Prayer I

Circle the heart
with the warmth of love
and find yourself open
to the possibility of healing.

Dream of the sacred places
inside yourself and soon
you will be surrounded
in the light of truth and peace.

Do not be influenced
by a world of fear
and rules that are not in tune
with the universe
and her powerful ways.

Trust yourself
and all that is whole within you
and joy will find a place
in the center of your life
that can’t help but focus
all things.

January Morning

Snow rests silent
in these trees
after making nothing
of the night.

A single path
of footprints
make their way home
to where the hearth
is kept burning,
abundant coals
burst into flame
at the first breath of air
or with a bit of new kindling.

And out in the woods
the chickadee and nuthatch chatter
waiting for the breezes
that will eventually come
to upset the quiet snow
and drop everything
to the floor of the forest--
where the fox
made his nest
after dark.

Morning Meditation

The twilight of the day
sifts through the night
like sugar powdered
for sweetness.

The mind lifts
a finger, wets it on the tongue
of awareness, and dips the senses
into the fine confection
to return to the mouth
a sample
and the comfort
of a new day.

Awake
and searching the edges
of the room for familiar forms,
the only promise of peace
is to rise at the call,
sit upright
and ask thought
to quiet into the breath
and the companionship
of silence
to greet the rush of my humanity
with controlled consciousness
and the release of everything dark.

Caged Bird

Exhaust the ways
escape is possible
and the panic
of no way out
will make the prisoner
weep, break down
call for his mother
who was also captive
before she died alone
and begging for a glimpse
of the sky.

Turn the bars
into the stems
of daisies.

Turn the guard
into friend.

Turn the heart
into unending singer
like the bird
who loves
her cage.

Heat

The heat of the night
rolls through the body
like fire on the edge
of new fuel rapidly approaching
spring on the prairie.

There is no stopping the wave
that must consume the past
in order to make way
for the violent green
that sleeps under the surface
of earth.

You have no idea
of the giant that wakes
from winter,
the glacial cracks booming
in the bones
of unconditional love.

The air ignites
with crimson
at dawn.
The first drops of water, bloody,
sizzle then evaporate
into mist.

New Year for a Writer

Write.
Just write and see what comes from that place
in the middle. That place where
the heart channels the soul to the universe
for examination.

Greet the day with words
on the page
where ink opens you
on the white paper and allows blood
to drip as pure joy into a space
where the clear mind is free
to make love to the curves of a syllable
and the frustration of punctuation
leaves on a moan--
of nothing.

Plunge deeply into the idea of love
with no concern for time
or the obligation to the world.
Here words play on the skin,
run fingers delicately across
the slippery sex of the finer points of argument
and bring chills to the curve of the back
before release.

The breath will not be lost here,
but captured in the arms of reason
and then rejected
like a rigid boundary
that must be crossed
to experience air in the lungs
or dreaming of the color
of the inside of truth.

I wake to the sound of my pen scratching
across the flesh of this page
and laugh at the whispering
no one will hear
but this lover.

This beautiful face greets me
with unconditional abandon
asking only to please my every desire
to live fully present to the sea
and the sun
and the smell of the earth opening in spring
for the seeds that will become a feast
and nourish the hungry soul
that lives lean in the depths of more words
than will ever escape from the ribs
and blossom, exhaled, from hope.

The light of the day
arrives again
and the pages
filled with morning
roll over and make room
for the business of the day.

Attachment

I have begun
to look into distances
as I approach the center
of a life colorfully decorated
with the united reminders
of decay.

It is natural—
a selected intelligence
that awakens just in time
to give away
all I know
in reverse order
of the gathering.

The stories of my brothers
and my invisible sisters
are alive in me
like fire and wicked wind
the suffering is caught in my breath
and fall like the inevitable avalanche
in my bones—
the sound deafening
within the silences.

And yet I am called to listen
to the dead and the forgotten.
I see their faces
and feel their hands upon my soul
when I know not what to do.
The comfort of the saints
and sages settles around
the same flame for light
in the unbearable darkness—
in the cold we will know
as the longest winter.

If kindness is my only possession
before spring arrives in the color
of tulips and daffodils,
let me have the wisdom
and the grace
to give it all away.

On that day
wash my face clean
and remember
that it is exactly
as I have told you
and the gift that I have plucked
from between my ribs
so that I might place hope
in the palm
of your hungry hand
is the only meal
you will ever desire
again.