walk.
there is step underneath you
a step in front of you

leave
where you've been
is gone

there is no hurry to get there
there is
here
inside of you.
don't let  anyone tell you
youmustgofast. thereisnotimetowaste.

this makes you small and
crowded
and never enough
never enough
and
never enough is
never going to be enough for you

you, who are so
skywidebig, full already
with everything you suffer towards.
love.
god.
goodness.

stretch out your arms
your legs
your mind
and
heart and
trust
the
space
around
you
is
oh so
full
already
with
love.
with
God.
with
goodness.

you are
here.
you are
home.

stop the rushing towards and
stand in the sea that surrounds you.

God is not delivered to your doorstep by
paying your dues,
selling your self for emptiness.
giving it all away in the name of
freedom.
We get this world to love, not to deny.
To breathe in the bonding, not to break in the sacrificing.
To hold hands with living, laughing, loving.

you are already free.

if you arrive here, please stay a moment to listen.
bend this way and lean into the inbetweens of these words

i am here.
my heart, my soul.
here.

when I am strong, I am.
when I am not, I still am.

these tears are born from the song I arrived on.
a lost bird flown in a sky that did not cease.
I am thousands of suns and the endlessness of moons, floating, then landing, rising and falling.
begun again in a scream, ending again with a whisper.

so old am I that you forget me sometimes.
some old tree, leaned into, climbed or cut.
I feel.
some thin stone, skipped, buried, blamed.
I know.
some bucket of sea, gathered, choked or claimed.
I grieve.

I am here.
my heart, my soul.
here.

this voice is emptied, abandoned of language.
no turn of phrase will convince us of the meanings.
in the cells of our blood and bones beats the heart of the truth.

it is here.
in my heart, my soul.
here.

it was the center of the night and I sprang from a deep dream to stand outside and feel the soft wind. there were shadows that spoke small threats, tricks of the light I think, and I was restless to go back inside. a shout tore through my skin like a signal flare, explosive and white hot, then it was quiet again. a return to a suspect stillness, still knowing the guns are loaded.

I was called by the moon.

to stop the thought and see. to listen.

Her shoulder fell under a drape of grey cloud and her light shone fierce. She caught me in wonderment for a moment offered as memory.
yes...yes.
abundance lives in this pause.
she spoke in a time distilled tongue of a belonging. she opened her hands and set loose a wing of stories that pulled me down to my feet and softened the iron. it is the only thing I have. this, now. rest now and come back to the dreaming.....

I knew, without knowing, something of her pain.
could I offer the apology for a blindness not my own?
no, but I could learn and live the way to stand and bend, without breaking, in the winds of war. I could feel, too, the impact of the bombing, stand resolute and wise in the flashing of fire and ignorance and burn the hot tears of grief and rage at the point missed. I could, in this great and epic shift, continue to feel. Continue to love.

the closer we come, the farther we go
when I turned the corner I stepped into a wind that nearly pulled me down.
you were some steps ahead of me talking into the sound of sirens on the street where we walked, trying to tell me to run faster.
In all this suddeness of weather I was braced against the velocity of cold, trying to appreciate the scent of impending rain, and I could not run.
I blinked in a moment of a dream and wanted to walk outside of this cityscape, with your hand in mine, into a verdant silence, a green place ripe with life and listening. Away from the cataclysmic threat of traffic, emergencies and rushing to arrive somewhere better, calmer, safer. My foot landed in a patch of earth that sprang life and connection into my bones. In that moment, this moment, now.
I cannot say what I fear and what I love without walking into that street now. I have said too much and the wheels are bearing down, the horns blaring.

I only wanted  the pace of a walk that afforded us the song of birds, the space between space where things tender and new, find courage to bloom.

This running feels like fret and fever, cables on the heart of things with fur and feathers. I fear we are missing the nature of our divinity, the divine gift of our nature with all this speed. God is at our doorstep and we are in the streets praying for a sign.

i went ahead and took the plunge.
jumped.
got tired of all the toe dipping, shivering only from an imagined coldness.
spent so much damn time staring at my own nervous face rippling in the waves it started to feel silly.

my feet, clawing at the rocks, tried to hold me steady and safe and instead, kept me slipping and missing my steps.
my hands, wrapped around my elbows, crossed against my heart and forgot their sense of adventure.

so then I did it.
pulled my hem up over my head, 1-2-3'd with a deepbreath in,
suspended in a moment of a moment of a moment in flight
and
jumped.

may I sit here for a moment
and now,
a moment more

and another.

I am at work listening.

I have asked the questions.

now it's time to bend my heart towards the wind and turn the keys to all the locks and open.
time to wait bravely for things I need to remember.
things I already know.
time to risk the space between the breath out
and

the next

breath

in.

a child's hand is laced in mine. and I am old.
a song, like laughter, is running loops in my head. and i am sad.

on my back, the sea sweeps beneath me
and gulls swing in the sky.
my heart is a stone balloon.
sinking.
rising.
sinking.
rising.

is there a word to name this waiting?
is it trust?
is it patience?
is it courage?

there are blossoms growing from the centers of my palms
and I might be chasing some colorful string tied to the heel of a shoe.

may that voice come that wraps arms like wings around me.
may i remember
I fly.
I sing.
may I trust this sky, too, is
mine.

what do you with your whole self long for?
who is that one child that sits steady inside your soul, crying with thunder and downpour, until you come to feed it exactly what it needs?
you
must have been sleepwalking again.
We found you wandering the neon aisles of some late night supermarket, pulling the boxes down into your three wheeled shopping cart, crashing the displays and scrambling to rebuild the pyramids of buy one get one free.
you
gotta start checking the labels, man.

