Category: poem

Imagine

I wrote this poem last October in a writing salon with Patrice Vecchione at Gabriella Café in Santa Cruz, where her art show Imagination Migration was on display, a flock of hand-colored birds carrying flowers, maps and pencils in their beaks. I didn’t guess then how much I would need imagination to move into my next chapter, our next chapter.

For me, today is a day for remembering the courage and wisdom of Martin Luther King, Jr. “We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline,” he admonished in his “I Have a Dream” speech. “We must not allow our creative protests to degenerate into physical violence.” Although he was talking specifically about civil rights for black Americans, his sagacity transcends the March on Washington in 1963. Dignity, discipline, and nonviolence are his guidelines, and just as important, “We cannot walk alone.”

Today I’m also remembering the four freedoms Franklin Delano Roosevelt articulated in his State of the Union address on January 6, 1941: the freedom of speech, the freedom of worship, the freedom from want, and the freedom from fear. Today I call on our collective creative energy to imagine a future of freedom and justice for all. 

drawing of birds

Imagination

I swallow sunlight with each persimmon

bite, and juicy sweetness quenches 

fear, feeds in me the flame 

that wants to burn

like the persimmon did 

when it plumped into roundness

and swam into its deepening orange.

Oh, that fire wants to burn bright. 

Something greater than me kindled

my flame, the same something

that coaxes birds into flight

and taught the persimmon to long

for orange. I swallow sunlight,

and birds fly through my pen

onto the page. They are cooing

and warbling, hooting and squawking.

They love this page, and it loves

them back, so fiercely it gives 

up its claim to gravity, and really

it turns out there’s no defiance

quite like flight.

*Drawing courtesy of Sarojani Rohan

Enter the Sanctuary

Angel sculpture holding candle

It’s all mist and veils to start with – 

except for the title,

a line lifted from another poem,

a flame to which I touch

the wick of my small candle.

Carried to the blank page,

it flickers in currents of air

exhaling the breath of so many spirits.

I cup my hands around it

till fire takes hold

of wick and wax,

and I see the opening,

take my first step into the labyrinth.

Though mist still shrouds

the circuits and turns,

candlelight shows

where to set my foot —

and no more.

How this roundabout

twisting-on-itself path

will lead to the center

I do not know,

nor can I yet fathom

what I will find there.

Sometimes the way is overgrown

with brambles and gorse,

thickets so tall and tangled

they hide the center.

I carry no machete,

no pruning hook or shears,

only bare hands

to unravel thorny vines.

Do not shun your doubt and fear.

Be patient. Be humble.

Taste the blood on your torn finger

and heed the spiderweb

as you slip past its dark weaver.

Curious and awestruck

audacity

will take you

where you want

to go.

Dear reader, at this time of winter darkness, about to light the fourth candle on the Advent wreath, watching for the return of light heralded by the winter solstice, and admittedly overwhelmed by the consumerist frenzy that hijacks Christmas in our culture, I wish you sanctuary — your own pool of light in the labyrinth — and a pathway to hope in the New Year.

Advent wreath with three candles lit

The Body Is a Sacrament

Notebook and a copy of Anam Cara on a desk and window looking out on a garden and the ocean

What hidden grace

does this flesh and blood temple

make manifest?

I mirror the universe

outside my window,

star jasmine and juniper,

feathery fountain grass,

salvia’s royal velvet thrust.

The far horizon draws my gaze

across Mother Pacific

and up to Father Sky,

wisps of white like angels’ eyelashes

and prophets’ beards

splashed across the blue palette.

My hazel eyes offer passage

for the inner

and the outer light,

soul windows that reflect beauty

and shine forth my own glow

from the cave of my heart.

Grace it is to know

the Beloved lit the flame.

I wrote this poem four years ago while on retreat at New Camaldoli Hermitage in Big Sur, CA. Readers of Anam Cara by John O’Donohue may recognize my title as a quote from the book and some of the ideas it inspired in me.

Poppies and Lupine

A long El Niño winter filled rivers

and drained the sky into a palette

of whites and grays, but now above is flush

with blue, and in November’s stubble fields

wild grasses grow chest high. Gnats

and apple blossoms glow in the morning sun,

and in California meadows

poppies and lupine mingle

as if they’d invented the color wheel,

like friends who love bold

fashion and go shopping together,

noontime and midnight meeting for drinks.

How can I blaze like they do,

exuberant and heedless of burning out?

Step out your door

and seek your shadow.

Savor and serve it all,

mystic and hedonist,

hostess and hermit,

the good daughter and the performer

who’s only acting the part.

For every purpose under heaven

there is a time —

for yes, for no,

for beholding beauty

and for giving it away. 

O poppies, o lupine,

I want to kiss the world.

Teach me how to flaunt orange,

show me how to dare purple!

With appreciation to all my writing friends who helped me make this a better poem

I Will Always Remember

man holding a mug of tea

A drizzly morning thirty years ago.

I rush along a path of dripping oaks

from coffeehouse to early morning class.

Across the quad (it seems so far away)

a man much older than I  rakes wet leaves.

My coffee steams as I stop now to sip

and in the distance see a girl approach

the gardener, holding out a cup of tea.

He shakes his head, polite but firm, no thanks.

The mist and space between us cloak the two,

a snow globe or a silent movie scene.

Again the girl entreats and lifts the cup.

It’s almost eight, I may be late for class,

but I remain. How will this story go?

At last the man accepts the cup, he nods,

she smiles, nothing left for them to say.

Who gave a gift to whom that winter day?

Let My Soul Sing

dog playing on the beach

I light a candle at dawn and invite

my soul to sing with the angels –

which means that I sit my body down

and repeat a mantra in my head to hush

the buzz of plans, desires, and worries.

The soul knows the secret

riffs and melodies

you forgot when you were born

and delights in her play among them

as a dog racing across the sand

to the scent of the sea delights

endlessly in the game of fetch.

The master-tossed ball

arcs across the sky

in a marriage of mass and motion,

and the dog chases and fetches,

chases and fetches.

So, I release my soul

to play on the beach

and beg the Holy One,

open my ears to hear the verses

You are singing to me.

Open my lips to join the chorus.

Sleepytime Tea

box of sleepytime tea next to a teapot on a stove

Seductive valerian and maidenly chamomile,

same herbs my great

great grandmother snipped and brewed,

summer garden wrapped in tissue,

insomniac’s aphrodisiac,

you promise I’ll wake in the morning

like wood sorrel opening

its neon yellow flowers

to the first

touch of the sun.

Come, blessed leaves,

soak in this boiling bath;

release slithers of scent

into steam if you must,

but save every single soporific cell

of sleep-inducing power

for me.

O liquid lullaby,

soother of worry

and dream enticer,

drift away with me

into a nightlong

river of rest.

Crossroads

Trail through the redwoods

The same breeze that sifts

through the redwood boughs 

and flutters the aspen leaves

also lifts a strand of hair from my face,

brushes my cheek and wrist.

What arboreal aerosols

has it lifted on its way

to trace on my skin?

We can’t see what happens underground,

roots and beetles, tinge and seep of water,

the faint white mycorrhizal threads

doing work beyond human imagining.

The power of the barely there

becomes visible in trunk and leaf,

honeysuckle nectar for the bumblebee.

Like the magnetic pulse that tells

wild geese where to fly,

something is calling you 

to the place

where your joy meets

your neighbor’s need. 

At this crossroads 

in the kingdom of enough,

listen to the gull’s cry,

the squawking of crows,

the warbling coo of mourning doves.

Here is the delight of the realm

singing your name.

With gratitude to Frederick Buechner, who wrote, “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”

The Beauty You Love

open notebook lying on a bench in dappled light

Dappled light on a blank page,

breeze sifting through pine boughs

faint as a whispered prayer

invite a spray of words

to fill these vacant lines —

an empty universe waiting

for stars and stones,

crustaceans and curlews,

waiting for the endless

bubbling up to begin

yet already longing

for a still point

within the hurtling.

When the Holy One commands us,

love me with your whole heart,

and with your whole being,

and with your whole strength,

doesn’t She also mean,

adore the pine tree whose shade you sit in

and worship the sun that feeds you?

Praise them worthily, She says,

and you will praise me.

Title from a poem by Rumi