Thursday, February 16, 2012

About Writing Poetry

When I was a child, I wrote poetry and stories. When I was reading books like, "The BFG" or "The Indian & the Cubboard" or "Redwall". When my imagination took me everywhere and my parents would call my brother and I reluctantly to dinner from the forests.

Then, I don't know, I stopped, other than 1 poetry class in high school that did not feel nourishing and 2 pretty great ones in college that sparked my interest again, but didn't keep it burning.


For whatever reason,
Before twenty-eleven June,
I wasn't writing poetry,
Only once in a blue moon,
Once in a seasonal spell,
And now that I've restarted,
I can't go without the well,
Its the silence of the evening again,
of a day completed as best it could be,
that brings me back to mystery.
If I were to lose my sight,
As my dad lost his in later years,
I would turn to healing probably,
Maybe sooner in life than I will,
I could still be a poet,
But not a visual artist so much.
I feel again like writing,
Though I don't know what.
Something from my imagination.
Coming like a kaleidoscopic
Shifting colors invitation.


I am reading a little paper my friend, Cathy, sent me. Its called "Circling to the Center". A quote pops out at me, relating to a poem I wrote last week about destiny. The quote:
"Destiny? The word is not really mysterious. It is in reality a simple word, asking only that we live each moment as it comes. It means, "Being whom we are meant to be...Growing as we are intended to grow. Accepting one's own reality."

Another quote: "To progress in our inner work, we need to be able to observe our resistance, our attachment to our self-image, and our fear"

and another comforting quote: "I am to rest in this opaque unknowing, leaving behind the light of understanding. To no longer want to understand, no longer need to understand"
Yes, this make me think about how last year at this time, I had ideas/plans for the year all the way to September (Guatemala learning Spanish until May, Europe trip in May, Spiritual internship June - August, Alaska and the pacific NW trip August/September, return to Santa Fe in September - and, miraculously how all of that happened and I was given the means to do it). I am strangely enough even more excited and uplifted for this year than last because I do not know and have no plans/ideas set in stone for this year and I am so in love with this not knowing that now the challenge becomes not getting too attached to the not knowing. Does that make any sense? Not getting too attached to this feeling of things flowing without knowing. To take this practice and knowledge with me when things seem to be clear in my life again - that I don't need or want to understand or hold on to the unknowing or the seeming to know now that that clarity is starting to come again.

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Cross-country Skiing, Valle Caldera, New Mexico




One foot in front of the other?
If so, then sliding, gliding,
On skis across sunlit snow.
One thing at a time?
Then this moment cries go,
Toward trees fringing the rim,
Of ancient crater, once volcano,
Expansive brim of whiteness,
Cradling sword brightness of sky,
Making our own slim tracks,
Who could possibly deny,
That life aches to live us,
To the fullest we can allow,
To give us slopes, deep drifts,
Balance, hopes to follow,
Interims on fallen logs,
Friends to hug like a koala,
Leaps alone and together,
Enter into bones, cloud and stone.