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Posts Tagged ‘worry’

Sitting in a Quiet Room

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on September 8, 2025| 4 Comments »


                  with thanks to Karly Pitman
 
There is this stark moment
when I see I am not my worry.
When I do not chastise
myself for worrying, nor
do I demonize the worry.
I do not imagine the worry
as a snake or a tick or a nail.
I welcome it into my lap,
uncomfortable teacher,
and pause here
on the hard chair of curiosity.
Softness arrives with conscious breath.
In and around me blooms
spaciousness.
Silence is the tenderest lullaby.
It holds both the worry and me.
It has no tongue, yet the lyric is clear,
There is nothing here you cannot meet.

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When Worry Showed Up Again

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on September 7, 2025| 6 Comments »


 
It slithered in snakelike, the worry,
and hissed in a sinister whisper,
What if you said too much?
Why can’t you just be quiet?
I felt its eyes measure my long, bare throat,
felt its fangs against my skin.
Doubt in my safety flooded in.
But I did not speak back.
Instead, on instinct, my body
took me to the noon-bright pond
to float like a leaf on my back.
I felt the water lifting me.
Felt the summer-warm kiss of sun.
Listened to dragonflies moving
the reeds as they landed
and took off again. Listened to trees
rustled by wind. The more present
I was in my body, the less strangled
by worry I felt. The more I could see
how worry wasn’t everything,
the easier I could breathe.
Hours later, I marvel how the body,
knew just what to do,
an ancient wisdom moving through.
Of course the snake didn’t disappear.
I still hear its disturbing, insistent hiss:
What if, it insinuates. What if, what if …
But it’s harder now to believe the snake
when I feel more aligned with what’s here.
What’s here? The heart ever learning
to open, to trust. The wonder of having
a voice at all. The wondering what I am
here to learn. Dozens of dragonflies.
Reeds. A slender snake of worry. Trees.
Sun. Pond. Wind.

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Could It Happen Anywhere?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on July 13, 2025| 7 Comments »


 
Listen to the rhythm of things that never die.
                  —Mark Nepo, “For a Long Time”
 
 
Worried about what was to come, I went to the river
and listened to the constant song as water met stone,
met log, met wall. The endless white hush of it.
Song of building up banks. Song of tearing them down.
Song of surrender to invisible force. Song of change
that is ever the same and not the same. And in the listening,
I found refuge—not in the longing to hide, not in the sound—
I found refuge in the listening. Refuge in the opening
of the senses. In attuning to what is here. Wave and current
and eddy and flow and the attentiveness that lives
through this woman. And I listened and listened, listened
to it all, and was opened by listening. At some point
the listener disappeared. What was left was
listening itself. For a time, peace found me there.

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All at Once

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on June 18, 2025| 8 Comments »


 
 
Walking alone into the dark,
my fear comes with me.
I feel it small and hard
in my belly like a tiny grenade
the mind has conjured
in case I need protection.
Meanwhile, all around me
the night is peaceful.
The dark spills its generous ink
into every open space.
Crickets rub their legs in bright music.
The misty rain makes no sound.
But the mind is not convinced
the night is safe. It clenches tighter
around its fear. It does no good
to tell the mind not to worry.
Hello, tiny grenade.
I carry it with me as I walk
through a field of fireflies—
and I’m laid bare by the beauty
I find there—thousands of glittering sparks.
Isn’t it a marvel how a person
can be both clenching and opening
at the very same time
while moving alone through the dark?

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The Minimum

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on March 25, 2025| 1 Comment »




Even when worry wrecks us,
leaving us broken on the shores
of the life we had,
even when we have been wrung
like rags, even when we
are brittle, snappish things,
even then the scent of spring
can reach us with its notes
of damp soil, sharp pine,
and sun-warmed grass,
the air clean and slightly sweet.
We don’t need to open
our eyes. Don’t need to try.
All that is asked of us: breathe.

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After Years of Seeking Peace, I Stop

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on March 5, 2025| 7 Comments »


 
 
right where I am
and find the peace
that is already here,
notice the way
peace is what
holds all the tension
in the same way
silence holds noise,
in the same way
the dark holds the sun.
Right here. Right here.
An infinite peace,
an unwavering peace
great enough to hold
all agitation, tender
enough to hold
even the most
shattered heart.  

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One Incongruous

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on September 20, 2023| 12 Comments »

this tattered cloak of worry—
with my best silk thread
embroidering the holes

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One Encouragement

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on August 30, 2023| 12 Comments »

the day flooded with worry,
I become sailboat—
your words the wind

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A Fearful Heart

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on January 31, 2022| 6 Comments »

 
 

 
 
Worry comes in like a fruit fly—
slips through the tiniest crack,
a crack I didn’t even know was there—
or it comes in the front door
with something I love—
and soon, worry is everywhere,
laying its eggs in all that would ripen.
Almost instantly, worry multiplies.
Of course, worry would have red eyes.
Worry doesn’t much care the season.
Winter is as good as spring.
And it circles me, buzzes me,
annoys and undoes me,
resists my attempts to be rid of it.
Invites me to learn to live with it.
I never notice when it is gone,
only when it’s here again.

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One Expansion

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on October 29, 2020| Leave a Comment »

swallowing the sky tonight—

all those enormous worries in me

now like grains of sand

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