YOU

You came to me with your heart wide open,
your blood dripping about you without a sound.
My eyes widened with wonder
Should I dare take the plunge?
"Jump in," you assuaged, "the water's fine."
As the days passed and the minutes opened
your silent strength and daring taught me
that although we cry, wretched and bloody,
the heart of love cannot be broken.

The last of November

Many times over the past few years I have felt like that little bird in the book, “Are you my mother?” as I meandered through life wondering what was good, what wasn’t, what was true joy, what wasn’t, what love was, and what love wasn’t. My quest to find love left me injured, ill, and consequently, in quiet places where I had no choice other than to heal myself.

One morning in a meditative dream I heard a voice tell me that I am my greatest love. Slightly incensed because I was feeling gypped, I resigned myself to thinking that perhaps I was meant to roam through life alone. No more questioning any bulldozers, foreign species, or whims. So it became about me- and what I became was wonderful. When you run out of questions and challenges, you are free to just linger in any and every moment in which you choose to; feeling, seeing, smelling, tasting and touching the beauty that is there. Time just stands still with you.

This little gift has opened my heart and mind to not only my own beauty, but the beauty of everything and everyone around me. To talk with a gorgeous friend who is the only one who doesn’t realize how gorgeous she is, about the difficulties and heartbreak of parenting, and feel her pain and mine as one was a gift. To help someone who just last year might have irritated me, but who now offers me the opportunity to serve them while finding a deeper understanding of both them and me is yet another gift. To hear criticism from someone who loves me and not feel my pain, but rather the pain of what they are professing- is absolutely majestic.


Just a few weeks after the little voice told me that I was my greatest love, a very wise friend said something very similar to me and I laughed.  Life comes to us like a wave, one rolling in on top of the other, until the wave in its entirety, has reached you.
So I remain grateful for love, for love’s lessons, and for all of its gifts. I love that feeling of standing still and being with what is while life whirls around me. 

Today, on this final day of the thankfulness game I am thankful that I have a beautiful new friend who was worth waiting for, who stands still with me. I no longer have to ask, “Are you my lover?” I just get to linger in his wonder.

Thank Me!

She breathed in, and then out again
air
colder than the dark afternoon
as if
death had already seized her limp, fainting
soul
Staring into the gray blue autumn
sky
watching the still clouds frozen
as if
the very last moment before the ice age came
to freeze
Remnants of life and love and hope
in
the pictures scratched by the bare, stark
twigs
that cling listlessly to yellow threads of
life
Lingering in the cold, all alone again til her last
breath
shattered the stillness of death's frozen
scene when
she dreamed of sleep's blanket, to awaken one
day-
the new life, the warmth,
the promise of
spring 


******************************
Tell me why you want me to want you
when you don't even want to want me

You're so broken that I think you are more right
than most who have never even splintered

Where is the line-the line that you crossed
the one you can't come back from?

From here it looks like just a crack, but
for you it must seem an insubordinate chasm

turning toward the light

you must have been the heart of god
when love was what god thought of
for in the brilliance of your love and kindness
you ignited the star lights by the millions
and in morning's gift of sky so blue
I swear-
god loves me more when my thoughts are of you
yes, you must have been the heart of god
when god first thought to love

thank you

The grapes I hath

This morning I held a firm, plump grape in my hand before popping it in my mouth and rolling it around a bit with my tongue.

Biting down with my sharp front teeth, I love that sensation of the popping of the skin, followed by the sweet juices engulfing my tongue. The inner flesh of that fruit is what I craved until its smooth bits tossed about my mouth now satisfied.

There is so little of what we think is real, that really matters. It's the sweet, fleshy fruit that becomes us, not the skin that we find so alluring.

Today I woke the sun

There are the mountains you have climbed
only to have fallen down the other side.

You have lived in the depths of abundance
only to blink your eyes and find yourself drowning in an abyss.

Oh and haven't you danced to the music of life only
to have life swept out from under your feet?

But every time the sun rises to warm your face
at the end of the darkest night
Life kisses you as you dance up the mountain
one more time.

All of those hurts-the ones you've inflicted and the ones you've endured. I think it's the ones that I've dished out that hurt me the most-now. Remorse is the most lethal karma until I remember that my inflictions of pain on others helped them in the end, the way my own wounds have healed me.

"We're all just here walking each other home."

You love the cards when they are favorable,
yet despise them when they do not suit you.
The cards which are dealt
must be played to win.