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Posts Tagged ‘light’

One at The Nutcracker

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on December 15, 2024| 3 Comments »


 
 
so bright the light you carry—
watching you dance
I, too, am glowing

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Grace

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on December 14, 2024| 9 Comments »


                  while receiving Reiki, with thanks to T. V.
 
 
For a moment,
there appeared a circle
of golden light,
the way sunlight
sometimes streams
through a gap
in the forest canopy
to form a small shining pool
on the ground.
It wasn’t that I
stepped into this light.
More that the light found me,
and for a moment
I knew what it was like
to be found.
This is perhaps
what grace is like—
when we wander
in the dark, cold, lost,
and the light finds us,
not because we deserve it,
not even because
we have asked for it.
It simply arrives,
and it is ours to receive it,
to know gratefulness,
even astonishment,
and to let it inform
what we do next. 

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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.
 

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.
 

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