Meanwhile, the wind blows, incredibly. The sun rises – seen or unseen – and moves across the sky, incredibly. Water covers most of the planet. Effervescent laughter is remembered. The vast silence of the world helps quiet the noise of your mind. The great emptiness fills you up and calms your heart. Do not be too eaten up by your own life.
It’s hard to be sure
if you’re climbing.
You know,
really going somewhere.
As opposed to
just milling about
as if you were
at a cocktail party.
Who can say
in what direction
you’re actually moving?
Could be sideways,
or some off-the-charts
geometric angle.
Perhaps there are
no directions at all,
and we’re just taught
that an absence of direction
would be impossible.
Or maybe
you’re hanging on
for dear life
to the same slippery place
you grabbed hold of,
when you lost your footing –
and almost fell –
so long ago.
For many long years, sleep did not come. Now it is here, a sanctuary, an unremembered temple of well-fed lions.
Summer comes, undeniable as the needs of body and soul. We peel away her nightdress, and when she goes we go with her.
There will still be times we do not feel supported by the earth, and contact with it will need to be reestablished. There will still be times when pain holds us in its mouth like a whale, and we struggle to light our way so we might see better in the darkness of its belly.
The sun is rising, now, again. The earth tilts on its axis, and that star is still there, incomprehensible fire of all fires at its center, and the fire moves ever outward, cooling equally, creating a roundness.
We owe our lives to the circumstances of the earth and the sun, to the distance between them.
It is morning and you are held in sleep. I am held in my usual early wakefulness. Calm water has eased my burning. There is soreness in my body, and insect bites on my skin.
I eat up the world, and am eaten by the world. A humble warrior does not forget to bow to all of it.
A dream of bamboo groves and flickering candles. A dream of sitting in meditation, of the alchemy of bees bringing about the reality of honey.
A dream of desire, awake and alive, of a sanctuary of sleep like a temple of wed-fed lions, of a heart containing both fire and calm understanding.
A dream of crouching down at the edge of water, of the sound of a bullroarer, of the coyote crossing my path and looking back, and he this night twitching as he dreams of the human crossing his path.
Dreams of the language of rivers, the lessons of mountains, the lumbering grace of knowledgeable bears, the songs of birds, the pulse of stillness, the rise and fall of tides, of breath, of energy.
And then the inevitable return. For after the dream, I enter myself again.
We cannot wait for things to be different, for things to be perfect, for things to meet our requirements. We cannot wait for everyone’s approval. We cannot wait for the certainty that everyone will like what we have to say.
We cannot wait for ourselves to feel less afraid. We cannot wait for the coast to be clear before we step outside, because the coast will never be clear. We have to take the risk. We will be criticized, misunderstood. Still, we cannot wait.
Transformation means loosening our grip until we let go completely.
Quiet the questions in your mind long enough, and you might hear the answers your heart knows to be true. Trust your heart, listen to it carefully, wear your heart on your sleeve and let it break open.
a blog that combines my love for both food & poetry
Humor and Lifestyle
A food blog with a buzz. Born and raised in Chicago.
recipe developer, stylist, content creator
Living, Drinking and Eating in Burgundy
where observation and imagination meet nature in poetry
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"Everyone needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to the soul" -John Muir
