x-mas gift (2011)

last night I Dreamed
of the future
and I can still -feel- beneath my cheek
the wood
on which I will paint my masterpiece,
and I can see the light that comes in the
studio in which I will paint it,
and the mountains and trees that are around
those walls and windows
breathe to me behind my eyelids
with a faint melodic hum
calling to me down the loop of time,
and it became infinitely clear to me
the powerful goodness
of making and nurturing and
breathing the life of love into
everything I consecrate with my body.

That painting,
surrounded by the soft light of that studio,
which is nestled in that house
on a hillside
of mountains and trees
and holds dear friends and family
all engaged in this same loving endeavor,
I know it now,
that it lays in the Road of my life
stretching ahead of me.

and my love,
my love,
you were there,
woven throughout the air
of that place.

The song of the dream was so strong
I got up this morning
and nearly delivered a holiday present
of one less employee
to pack the car
and get decisively on the road
toward that place.

Oh, my life,
my Life,
I don’t know how exactly
we’ll get there,
but onward we go!

Angela and Patrick

an angel and a saint
sit across from me on the train,
cleanly dressed,
clearly in love,
yoked,
with an unmistakable hard-crack
around the edges
that speaks phantoms of despair
and rough street,
the scritching of glass
from clandestine wine,
slowly and carefully
uncorked
against the sway,
slowly and carefully
filling the canteen,
against the long haul
of the day
ahead,
the promise and sadness
all mixed up
together
in their kiss.

not-knowing

I have to trust and I have to have faith.
Faith, trust and love. These are the only things that can counter the fear.
But they are based in the not-knowing.
The way to know is to listen to the fear.
Following the fear-based way, you will know what will happen, but it will be what the fear-listening leads you to let happen.
It will not be good.
It will not be full of magic and wonder, because those cannot be made to happen.
You have to let them.
You have to allow them to happen when you least expect it.
You have to allow the not-knowing.

Faith, trust and love … and not-knowing.

the need to be held (2012)

How often have I felt the need to be held?
How often do you recognize in someone else that they also have the need to be held, and the need to be recognized as a person, a living person who feels the need to be held?

Maybe try thinking about that next time you’re on the bus, or in the supermarket, or walking past someone that it would be so easy to think negatively of. Maybe just try.

Some days it is so hard to not let my heart be broken by the degradation of humanity that exists in almost every corner of this city. Some days I fail utterly. And some days I can remember that everyone I come across feels the need to be held, that everyone I come across, most simply, just wants to be recognized as a person.