What part of us?

What part of us sits cowering;
stares into the future,
expecting the worst
and ready to spring?
What part of us
demands so much attention
and still fails to trust?
What part of us
is always hungry,
always anxious,
so suspicious, and afraid?

Find that part: seek it out
and approach it gently,
hands outstretched,
and give it all the love
you've been withholding from yourself.


* * *

Letting go

Isn't it time for that part of me
-- that part that wants to show
how good I am at what I do --
to retire?
Isn't it time
I settled down,
nestled into my dock,
allowed the reeds
to grow up all around me
and just reveled in the light?
Shouldn't it be enough
to have served all those years
and still be floating,
bobbing on the waves?


* * *

Stone Spirit

I walk the beach,
and spirit lurks
in every stone,
her feather poised
as if a quill
born to inscribe
her presence;
to carve her words
of love and loss,
of fundamental inevitabilities,
across the graves
littering the landscape
like shells and seaweed,
those days when what is not
or never was, or is no more
is all I seem to see;
the scrape of what's been torn away
is all I seem to feel
and She Who Loves
lies here, entombed
beneath my stumbling feet.


* * *

Bright anticipation

As we stand in the shallows
awaiting the waves,
we who are darkness
are dancing in light,
our shadows truncated
where hearts begin.
How can it be,
that a heart casts no shadow,
that all the dark comes
from the legs, hips and heads?
Perhaps that single elevated foot
provides uplifting answer:
our darkness is at its strongest, clearest,
just before we step into the light;
can it be each heart's already glowing,
bright with anticipation?


* * *

In these dark places

Standing within and before us
bathed in light
you extend a constant welcome
to our souls,
and yet we linger
in these dark places,
hoping we might find
that ache of fullness
for which we hunger.

And so,
as days grow short and dim,
help us to take this time to pause
and kneel before your throne
in humble application:
bless us Lord,
and come into our hearts anew.
Help us yet again to know
your beaming presence
in a life grown cold
with sacred longing.


* * *

At the water's edge

Seaweed tangles
at the water's edge;
shorebirds tiptoe
through the tide
while the gray cat peers
from the long grasses,
golden eyes gleaming orange
in late afternoon sun.

One dead goldfish
floating by,
released from prison
with a burial at sea,
mourns the loss
of his freshwater bowl,
staring one-eyed at the sky.


* * *

In the gray between

Much as I like to think of myself
as a mini-Galileo --
looking to the heavens,
finding inspiration in the stars --
there are definitely days
when the real me
seems to have much more in common
with the evil machinations
of this prince, Macchiavelli,
and, far from wondering
what the world might be, and become,
I find myself trying to control what is
and fend off what will be.
Instead of "Hmm, what if...?"
it's "Hmm. What if..."
in a far more speculative tone.
Fortunately I mostly live
in that gray and unformed space between the two...


* * *