Between the earth and the air above
life speaks in clouds.
Converse with your maker,
No matter the treasure bestowed
on you in the night, when you wake,
keep something for yourself.
Slow down.
Press lightly with your feet.
Shoes on, shoes off, it doesn’t matter.
There is no substitute
for feeling what calls to be felt,
no shortcut through the forest.
This is not the fruitless kind,
the rearranging of deck chairs
as the ship goes down…
Stay a while, still.
Less like the wind,
more like the ground you stand on…
We should live at least one day like it’s the last.
Not our own last, but THE last,
as if the world and time itself
is out of ideas for what comes next…
This is their shortest stop,
a flourish, a visible high point
in the business of their life—
Stray, to where? With whom?
In the end we must choose ourselves
over and over.
We could not tell you sooner—
you had to ask the question first,
had to wonder why….
To stay afloat
you must set aside praying
and save yourself.
You do the thing
you think you cannot do…
Nothing is for nothing.
Everything is rooted,
a branch, an expression
of that to which it belongs…
If we could do it—
receive with grace what is given
without busying ourselves
in the name of deserving…
That something
you feel called to,
the almost-voice you hear…
Branches sweep up and over,
leaves reveal their underside,
the whole garden leans, bows,
as if honouring some new truth.
A river will bite
at the bank that bars its way.
Backed up against the wall of itself…
At times your life will show itself
arriving in the dancing sunlight,
landing with a soft stirring of air.
Knowing that the anchor
was thrown too far from the boat
all that time ago
reunion can’t come soon enough.
I want to say it’s alright.
I want to say you can sleep now,
but then I think of Rumi…
Those first lines
now forgotten,
hidden in the blinding green,
lost in the flurry of life’s business…