enough
to sit on the porch
in shirt sleeves with a second
cup of coffee and Mary Oliver ~
Our Story, her 40-year conversation
with a lover, her partner, her mate.

My craving for companionship ~
to be with one who understands
me without explanation ~
that craving is at odds
with a seasonal, burgeoning
desire to experience life,
once again, autonomously.

This is my half-story,
always a partial contentment.
I really am trying
to let loneliness and fear
rest from their vigil
over my life.

Today, I accept the silence
from a friend, trust
what is stirring and growing
healing and becoming
in the spring soil.
She has imposed
a silence on me as well,
“Do not write me anymore.”
Heard too much from me
I imagine, my muffled
half of the story.
Why is it we only wish
to hear and tell our stories
from the safe side
our side?

Just now, a pit bull
and its owner walk by.
I hear the innocent
click click of the bull’s nails
on pavement and see only
an easy saunter
in the black man’s gait.

For our Journey

This being human is a guest house

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing,

and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.
-Rumi

Lenten Renewal

I haven't written for a very long time (as some of you faithful ones have noted). There is a reason...I haven't been myself. This January I crashed into that realization and started looking for solutions to find myself again. One solution was to rent my own space again. It has been wonderful sharing a space with my friend...she has been generous and we have been relatively compatible, but I really am a soloist when it comes to living space. I missed my art work on the walls, my own garden space, talking to myself without getting caught. :-).

So I came upon a little yellow house to rent, only a mile away from the "fun house" with the poetry pole. With great intention, I found a place for every knick-knack and wall hanging. If the piece didn't fit, I stored it, threw it away, or gave it away. Slowly, I am finding a rhythm to my day in this house. I am reading, writing and meditating again in the mornings...renewing my spiritual self...reading at night again. Most importantly, I am addressing old habits (addictions if you will) that have kept me from me. This is the hardest part, being still and silent, grieving if that's what comes up, until I can feel me in my body again. I wake in the mornings in my lavender and white room feeling my spirit hesitating to re-enter this body. "How are you going to treat me today?" it seems to ask.

My little yellow house has some small neglected gardens in front and back. There is a hunk-o-bamboo that appears randomly placed in the middle of the lawn. I was going to try to remove it, but it is too big and too deep. As I looked closer, I realized someone had a plan with this bamboo. Someone left before the plan was complete. It is my job to wait until I can see where that garden wants to go next.

To the right of the front door is a garden bed with lavender and tulips popping up. I planted some baby rust hens and chicks barely visible in the red rock right now, but I know they will spread and acclimate quickly. Purple heather and euphorbia will also fill out nicely in a zero-scape kind of way. Calluna vulgaris, with its downy gray leaves and pink tips, is so rooted in her pot that it takes quite a bit of coaxing to get her out and planted in the new space. I decide to transplant the tulips and other spring bulbs into the center bed where I have planted the proverbial purple lupine, already catching tear drops of rain in its open palm of green.

One tulip, a single leaf, that I think will be shallow and young, easy to move, refuses to reveal its bulb. I dig my trowel past the red rock, inching into clay soil, blindly easing around what I assume is the bulb. Then I press down on the handle, lifting a hunk of soil, no bulb; only the broken stem.

This week I broke a friend's trust. I hurt someone I love. I dug too deep (or not deep enough), pushed too soon and now I believe she will no longer bloom in my presence. Who am I to be someone a friend can't trust? Who am I to be so cruel? I can't just say, "Oh well, maybe next year. At least I didn't slice the bulb. I only broke off a stem. That's life. I'm not perfect." I can't say any of that right now. I have to say to myself that I didn't take care enough, I didn't let well enough alone. Why? Because I have not been myself? Why, because I have numbed myself with all sorts of distractions and addictions and it is time to fully admit that I am lost and must do all I can to find myself again.

I am paying the price of losing myself (in some ways literally- as in a car payment and higher insurance). My Epiphany word this year (we get one every year at church) is ALERT. I get it now. I thank the garden, I thank my friend, I thank my little yellow house, and I thank God that I didn't do more damage than I did, that I am awake now and ready to take that first humble step of renewal.