Smile

from your bones

and let the structure

of joy move you,

your arms

embracing everything

in half rounds

Smile

from your heart

with closed eyes tilted

up at the corners

and the soft curve

of your shoulders

seeking sky

Smile

from every hair

curling and coiling,

from the soles

of your feet arching

and your fingernails,

quarter moon smooth

Smile

from deep

earth orbiting

underfoot,

to sky bows

from rain

completing their bent

Smile

from your mind

at the thought

of everyone

who has ever

become part

of your smile

1/29/23

Calma

Rest

like a child

or a cat sprawled

wide asleep

That deep relaxation

in which your mind sighs

in relief, your body

sinks into renewal

Rest among the clucking

chickens and birdsong

with the dark night stars

alight

Here, safety

breathes every breath,

time moves snail slow,

nothing is everything

Calma, they say, calma,

when presence stretches time

into always enough

and accomplishes everything

7/25/21

Unwounded

It might be

a stiletto of words

thrust directly

into your heart

It might be

the casual indifference

of someone

who professed to love you

It might be

promises

spoken,

then broken

It might be

the gap between

what you do for love

and for money

It might be

loss after loss

of whatever or whomever

you held dear

Whatever

has filled you

with that hard, sharp, dull

blade of despair

Whatever heavy

weights your shoulders

and crowds

your mind

Whatever has happened,

it isn’t you,

it isn’t the heart

you were born with

It isn’t the you

that delights

in sunsets

and mud puddles

It isn’t the you

that creates

as exuberantly

as any child

If you reach inside

deep, deeper still,

there you are,

yourself, unwounded

Blue Sky

On days when the sky

holds a danger of gray

let each flavor linger

like unfamiliar fruit,

slowly, with delight

and a bit of wistful wishing

that you hadn’t tried it yet,

that the first sweet surprise

still awaited your tongue

Greet each person you know

like a world

you’ve never traveled,

wild terrain

both foreign and friendly,

with unexpected paths

perhaps long forgotten,

and vistas that awe the heart

and catch the breath

Embrace every tree you meet

like a whole forest 

of wonder 

rooted more deeply 

than any human kind,

rich, earthy, expansive,

not prone to pettiness,

but magnificent 

in generosity

On days when the sky

holds a danger of gray,

you might think it 

the only color you will ever see,

then with all of your senses

seek blue, find blue

taste it, greet it, 

embrace blue sky 

in you

3/18/20

Impossible

We think we know

what will come

and then

something unheard

or unthought

or never experienced

plummets us

out of our minds

and into our small bodies

This human wear is wearying

and humbling

because just when we think

we are powerful

life fells us with a bold ask

to see more deeply

to feel more fully

to be more than we ever thought

impossible

Egg

Once, the egg of the universe

cracked wide

and spilled into clusters

of planets and stars

in space

And our little blue round,

if only we held it

as tenderly

as any bird ever sheltered

her unhatched brood

Perhaps the mothering sky

waits for the day

that our hearts crack

wide open

and we all fly

Pause

let us take

a brief pause

in our regularly scheduled

human mayhem

to hold a pine cone

and notice the seeds spiraling

in orderly splendor

of reproduction

and how the fern knows,

without complex calculations,

which way to reach

for the sun

and how flowers,

making no distinctions,

blossom sweetly

among the weeds

and how stones come to rest quietly

where they are placed,

and even earthquakes

open in a line we call fault

and how humans

in their civilized fashion

may be

the wildest things here

Transition

Catch hope

as only a cat can,

with a smile, a purr,

and a pounce

Count the gifts

of imagination

no longer buried

under too many rules

Carry petroglyphs

of possibility

carved

into new walls

Hold your heart

carefully open

and run dance

passionately forward

Chronic

By the time we reach our 40’s and 50’s, most of us have had some kind of health issue or have suffered losses of friends and family members. And some have already experienced a great deal of loss in their early years. I barely know anyone my age who does not have some kind of chronic health issue, whether serious or relatively benign. And anyone who has suffered a loss knows that grief is an on-going chronic process too. I am always struck, in listening to others’ stories as well as through my own experience, by how our country shames the physically and mentally ill, and provides so little safety net that any major illness may result in deprivation and poverty. If the statistics that 70 percent of the population is living paycheck to paycheck is correct, any sudden change in health or circumstances may be catastrophic.

So far, I have seen Go Fund Me accounts set up for long or short-term medical expenses, (even among insured people, because most policies don’t cover much) for funeral expenses, legal assistance, schooling, transportation, living expenses, catastrophic accidents, and lately, for out of work and non-paid government employees. Despite working sometimes two or three jobs, people are basically being forced to beg for survival.

It is no wonder that a great deal of the population is anxious, depressed, and addicted to opioids. When I talk to overseas clients, whose countries have universal health coverage, they want to know how anyone could ever recover from an illness given the stress we are under. And many don’t. In a country where our only value is based on whether we can earn a living wage or not, many of us don’t survive, hence our increasingly high rates of suicide.

I think as human beings we have a duty of care. To treat one another with respect and as if we have the right to say alive, be healthy, and pursue that elusive thing called happiness. This used to be called basic decency, but apparently in this country, it is now reserved for the privileged. We currently have cities with whole neighborhoods of people living in tents. We are our own refugees. And this is a rich country!

Lately, I’ve been wondering what it would be like to live in a country whose laws actually reflected values of care rather than cruelty. A country in which we had access to clean water and air, non-poisoned food, medical care, decent education, equal rights, and we knew that our country actually had our backs. Given how much we work, and pay in taxes, it doesn’t seem too much to ask.