I throw in any tallies
I’ve been keeping,
the ones that record
who did what and when.
I throw in all the letters
I wrote in my head but didn’t send.
I throw in tickets I didn’t buy
to places I didn’t visit.
I throw in all those expectations
I had for myself and the world last year
and countless lists of things I thought I should do.
I love watching them ignite,
turn into embers, to ash.
I love the space they leave behind
where anything can happen.
Posts Tagged ‘transformation’
Bonfire in the Heart
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, fire, new year, transformation on December 24, 2020| 6 Comments »
A Little Pep Talk
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged endings, heart, letting go, transformation on December 9, 2020| 2 Comments »
The swirling ash
doesn’t try
to be become
log again.
The flying leaves
don’t attempt
to return
to the tree.
The girl
can’t untwist
her genome
back into
separate strands.
The flour
in the bread
can’t return
to the sack,
can’t undo
the kneading
of hands.
In all things
lives a memory
of letting go
and the chance
to transform
into what
it can’t know.
What do you say
to that, heart?
Good self,
what do you say
to that?
Transformation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, prayer, rain, storm, transformation on July 17, 2020| 9 Comments »
You need a rainstorm.
—Paula Lepp
I need a rainstorm
on the inside, the kind
that relentlessly pours,
the kind that rearranges
everything, leaves nothing
untouched. I need a deluge
that drowns out any voices
that would offer easy answers.
I need a cloudburst to flood
everything I think I know,
that carries me until I, too, am current.
Have I gotten so dry inside,
so brittle and sure?
Give me a gulley washer,
the kind that scours
and remakes its path as it flows.
I want it, and yet
when I feel the first drops
I scramble for the umbrella,
as if it would do any good.
There it is, petrichor—
earthy fragrance of change.
The big rain will come when it comes.
There will be no stopping it then.
On the Edge of Transformation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cottonwood, transformation, tree on March 20, 2020| 6 Comments »
When it was a branch
on the cottonwood tree,
the driftwood never imagined
it could travel—
and now look at it, softened,
smoothed, riding the current.
Oh heart, what have you
yet to imagine?
Practice, More Practice
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged practice, transformation on January 27, 2020| 3 Comments »
And if I snap at you about the soap
in the wrong place or the toaster
not being put away or how we
are late, it is simply that I have forgotten
the inner spaciousness of everything.
I have forgotten the poem inside everything.
And if I mutter and pace and stiffen,
if I prickle and fuss and pout,
it is because I simply do not remember
how essential it is to let myself
be broken, how a sweet alchemy
is happening in me even now.
There are days when I lose sight
of how beautiful it is, this chance
to get things wrong, this gift
of making mistakes so that I might learn.
And all that I don’t yet know grows wings—
it will choose when and where it lands.
One Freedom
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged flower, garden, meditation, poem, poetry, stillness, transformation on September 6, 2019| Leave a Comment »
If Only All Change Were So Easy
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, poem, poetry, rain, transformation on July 28, 2019| Leave a Comment »
Transformation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged erosion, loss of separate self, poem, poetry, sand, transformation on June 27, 2019| 2 Comments »
And again the world tumbles me
and again I emerge smoother, softer,
less sharp, less whole. Someday I will be
less solid, less myself, more a part of everything,
more a grain of sand that knows itself as one of many, easily
moved by the current, until finally, I
am less sand, more sea.
Why I Like Singing the Same Concert Six Times
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Heartbeat, music, poem, poetry, singing, transformation on March 3, 2019| Leave a Comment »
for Heartbeat
singing
the same song,
again,
but this time
the melody
finds in me
a closed,
forgotten place
and sings light
into its tightness
until where
there were walls,
now wings
Becoming Crystalline
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged forgiveness, poem, poetry, salt, transformation on December 8, 2018| Leave a Comment »
Forgive me. I do not mean
to be sharp, stark, sterile.
I’ve read of the salt mines
at Salzburg, how if you throw
a stick, leafless and dead,
into one of the abandoned workings,
then return months later and pull it out,
it will be covered in crystals,
“a galaxy of scintillating diamonds,”
writes Stendahl, “the original
branch no longer recognizable.”
I want to be like that stick.
Take my winter soul
and throw it into the mystery,
though it’s dark and cold
and easy to get lost.
What knows how to attract
the light will grow, will change me
until I barely recognize myself.
I do not mean to be short,
but I hear it in my words.
Stranger things have happened.
What is dead is sometimes
a chance to find new life,
to become a thing shining,
something the same, only fresh,
a thousand times more brilliant.