Due Regard

    Sometime earlier this year, I started practicing loving kindness meditation. It teaches you to observe what love feels like in your body and your spirit when it is authentic, and then to expand it and extend it to people who are not as easy to love. It feels like something actually is happening physically when you do it-- this intense flow of light energy out of your chest. Or maybe it is more accurate to say that it feels like it teaches your body how to recognize and pull the love that is the invisible architecture supporting all living things into your body and direct it toward others. Or something like that.

    I had just finished doing one of those meditations the other night when I remembered a big snow storm was coming, and I needed to move my car into the garage. I had barely stepped out the door when I saw a whole family of deer- 7 or 8 of them, standing behind a row of pine trees. At first I startled them but then I immediately froze and so did they-- we were all arrested mid-stride. The moon was bright. And I suddenly remembered that I could send love to them, that this moment was a gift. I opened my heart to them, and they moved a step or two closer. So did I. Very slowly. Then we simply regarded one another from a comfortable distance, respectful of our differences, and conected to one another. I felt deeply seen. I hope they did too.

What If—?

Starlight climbs down the ladder of years
So that we can see it, and we believe that,
Standing in a field at night, looking up,
We are in the moment. But what if
That moment contains every other moment too?

We are also bodies of light, flickering
Through crowds of yesterdays, hastily
Making our way toward oblivion
And calling it living. But what if 
Our light simply climbs down the ladder of years
And looks like magic to someone in some other field?

Touching the Sun

Climbing my first mountain at age five,
I thought that I would touch the sun
When I got to the top. But then,
Before we summited, we stopped

To fill our canteens at a natural spring
And there in a calm pool, the sun and I 
Both saw each others' faces staring back.
We both leaned in to see a little clearer

Before I knelt to reach inside that mirror, 
Passing my small hand through the sun's face
To draw a palmful of that clear water
Of which my body mostly is composed.

Meanwhile, over our shoulders,
The clouds poked in their noses,
Resuming their ancient conversation
With the rocks that sometimes hold them
In their palms--

What strange alchemy of grace transforms
The liquid of our sustenance into a sacred meeting
Between the needs of body and of spirit.

Borrowed Love

Deep in the monotony of driving across the state,
Fall's goodbye kiss of golden light having lost its sway
With me, I looked up to my left and saw--
More felt-- gray winter riding there abreast of me.
Her team of horses rode ahead of her dark plough,
Which raked the earth of color in her wake.

The road turned. She overtook us all,
And as she did, wild rainbows arced
Around the wall between her world and ours,
Shot through with flying diamonds of her glittering hail.

Inside her walls, a thousand shades of gray
Mark her dimensions, the still green grass
Abashed by its sudden magnificence, 
And then the light burst like a bugle cry
Through a hole deep in her side, 
Delivering us back to the land where fall remained.

Should this love inside of me ever nod off to sleep,
I will go riding off again to look for the spot
Where two seasons meet. There may I recall that this love
Was always mine to borrow, and never mine to keep.

Fission

Each soul is an echo 

Down the long canyon of history--
An infinite regression.

Sometimes one rich and soulful loneliness 
Meets another, and the nucleus splits--
And it splits, and it splits, and it splits--
An infinite regression
Of hearts saying, "Yes, and--"

Unutterable

Some losses are unutterable,
Even to yourself.

When was the last time you spent a whole day lost in play,

And did you mark its passage?

What of the thousand compromises

Through which you bartered away
Your birthright of love?

And when did you raise the drawbridge between

The world of dreams and this one?

Snow Globe

When you speak, a bell rings
In my spirit. When I walk
Into a crowded room, one word
From your lips hushes the din,

And I am standing alone as in
The center of a snow globe--
My world flips and a strange song
Filters through the sudden snowflakes--

The edges of my world cupped in your palms
While I try to write the lyrics to this song.