never, please never.

underestimate

kindness.
the miraculous, transformative power of being present.
putting another first.
smiling.
tenderness.
taking time to breathe. deeply. before speaking.
choosing love over fear.
stepping into someone else's shoes. even for a moment.
remaining open.
putting your actions in-line with your words.
wanting someone else to be fully, wholly authentic and true to her own journey.
faithfully remaining, fully, wholly authentic and true to your own.

where there is real, true love between two individuals,
these are not hard.
not mutually exclusive.

instead.
it's a pause at the edge of the cliff.
taking the time to hold your other's hand
to stand firm, strong,
to lean into one another.
together.

knowing the thoughtless, single mis-step
hazards a heady plunge;
dizzying fall
from the precipice
onto the unforgiving stones
of self

it's true.

The world is far more vast than we often realize we can create.
And then,
we awaken.

xix

[becoming, i]

from The Walls Do Not Fall


There is a spell, for instance,
in every sea-shell:

continuous, the sea-thrust
is powerless against coral,

bone, stone, marble
hewn from within by that craftsman,

the shell-fish:
oyster, clam, mollusc

is master-mason planning
the stone marvel:

yet that flabby, amorphous hermit
within, like the planet

senses the finite,
it limits its orbit

of being, its house,
temple, fane, shrine:

it unlocks the portals
at stated intervals:

prompted by hunger,
it opens to the tide-flow:

but infinity? no,
of nothing-too-much:

I sense my own limit,
my shell jaws snap shut

at invasion of the limitless,
ocean-weight; infinite water

can not crack me, egg in egg-shell;
closed in, complete, immortal

full-circle, I know the pull
of the tide, the lull

as well as the moon;
the octopus-darkness

is powerless against
her cold immortality;

so I in my own way know
that the whale

can not digest me:
be firm in your own small, static, limited

orbit and the shark-jaws
of outer circumstance

will spit you forth:
be indigestible, hard, ungiving.

so that, living within,
you beget, self-out-of-self,

selfless,
that pearl-of-great-price.


H.D.

pause.

lying here noting the fading smell of sulfur match lit the Holy Spirit candle placed at the center of the cardinal directions on the altar I erected facing east signifying Life my life a whole life is the work being wrought in me i am tapping tapping tapping out each letter painstakingly but a moment this and then gone i love this lampost to living altarspace a low lying table i culled forth for this purpose to pause to bend knee to invoke i know we don't always know where we are headed cosmic vagabonds all but the Sacred knows exactly what we need and what we need is what I pray for our souls to grow i listen so often to the song when the birds are flying low watch the thunderheads form and did you know? you can lean so far into the wind and smell the rain gather whispering drops before there is even a visible cloud in the sky i thought i was imagining it one afternoon but it was as real as any dream and so it is i like knowing there is a secret wisdom wonder gathers all about us and we are so busy looking for what we think we should see we miss it the mystery the real and glory of it all i've come to the conclusion i want to listen more prayer is so much more about my ears than my voice but then my heart has always made its pace through the day with you I'm thinking of how now it's so much summer outside and yet like on Saturday when i felt it when you are out riding with the wind sometimes you can feel a change coming long before you'll see that change along its way i swear i felt tiny moments of fall and though all about us seems contrary to that day you can't tell me it's not coming i hear it's cold in the Panhandle tonight and so it is you envelop me in Mystery i cannot possibly know in this moment what the world it has instore for me but i know you mark my journey and i embrace it to honour you grant me courage like the ready staff i once took with me everywhere the one I called my umbrella only a few knew i never meant it to keep out the rain like the power imbued in the child's sword plucked and preserved from the gutter of oblivion i promise i will never stop looking for your letters never stop listening for your voice never stop never stop being in your name do not let me settle for less than your eternal transformational quickening moment by moment by moment. yes.


[artwork from the album "fallen splendour" by jeff johnson]

and that's it. we...no one...knows. take your chance.

After Fever


Under his bush,
invisibly, the grouse
folds his wings, won't flush;

in a week, hoppers
have taken over the grass,
as if they'd waited for

my eyes to turn away.
My step, tentative, still
springs them into flight,

crazy, sideways, light
bodies flung toward
they can't know what

fortune of leaf or flower,
water or pavement's disaster.
They take their chance

as I do, too soon
climbing blue spectacle,
a perfect breeze, out

of body's consumption. How
invisible well-being, worn
like lightest cloth

the wind moves, sheer
exhiliration, over
skin, the world alight

as I come back to it—
how pain is felt
as presence, not the slipping

away from one's own—
the terrible body's weight,
its knowledge, burning out.


Katharine Coles

i will not die an unlived life

I will not die an unlived life.
I will not live in fear
of falling or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open me,
to make me less afraid,
more accessible,
to loosen my heart until it becomes a wing,
a torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance;
to live so that which came to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom
and that which came to me as blossom,
goes on as fruit.

- Dawna Markova