Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘waking’

Sleep Walker

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on August 27, 2025| 2 Comments »


 
 
Sometimes in my sleep
I walk with you. In the woods
or through the halls of a school
or once in a cave with turquoise pools.
We are almost always laughing.
Sometimes we play chase.
Only when I wake do I remember
you are gone. Is it any wonder
I like to linger in bed, sometimes
for hours, as if I could touch
the dream again, my eyes still closed,
my hands wide open.

Read Full Post »

On Waking

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on June 4, 2025| 2 Comments »


 
 
Do you, too, love the time between dream and day
when we are gauzy and diaphanous,
more sky than clay, more the spiral than DNA,
love those moments before you remember
your name, before you remember the guns
and the bombs and the lines we have drawn
around right and wrong, before you remember the fingers
we point and those pointed at us and the blame
we shove back and forth. Even now, midday,
if, still, we close our eyes and breathe,
we can almost return to the innocence of it,
can almost feel the weightlessness, the wildness,
the generous knowing of being without measure,
without border, without label, without should.
Imagine we could meet in that undefined space,
that liminal, boundaryless place. All of us nameless
at the very same time. It wouldn’t last. The alarm
always rings. But what if when we all emerge,
some of that spaciousness would cling to us
as we make coffee. Open the door. Drive the car.
Say hello. What would we make of the news?

Read Full Post »

Waking on Day of the Dead

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on November 2, 2024| 8 Comments »


 
 
Eyes still closed, the world
still dark, in my mind
I name my beloveds
no longer here
and my thoughts
become an altar.
I imagine each of their faces,
each of their voices,
surround them with snapdragons
and calendula, smooth stones
and white feathers.
Eventually dawn slips in
as if to light inner candles.
How does it do that, the light?
How does it enter me even
when the eyes are closed?
The dead, too, seem
to find their way in.
I linger with them.
It is beautiful.
When I finally open my eyes
the salt from the altar
has spilled all over my pillow.

Read Full Post »

On Waking

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on October 23, 2024| 9 Comments »


 
 
In that vast land
that exists between dream
and waking, there is no I
and no other-than-I.
There are no borders,
no citizens, no factions,
no right side, no wrong side,
a realm of pure openness
where I am not aligned
with any feelings or beliefs,
where I am wholly breath and being.
How would it be to bring
such openness into the day?
To fly across the lines
of I and not-I
the way a bird flies
between countries,
across state lines,
across fence lines.
To know the self as unself,
as seamless, undivided,
even as it pours the coffee,
even as it drives past
the signs in the yards,
even as it watches the news.

Read Full Post »

The Waking

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on May 16, 2024| 8 Comments »

When I wake, it’s your silence
beside me that invites me
to wake into my own silence,
and I begin the day with listening.
By heart I know the difference
between the quiet of your sleep
and the quiet of you dreaming.
and it is by tuning to the gentle
hinge of your breath that I
relearn my place in the world.
Even before my eyes are open
I greet the dawn-drenched day,
not with an alarm but through a doorway
of trust. How quietly opening happens.

Read Full Post »

The Grown Daughter

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on June 23, 2023| 7 Comments »


 
Before my eyes are open,
I reach across the bed
to find my mother’s arm
atop the comforter
still heavy with sleep.
I settle my fingers there
like a butterfly landing
on a flower the same color
as its wings. Grateful
for this simple proof
she is here, soft and breathing
beside me, I fall back asleep,
my hand still touching her.
Long after we wake,
I still feel it in my hand,
not her arm itself,
but the reaching.

Read Full Post »

Some Mornings

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on June 1, 2023| 6 Comments »

Before the eyes are open
but after the body wakes,
there is that gentle interlude
when the scent of the dream
lingers like lavender incense
and light enters the body
through the skin and there is
enough awareness to fall in love
with this moment but not enough
agency to stay in or to leave—
 
I imagine it’s what it’s like to be a bud,
to remain folded in on the darkling magic
until, like soft petals, the eyelids
can’t help but unfold
and the irises sip at the light
and half of the soul angles back
toward the dreamworld,
the other half opens toward life.

Read Full Post »

The Call

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on April 26, 2023| 4 Comments »


 
 
Dawn, and the geese announce
their landing on the pond—
and though the reluctant body says sleep,
the heart rouses to attend their arrival.
So many awakenings seem to happen like this:
when I feel least ready, least willing, most averse,
something demands I rise—
something strident, insistent, wildly alive,
saying, Now! It’s time! You’re here.

Read Full Post »

Two Days Before Spring

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 19, 2023| 6 Comments »

 
Without knowing it this morning,
I woke to the day
the bluebirds returned.
 
Every morning it is like this—
the chance to rise into a day
of unexpected blessings.
 
All afternoon the bluebirds weave
through the field, perch on the roof,
bob in the grass.
 
I marvel at how easily
beauty slips in to help me
fall in love with not knowing.
 
All day I feel lucky,
like a woman given
a truth so precious
 
not because she deserved it
but because she woke up
and met the day.
 

Read Full Post »

Adjusting to the Change

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on November 12, 2021| 8 Comments »




Just today I didn’t make you
a cup of chai—did not stir
in the dark clover honey,
did not warm the soy milk,
did not bring you the cup
with red flowers, the one
we got in Finland all those
years ago when we couldn’t
sleep with all that light—

instead I pour myself
into the black of morning.
There is sweetness here
in these quiet, predawn hours,
a vastness no cup could ever contain.
I want to serve it to you,
though I sense, love,
it is you serving it to me.

Read Full Post »

Older Posts »