Tag Archives: poetry

Then Nothing

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Reblogged from Ed Strachar: posted from Totemical: Bruce Cuse artist

Reblogged from Ed Strachar Healer/  Bruce Cuse artist

The woodpecker strikes the metal roof vent
It rattles persistently in the early dawn
Then nothing
I listen more closely
I extend my hearing into the nothing
The silence is noisy
There is a whirring of the Universe ever present
A dove coos, distantly
Then nothing
My thoughts move the same way
Bills to pay
Then nothing
Work project memo to send
Then nothing
My thoughts are their own eco-system
The woodpecker strikes
So deep now, the rattle doesn’t register
Then nothing
I push my hearing even farther
I am listening for the pin drop
on a whale’s back
Off the coast of Nova Scotia
Then nothing
There is a whirring of the Universe ever present
If I allow it
It will lull me into peace

Great White Crane

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I feel the lapping at the farthest reaches of my mind from a stone thrown centuries ago
Cracking barriers like a dam giving way
It is more effort to hold in, than to break loose
I have nothing to hold onto
Bits of sand and dust
Everything to give
What is this resistance really?
Rubber band girl
It is plain to see that with what goes out only more floods in
A dam letting loose a rivulet that becomes a stream
A river to a great delta water course gushing into the bay
That opens further to an even greater ocean
There is no purpose to these chains that bind when I have only love to give
Let it rain until the floods have washed even the mud away from my feet
I walk freely in the reeds, a great white crane

Sandhill Cranes: re-posted from Bing photo of the day by Patrick Frischknecht of Aurora Photos

Sandhill Cranes: re-posted from Bing photo of the day by Patrick Frischknecht of Aurora Photos

Kite Flyers

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Stained glass at Living Arts Center Denver

Stained glass at Living Arts Center Denver: photography by Noelle

How the mundane mimics the divine….

The little boy dances around his father in the late afternoon sun
The kite rises in the strong wind and he squeals with delight
Then, it pitches and slams into the ground
All movement stops in his little body
Arms drop to his side
Face crestfallen
He turns to his father who reassures
It’s okay
Just a downed kite
It will fly again
Pick it up and toss it into the wind
It will fly
So he does
And it sores, tail whipping like a dragon
The currents of the Universe are strong
Pick up your kite and throw it back into the wind
It will fly
It will sore
It’s tail will whip the sky like a dragon

Kintsukuroi

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Dead leaf beauty. Photography by Noelle

Dead leaf beauty. Photography by Noelle

Engulfed by grief I am driven to my knees, until back bent I am little more than a sapling in a hurricane.

Raging, fists to the sky with hunger for death in my heart I pace the hours certain of Divine betrayal. I am Shiva, Goddess of death. Blindly I plot tales of woe poor sirens must be calling to me from the deep. What wretchedness creeps into my soul as I tediously survey my faults, mistakes and missteps; no less a miser at his ledgers. There is no light. I am crawling in gravel up a mountain with no visible peak, but miles of trails that lead no where. I am confused. I am deluded. I am lost.

Still. Still. Time moves grief as a plowman’s mule. Bloodied knees always heal.

All wisps of smoke curling up into the ether now. Formless fog fading down the river of my life. The moment the last breath left my lungs it was already dead and gone, buried as my ancestors in dirt holes. Air fills the vacuum of my fading past, sweet and new.

When did I leave the bridge? What was the step that took me to the other side?

Kneeling to my sorrow now I dance to my joy. Swirling round and round free as the leaf floating on the current. The sorrow has ripped out my moorings it would seem. I drift with the river and worry not where it goes. I have already been where I could not go. With the hunger and vigor I gave freely to my rage I embrace the beauty of my life. I run with pounding heart captured by the power of my body no longer weighed by death and dark shadows. The mountain has gained no peak, but a fool’s laughter is heard along the trails.

Life, anyone’s life, is an endless sea of choices. Sing my hardy voice of love or hear it crack in the silence to a whisper.

Spit and shine, tarnish be gone. I am liquid silver, glinting in the sunlight.

Photo Poem 1

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Cracked mosaic

Cracked mosaic: photography by Noelle

This is a new segment I’m adding called photo poems.  As the saying goes, “A picture can say a thousand things…” I am captivated by what is old and broken, rusted and decayed. Such pieces again and again confirm for me that beauty erupts out of even decayed objects and destroyed lives.

Luna

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Super Moon taken July 23rd by Leilani May in Denver, CO. Thank you for letting me share, Leilani!

Super Moon taken July 23rd by Leilani May in Denver, CO. Thank you for letting me share, Leilani!

If you meditate and have not checked out the Insight Timer App you should. It is certainly a fine timer to use while meditating but that isn’t what makes it awesome. It’s the connection to people meditating world wide and the various meditation groups you can join. Great way to build a habit of meditation and connect with people in a beautiful global sangha.

Most recently, Juan Crocco of Santiago, Chile sponsored a meditation event around the Super Moon at Summer Solstice. It was an extraordinary event where individuals from Tasmania to Nova Scotia shared pictures of the moon and spiritual community. The following poem I wrote for the event. The beautiful, super moon photo was taken by my fellow Insight Timer friend and wonderful colleague Leilani May.

Luna, Luna, Luna
You call to my lupine heart
And pump my blood, an immense ocean
With powerful tide
Divinely rolling into shore

Luna, Luna, Luna
I sing to your celestial body
Awash in the love of your heavens
And enchanted by the world you
Reveal to my lover’s eyes

Luna, Luna, Luna
At once, I become the hunting owl in the elm
And the mouse scouting for seed
The deer moving softly within the briar
And hare whose ear twitches
To fox’s stealthy approach

Luna, Luna, Luna
You awaken my sense of Mother Earth
Her thrumming, steady beat
Which taps my palm, little more than a moth’s wing
As my hand grazes the long grass stalks
That glisten silvery green in your moonlight

Luna, Luna, Luna
I sleep no more in this dream world
My vision has become as sharp as a nighthawk
I feel a mystery moving within me
Only to realize you have
In this dark night
Lit up the luminous nature of my spirit
For me to see I am the mystery

Luna, Luna, Luna
I sway in your pearly glow
A dancer alive in the field
I am a living galaxy twirling in your wake
My body a night shadow
As mystical as monks moving
By candlelight to whisper their
Midnight vespers

Luna, Luna, Luna
Feel my spirit reflect your brilliance
For I, too
Am a celestial being rising into the heavens
To light a comet’s trail for all to see

Luna, Luna, Luna
You call to my lupine heart
And pump my blood, an immense ocean
With powerful tide
Divinely you send me back out to sea

Luna, Luna, Luna

Patience and Crawdaddies

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Stained glass at Living Arts Center in Denver

Stained glass at Living Arts Center in Denver: Photography by Noelle

As a child I was quite the tomboy, catching bull frogs in the lake behind my house or craw daddies in the creek. I still listen to frogs on summer nights to determine where they are and to what mate they call. I’m especially fond of finding crawfish in the streams that I hike. Spring has been slow to come to Colorado and the creek is running fast, deep, ice cold and swollen with snow melt. Not very hospitable for a crawfish. Still, I look. Today, I was about to turn away after quite some time standing, when it’s tail caught my eye as it scurried across the creek bed beneath a rock. Life! Spring is here!

I meditate so that I may cultivate the quiet, the patience, the awareness and the love for this moment. Even the long waiting part. Even if there’d been no crustacean. Even with the red wing blackbirds that squawk like old Bolsheviks into my ear from the thicket for my intrusion. May you live a long life my mud-digging friend. You lit up my heart tonight.