Dead Beauty

Dead Leaf Beauty: Photo by Noelle

Dead Leaf Beauty: Photo by Noelle

Crumbled, even moldy
Long dead
Yet delicately beautiful
As an old woman’s hands
Rubbing a rosary
At morning mass

Dry with crackles
At the grace of a finger
No more than paper
Of Earth stories
Telling now of last season

Take to hand
And it vanishes into
Pieces caught on the wind
And gone
Springs robust leaf
Now Winter’s palsied hand

Yet the scent of leaf lingers
Fecundity remembered
And growth to come
All born of this life’s passing

Doors open, green
Then to another closing, dark
The sprout and the
Discarded shell at once
Infuse a molasses mulch

Fertile is the soil of my life
And my passing
Is neither ending
Nor beginning
Just the leaf transforming
On a winter’s wind
Calling the land to Spring

Negative

Sunset: Photo negative taken by Noelle

Sunset: Photo negative taken by Noelle

The Dalai Lama is quoted as saying, “Sometimes the best thing to ever happen to you is NOT getting what you thought you wanted.” Spiritual evolution comes when we begin to see that the negative events of our life are actually the good things. That these same things, places, events were providing us an opportunity to see the world and ourselves completely differently. That they are meant to strip away our illusions, mainly, about ourself. When you can see beauty and motion and grace in negatives….well…then you are really onto something.

Home

If pain, sorrow, regret, confusion or fear are appearing in your present experience right now, do not turn away, do not use the labels ‘dark’ or ‘negative’, do not assume any kind of cosmic deviation or ‘sin’. For these are sacred and intelligent life-movements, all, undivided from the vastness of creation, waves of the limitless ocean of Self. They are your beloved children, all, forgotten movements of yourself, longing for your warm presence – a moment of undivided attention. “Remember me!” they cry, one last time, and will you ignore them today? Or will you finally accept your birth right? Will you remember that everything you long for is already appearing, disguised as everything you reject?

Will you remember that you cannot be anywhere other than Home?” ~ Jeff Foster