Entering The Wind - 2007

In autumn the year I was ten, playing with leaf-piles in a neighbor's yard, the wind called

and I knelt on the grass and entered the wild windy breath as it entered me,

and I knew mySelf for a moment

and it was over, and never finished yet for eternity.

In winter the year I was, oh, thirty something, walking over the hill crunching through the crusted snow, wind blustering, biting at the outside of me, calling the inside, I felt drawn

to a group of pines, to one pine, which entered my dreaming mind and spoke to me..

This pine invited me to be a tree, to own my pine-ness, to participate in bark and needles and allowing of the wind to move right through my branches, and so

I became this, this pine treeness,

I became it,

and learned once again the way to love the wind.

Who could understand this? This invitation to the Dance?

All I know is Love, when it's True, has this way of inviting you to be it, while it is you.

My Mother's Garden - 1984

For my mother, who was sometimes difficult: written eight years after her passing.

I recall her white roses blooming along the backyard fence,
filled with bees buzzing away the Tennessee afternoons.
I remember being first up in the morning, I thought -
discovering Mom down on her knees in the red clay
tending her Easter lilies.
My mother, manna of the flowerbed.
How often I must have turned her proffered wine to blood!
Oh, she poked and weeded mercilessly around my loudly protesting roots
and yet I know now, I'm sure of it:
her will was all for me to bloom.
What is mercy if not the pruning of the vines in early spring,
the opening of the womb to birth?
Sweet breath of the tiny sleeping baby,
slanting dance of sunlight through a bottle of homemade wine:
they move us through labor and pain
into the heart of love.
How rich the garden where the living kneel,
weeding out their petty judgements of the dead.
The oriole sings there, and at night
lovers ply its flowering stars for dreams
like bees among the roses.

The GoodWill Life - 2007

I had a dream last week -
standing in a crowd of pilgrims, I was waiting
for the rummage to begin.

We had all given away our stuff
and were trusting Goodwill to provide whatever we needed
for the next level of awakening.

I found some clothes and shoes, and then moved on,
hot on the trail of something magical,
some amazing bit of inspiration.

There it was: a yellow plastic helmet -
fire helmet, hard hat, safari helmet?
All of the above.
And it had fake leopard fur and tiger stripes on top.

Oh, that yellow - welcome, new thoughts.
And the big cat energy?
Look out, stage and screen -
look out, my little puppets and wild-eyed laughing puppeteers:
Leo has arrived.

The helmet didn't quite fit, though -
I set it down and went to buy the practical stuff, the simple stuff,
and don't forget the shoes.

But in my heart I can't set down that helmet.
What is "buying," anyway?
I think I've bought that helmet,
and it is pure, unadulterated magic.