Here you are staring up at the moon like she's home, talking about the rocket you're gonna buy to get there and tucked tight underneath your arm and side is the moneyjar you've been feeding with your found pennies and dimes.
i say
smash it.
Hurl it headlong into the sunblasted asphalt and watch the shards scatter and spill everything you thought would keep you safe into the storm drain and don't even think about scrambling to recover it. Don't you dare reach for that superglue.

Try standing in the middle of a crowd, singing your own made up love songs. Let them bustle and bump you, stare with black and afraid eyes that mock you. Let them blow smoke in your lungs and walk wide around you, cautiously.

Your only job is to sing.

Sing until you cry.

Sing until your throat is hoarse and sore and all sounds around you drown.

Sing until your heart splits and divides and spills and all the sweet birds stop their songs just to listen to the arrival of the symphony that we all have been waiting to be written.

Sing until the sky kneels down to hear you and then, when you open your mouth and nothing comes but a single string of light, irridescent and empty of all syllables, wind it like a ribbon around and around you and allow what it contains, your body and your bones, your name and your desire, to soften and pour down as sand from hand to hand.

 

And,

in the next breath of wind,

open these hands wide.

 

 

 s.a.

there was a certain rhythm to the way she would stand and rock the creases smooth, walk the green shag then the orange, carrying the folds and tumbles, making clean what was dirtied, assembling order in the chaos.
every monday.
every wednesday.
I watched her with shy shame and wrestled with my tangled tongue to find any word that might draw her closer.
but no word came.
none but a soft hello and a staggering vulnerability that made me feel translucent and bare.
in my age, i occupied a land of familiar and did not recognize the bright flares shot red deep into the sky.
not the dry, brown grass complaining to the tops of my knees, the rusted old ford slouched on it's haunches, the gritty grey moat that burned with summer, the iron coiled bars blocking the view of sky, the vacant ghosts that staggered the halls, the naked smiles hidden under the couch cushions, the volcanic silence, the dorsal naps, the needles going in.
fireworks exploded in the simple white clouds of a simple idea of something that seemed so simple.
but surely she could see.
and like a wild and wise animal, she noticed the lions roaming and stood aloof and readied for her own flight, soundlessly witnessing what clues fall from a coatpocket stuffed with secrets.

what was known was the shape of this world: a jagged star in a sea of circles.
in the room with something so smooth and sure, i did my best to hide the staggers and the jags.
i wonder.
i wonder now.
i wonder now what might the trajectory of this star been had the words come.
had the line between black and white been crossed.
had the invitation been uttered and accepted to come, sit beside me and let me feel the weight of your dark skin. those knowing bones.
smile at me with that ancient knowledge that bears the vessel of true living.
tell me, with your eyes, that I am something worth keeping,
not a speck or a mote or something ordinary to forget.

tonight we've been tangled in the threads of the moonlight
applauding her power to pull at our seams.
unravel me,
discover me emptied and full
by her light, by her love, by her beauty.

and under that bright, glaring sky,
between the tucking of prayers and the hours of birdsong,
we meant to sleep and could not.

overfull with a garden of bloom, we rested restlessly  and dreamed of the beginning
when sweet, watered tears grew the flowers and grace was the glass spun to gold.

but, the dreamless still count by their wishes
all the stories that live underground
long to wait in the soil undiscovered
by her light, by her love, by her beauty

and the moon, she will shine his reflection
and be one single sun in the dark

begin to write just begin to write because it will begin to move the things that wish to speak, it will stir the voices that yearn to sing, it will begin the beginning of the becoming again, the birthing, the breaking out into the open, into the sky the sea the seed of something stark and wonderous. some days ago I wound the hills under white clouds ebbing like the ocean over a blank and hopeful moon. i was so tired, but i wanted to listen to the beat of rain, to the blink of lights far over the valley, to your voice, low and whispered, speaking to me about freedom and suffering and how boundless love is.
i am wandering now, disoriented and quiet, touching blades of grass and turning a stone over and over in my palm. I wander the lines of my heart, my life and wonder how long it has been since I was certain about anything or if I will ever be certain again. if I ever was. it is a tiny blink that becomes the dream that ties the silver thread to something I was sure of. sure of the magic of omens and dreams of eden.
ghosts haunt the moment we are in now. I cannot escape this. they live with our words, our touches, the private conversations we carry where we build contracts and hide secrets of shame. and they were real in a moment once too, so who is to say which ground to step foot on. who carries the truth of love more clearly?
am I bound by knowing or bound by loss? what is broken and what is whole? did those songs come from somewhere I cannot ever return to? are the colors still strong and vibrant? am I hostaged to a serendipitous meeting or has my hand been touched by what I belong to forever and ever amen?
these questions hold me in the mystery. i am intangible as the smell of the trees and earth after a sudden storm. everything about me is familiar and known and answerless.