Night Storm II: Photo by Noelle
Night storm: Photo by Noelle
The heaven’s are full of light, even in the darkest storms. This is not what confuses us. We struggle to make sense that the heavens are within our heart.
Behind the Storm
Category Archives: Poetry
Clarity of Vision
Free Bing Photos
On the soul highway it doesn’t matter if you’re souped up on a Harley or riding a tricycle. Speed is not determined by the vehicle, but rather the clarity in vision of the driver.
Lonely Haiku
Free Bing Photos: 100 images of solitude
The piece below was written by my Insight Timer friend, Roy Mason in New York. I had been working on a poem related to loneliness that just wasn’t coming together. I sent it to Roy and he flipped it, most lovelingly, on its head and produced this beautiful layered haiku. Far better than my original piece. It is an honor to post it here.
Lonely Haiku
Magazines read twice,
Fridge food contains emptiness;
My heart: comfortless.
Mind wheels are spinning,
Sleep is sought but elusive.
The hours go on…
I ask: who am I?
The deafening loneliness!
Waiting for the light.
Outcast and apart,
I hear the chimes of the clock;
Then tick tock, tick tock.
I, disconsolate,
Endless pacing with worry.
Five O’clock: birds sing.
Beautiful Cocoon
Free Bing Photos: From lovelifedrawing.com
Before the beetles find me
Or the fire licks my bones
I will forsake this body
That has so lovingly carried me
Long upon roads
Of hot days and cool nights
Deepening forests
And fine ground sands
For in the end it is but a
Beautiful cocoon
And comes a point when this spirit
Must break free
To fly
Eking it Out
Sierra Nevada Mountains: Photo by Noelle
It’s curious how we go about eking out a life. Not the financial part, but the creative life. The part of us expressed, even privately, that makes it all seem interesting. Aspects of us that transcend rush hour commutes, deadlines and scrubbing the kitchen floor. We plant bits of ourselves in between jobs, school plays, and the church pot luck. Oasises of fertile land amidst the rocky terrain of daily existence. Music, photography, haiku crafting, a curious penchant for coin collecting or beading seem small when looked at in the scope of our whole life. Yet, those small pieces are what feed everything about us. Our engagement with them gives us the sense we’ve climbed off the conveyor belt and left widget-land, if but for awhile. A few moments with a favored album or doodling with your child are as water to arid land. A creative nitrate for the mind that enlivens the dullest spirit and grows a beautiful life.
Smallness
Re-posted from the Art For Ever Facebook page
When I look closely at my small life I get caught up in the details of its constrictions. I see pitfalls and turn little disturbances into high drama. When I look around at the people and places I see every day, it can feel closed in and predictive. But if I look up at the expansive blueness of the sky above me, or out upon the grandeur of a cityscape I fine myself breathing more deeply. The dirt of a trail and a green canopy above invert the smallness of my life into an expansiveness that is freeing. If I draw my eye away from the close aspects and out to the wider view I don’t feel smaller. I feel I have grown bigger and become more connected to what is vast and beautiful. What is eternal dissipates my constrictions and my fear of sameness. A few moments of a night breeze through the bedroom window shows me my life is not small. Only my perspective is.
Seeking Freedom: Photo Poem 44
Freedom: Photo by Noelle
I wandered out of the crowd, thinking others would follow. When the wind lifted me, I found I was alone. The sadness lasted but a moment, for the view of the land and the sky filled my heart full.
Squatter’s House: Photo Poem 43
Abandoned Factory in Healdsberg, CA. This is the view from a someone’s make-shift bed on the factory dock: Photo by Noelle
I sat next to the bed of a someone who is living in this abandoned factory, to take this photo. It is curious to see what another sees as they come to rest at the end of their day. In every life there is beauty and drifts of light. We each see the world from our own perspective and sometimes even in dire corners are unexpected views.
Around the Bend
Bear Creek Lake east reservoir trail: Photo by Noelle
As I get older I understand the value of taking the turn in the road. To go around the bend and see what’s up ahead and expose oneself to what is wholly unfamiliar. These are the points past what you usually travel. I’ve found little wineries this way and farmer’s markets, on what I thought were dead end roads. Old train cars left in the middle of deserts and wood sculptures whittled by hand from stumps. Mostly, I’ve discovered myself. Versions of me I hadn’t seen in awhile or new shades of the me I thought I knew. I can’t fall back on the familiar or the tried and true, when I take the trail that winds mysteriously into a wood. I have to re-invent, if just a little. Lost I pull out my best skills and wield a craft I didn’t know I possessed. I see the world with different eyes, and dig deeper into pockets for penny treasures I hadn’t found reason to use. There’s power in facing the unknown you. It makes your insides worldly, in much the same way traveling abroad does. It expands your view on who you think you are.
Sacredness of Cacti
Hedgehog cacti on Green Mountain: Photo by Noelle
The further on my path I travel, the more captivated I am with the patterns that appear in the mist. There is a sacredness to everything from leaf to the milking of cows.
“There is geometry in the humming of the strings, there is music in the spacing of the spheres.” Pythagoras
Meditation Travelogue 
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