Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘light’

The Opening

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 25, 2024| 6 Comments »


 
 
I feel it before dawn—
the longing not only for light
but for the vast embrace
of the dark,
the way it links me
to the farthest reachings
of the universe,
the way it holds
each dull planet,
each luminous star,
holds me with no question,
no reservation,
holds all I love
and all I have yet
to learn to love.
With each breath
I bring it into my body,
small sips of dark,
great gulps of dark.
Inside me it swirls
with my love of light,
and this is how the certainties
of the heart are erased—
when I love and ache
in two directions at once—
and what’s left
is so raw, so open,
so alive.
 

Read Full Post »

Before Turning Toward Light Again

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on September 14, 2024| 6 Comments »


                  for K
 
 
On the altar of healing,
I would place a blade
of grass to represent tonight
lying in the fresh cut lawn.
You in the cooling shade.
Me in the low, warm sun.
The late summer green.
Distant hum of river.
Your tear as it slipped
toward the grass.
Our laughter about
I don’t even know what.
The way the earth held us,
asking nothing in return.
Your knees on my knees
as we curled in for warmth.
Your fear. My fear. Your trust.
My trust. The way we could
say and hear anything—
anything at all—as the world
turned slowly toward dusk.

Read Full Post »

Yellow Coneflower

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on July 30, 2024| 6 Comments »


If ever I needed
a demonstration
on how to lead
with the heart,
it’s you, coneflower,
that teaches me
how to shine forth
from the center,
how to grow
from the muck.
I am ready to live
the way you do,
wild and abundant,
needing dark and
cold to germinate, but
living to gather light.

Read Full Post »

Amidst the Cold of Winter

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on July 23, 2024| 12 Comments »

 
There was that winter day when the ice floe
had cracked the river ice into giant slabs
thick as my open hand, tall as a child.
Our family gathered on the river bank
and played with the fractured chunks to make
sculptures—ice huts and ice caves and
a long ice wall that curved and snaked
through the snow along the river’s edge
like the spine of a giant stegosaurus,
jagged and upright. It’s never happened
again. The ice slabs always freeze together  
or crush into bits, but that night,
we went out with dozens of candles
and lit the ice structures from within.
And the glow then, the gold that blazed
through the ice, was the kind of luminous
magic that winter seldom knows. What
was shattered and sharp, heavy and cold,
became radiance, brilliance, a visible hope
I didn’t yet know I would need, some proof
of what might transpire in the winter
of the heart—how broken and frigid,
it still might become a means
to gather beauty, to amplify the light.

Read Full Post »

More

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on July 7, 2024| 6 Comments »



 
 
Like scratching
an itch
past the point
of satisfaction,
I fall in love
with golden slant
of low-angled light
that floods the field
on this summer night
till every part of me
is raw.

Read Full Post »

The Promise

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on June 22, 2024| 14 Comments »

 

 
We need to be light for one another.
                  —Parker Palmer
 
 
I will be your candle,
your headlamp,
your fireworks, your fire.
Your light bulb,
your lantern, your sunshine,
your flare.
And your lightning strike.
Your neon sign.
Your firefly. Your filament.
Your glowworm. Your star.
Your laser. Your torch.
Your flamethrower. Your spark.
I remember the exact
dark moment I knew
I would devote my life
to being your black light,
your back light,
your flashlight,
your comet, your match.
Your moon. Your ember.
Your pulsar. Your lamp.
Your bioluminescent wave.
Your strobe. Your ember.
Your flame. Your blaze.

Read Full Post »

Make a Wish

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on May 25, 2024| Leave a Comment »

 for JS


No cake and no you.
Still, I light a candle
on your birthday
and notice the way
one small flame
changes the feel
of a whole room.
I think of your light
and how many
gather around it,
how quietly you invite
the shadows to dance,
how gently one person
can change the world.

Read Full Post »

Today’s Sermon

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on March 17, 2024| 14 Comments »


 
 
was a single drop
of melted snow
that clung to the tip
of a tight red bud
at the end
of a naked branch.
It didn’t have to
shout or sing
to make me fall in love
with the way afternoon light
gathered inside it.
Such a simple pulpit,
such humble gospel,
this radiant preacher,
this silence in which
the prayer is made
of listening.
 

Read Full Post »

On the Winter Solstice

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 21, 2023| 9 Comments »

Let’s reach toward each other
with gazes gentle
as midwinter sun—
with a seeing so generous
we can’t help but turn
toward the other
to let ourselves be seen.
There are many reasons
to close, to shut down.
But when we meet
with such light in our eyes,
then we open together
like December dahlias,
soft and many petalled,
open like bird song
after a long, mute night.

Read Full Post »

Meditation

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on November 30, 2023| 9 Comments »

On clear moonless nights
in the darkest places,
light from the milky way
casts shadows here on earth.
I think of how light itself
is the obstacle for seeing
other breathtaking kinds of light,
much as I, too,
am my own obstacle,
my longing to shine
sometimes interfering
with that humble, soul-stirring light
I need to close my eyes to see.

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »