Category: Poetry

"you came here to learn ... "

9/17/2017

“Dear Human:
You've got it all wrong.
You didn't come here to master unconditional love. This is where you came from and where you'll return.
You came here to learn personal love.
Universal love.
Messy love.
Sweaty Love.
Crazy love.
Broken love.
Whole love.
Infused with divinity.
Lived through the grace of stumbling.
Demonstrated through the beauty of... messing up.
Often.
You didn't come here to be perfect, you already are.
You came here to be gorgeously human. Flawed and fabulous.
And rising again into remembering.
But unconditional love? Stop telling that story.
Love in truth doesn't need any adjectives.
It doesn't require modifiers.
It doesn't require the condition of perfection.
It only asks you to show up.
And do your best.
That you stay present and feel fully.
That you shine and fly and laugh and cry and hurt and heal and fall and get back up and play and work and live and die as YOU.
Its enough.
It's Plenty.”
Courtney A. Walsh

long afternoon at the edge of little sister pond

6/28/2017

“Every day,” says Mary Oliver, “I walk out into the world / to be dazzled, then to be reflective.”

by Mary Oliver
As for life,
I’m humbled,
I’m without words
sufficient to say
how it has been hard as flint,
and soft as a spring pond,
both of these
and over and over,
and long pale afternoons besides,
and so many mysteries
beautiful as eggs in a nest,
still unhatched
though warm and watched over
by something I have never seen--
a tree angel, perhaps,
or a ghost of holiness.

Every day I walk out into the world
to be dazzled, then to be reflective.
It suffices, it is all comfort--
along with human love,
dog love, water love, little-serpent love,
sunburst love, or love for that smallest of birds
flying among the scarlet flowers.
There is hardly time to think about
stopping, and lying down at last
to the long afterlife, to the tenderness
yet to come, when
time will brim over the singular pond, and become forever,
and we will pretend to melt away into the leaves.
As for death,
I can’t wait to be the hummingbird,
can you?

sometimes

6/3/2017

THE HOUSE OF BELONGING

5/28/2017

I awoke
this morning
in the gold light
turning this way
and that
thinking for
a moment
it was one
day
like any other.

messenger

5/23/2017

LET US BE

4/27/2017

Let us be women to lay down our words,
            our sharp looks, our ignorant silence and towering stance
            and fill the earth with extravagant Love.
Let us be women who Love.
Let us be women who make room.
Let us be women who open our arms and invite others into an
            honest, spacious, glorious embrace.

THE OPENING OF EYES

4/23/2017

The Opening of Eyes
That day I saw beneath dark clouds
the passing light over the water
and I heard the voice of the world speak out,
I knew then, as I had before
life is no passing memory of what has been
nor the remaining pages in a great book
waiting to be read.
It is the opening of eyes long closed.
It is the vision of far off things
seen for the silence they hold.
It is the heart after years
of secret conversing
speaking out loud in the clear air.
It is Moses in the desert
fallen to his knees before the lit bush.
It is the man throwing away his shoes
as if to enter heaven
and finding himself astonished,
opened at last,
fallen in love with solid ground.
-- David Whyte

walk slowly

3/23/2017

It only takes a reminder to breathe,
a moment to be still, and just like that,
something in me settles, softens,
makes space for imperfection.
The harsh voice of judgement
drops to a whisper and I remember again
that life isn't a relay race;
that we all will cross the finish line;
that waking up to life is what we
were born for.
As many times as I forget,
to catch myself charging forward
without even knowing where I am going,
that many times I can make the choice
to stop, to breathe, and be, and walk
slowly in the mystery.
- "Walk Slowly" by Danna Faulds
We invite you to pause and reflect:

How are you "charging forward" at this time? Where is that taking you?
What mystery might you walk more slowly into at this time in your life?

jailbreak

3/22/2017

“Jailbreak” by Maya Spector
It’s time to break out --
Jailbreak time.
Time to punch our way out of
the dark winter prison.
Lilacs are doing it
in sudden explosions of soft purple,
And the jasmine vines, and ranunculus, too.
There is no jailer powerful enough
to hold Spring contained.
Let that be a lesson.
Stop holding back the blossoming!
Quit shutting eyes and gritting teeth,
curling fingers into fists, hunching shoulders.
Lose your determination to remain unchanged.
All the forces of nature
want you to open,
Their gentle nudge carries behind it
the force of a flash flood.
Why make a cell your home
when the door is unlocked
and the garden is waiting for you?

literary snapshots