Why not believe in magic?
Can I soften? Can I soften some more?
Does truth exist? How are stones alive?
What if I never learn
what happens when we die?
What’s the next nice thing
I can do for someone else?
What’s for breakfast? What’s at stake?
When I dream of my beloveds, is it them?
Where am I in my own way?
How might I be more river, less dam?
Which comes first, forgiveness or the peace?
Which comes last, unknowing or the known?
What is love? What is now? What is home?
What is it in us that knows how to wonder?
What is it in us that knows how to grow?
Who are we really? What is courage?
What’s worth it? What’s asked of me now?
Should I be in this moment a blade or a bloom?
What’s the nature of higher ground?
Can I ask without longing for answers?
Can I feel I am one with it all?
How does life live through me?
Can I be in service to that?
What do I believe I can’t give away?
What if I say nothing and listen?
Will I choose awe today?
Posts Tagged ‘questions’
Questions for the New Year
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged new year, questions on January 1, 2024| 17 Comments »
The Empty Dark
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged answers, bowl, dark, meditation, questions on August 20, 2020| 5 Comments »
Answers don’t arrive if you’re afraid of sitting in the empty dark room of not knowing by yourself long enough for them to arrive on their own schedule.
—Michael Thelen
Oh let me, too, be willing to sit in the empty dark
and let the darkness enter me.
Let me not pretend to know how it will be.
Let me lose my plans, though it terrifies me.
Let me not imagine any better time
to practice than now.
Let me be the bowl that sings when touched,
the bowl that is content with its own stillness.
If I want answers, let me sit with my longing.
If I want lessons, let me find them right here.
And if it is dark, let me not run from the dark,
but lean into it. And if it is light,
let me long for the light. Let it enter me.
Let me not pretend to know how it will be.
I’m Thinking of an Ornament
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Christmas, mom, mother, parenting, poem, poetry, questions on December 16, 2019| 2 Comments »
The rules are simple. One person chooses
an ornament on the tree. The others ask
yes/no questions until they guess it correctly.
It was my mother who taught me.
I taught my own children. It’s a ritual
as important as the tree itself. Is it red?
Is it round? Is it cloth? Handmade?
So many questions we never can answer.
So many questions elude yes or no. But here,
in the soft glow of Christmas tree lights,
we share moments when every question
leads us closer to a treasure, where
the moments are treasures themselves.
Clear Night
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged night, poem, poetry, questions, silence on May 28, 2019| Leave a Comment »
I ask the night
teach me to ask bigger questions
it replies
perhaps you could
take the pen away
from the one who wants
to ask questions
and then let her come
walk in the night
Almost Home
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged answers, friendship, poem, poetry, problems, questions on April 30, 2017| 4 Comments »
After many, many hours in the car,
through spring blizzards and shine,
over passes and through tunnels,
we have conversed about loneliness
and loss, isolation and struggle,
we’ve found laughter inside
awkwardnesses and cried
for reasons we don’t understand
and we have solved nothing
of the world’s problems, nor our own,
but in this last hour, a lovely
silence joins us in the car,
all those unanswered questions
somehow content to look out the window
and admire with us the white rumps of elk
and the mountains newly covered
with snow, so much already
growing beneath the white.
Phylogenetic
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birds, classification, poem, poetry, questions on October 12, 2016| 1 Comment »
Just today my son asked
if birds were mammals.
No, I said, without looking up.
Then are they reptiles, he said,
and I thought no, but then
I thought maybe, and then I said,
I don’t know. Turns out some
classify yes and others say no.
There are so many ways
to see the world.
I think of scaly feet and believe
the crocodile and heron
could be cousins.
I think of intersections.
It’s not a surprise
humans arrive at different answers,
what surprises me is how
there are questions I no longer ask.
Like the nature of a bird.
Like the nature of love.
How many other questions
are gathering dust or are waiting
to be found?
But I Want to Know Now
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged answer, magic eight ball, poem, poetry, questions on May 17, 2014| 1 Comment »
I have never had an eight ball do me right.
—Rob Wasserman
I ask it,
Will it be easier tomorrow?
It says,
Ask Later.
I ask later. Will it be easier tomorrow?
It says,
Don’t Ask.
Oh, I say. Should I just go away?
It says,
Looks Good.
What is that supposed to mean? I say.
It says,
Try again.
Oh. Okay. Will it be easier tomorrow?
Can’t Tell, says the eight ball.
I guess I’ll have to wait and see, I say.
In the small blue window, it says,
I Say Yes
What to Say But Yes?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged are we there yet, arrival, kids, parenting, questions, short poem on December 7, 2013| 1 Comment »
long after we arrive
still the question
are we there yet?
No Questions Asked
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, questions on June 15, 2013| 2 Comments »
The gate did not ask
if I needed to find
a way out.
It simply appeared
two steps before
the dead end.
The thorns did not ask
if I wanted to pick
the red flowers.
They just lined every branch
of the leafless bush.
The closed sign
did not ask if I wanted
to enter. The lock
did not care I did not
have a key.
The match did not ask
if I were kindling.
Its red tip disappearing,
your name written
in kerosene
on my heart.