Tag Archives: outdoors

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Forgiveness

Rumi writes about the wound being where the light gets in. Leonard Cohen says the cracks are where the light gets in. My poems about being reborn or changed seem to involve either burning or the sea. I wrote this in 2009.

Forgiveness

I want to forgive something
Someone
In fact a group
Something that hurt a lot
I’ve tried logic
I tell myself
“It was an expression of concern”

My heart doesn’t agree
It is sullen
Immobile and grumpy
It whispers
“They have not apologized”
It whispers
“When people say you’re crazy
It could be a joke
An expression of concern
It wasn’t
It was a palm held out
At arm’s length
To distance me.”

My head argues
“That’s what it felt like to you.
You don’t know their intentions.”

I want to write
A poem of forgiveness
Hoping my heart will follow

My conscious doesn’t write my poems
My conscious wrestles with an idea
The poem comes out of this struggle
I look at the poem I’ve written
I think,
“That is what I would like
my conscious heart to feel.”
My poem is often more generous
than my conscious feels

My poems are not mine
They are a gift
From the unconscious
It is much larger
Than the small conscious me
I dream of feeling envy
I climb into a bathtub
And transform myself
To battle a trickster
We are transported
To the bottom of the ocean

In the ocean
The trickster and I are one
It is unlimited
It is not my unconscious
There is no separation
It is all unconscious

I did not think
A poem would give forgiveness
But pain drove me
Into the sea
I am connected
You gave me these pearls
Thank you

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: crack.

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Mind

Facing a wall or lying in bed
breathe slow: four seconds in
one two three four
four seconds out
one two three four
keeping count

or facing a wall sitting
on a zafu, bell rings to start
how can forty minutes be so long?
fall asleep and body weaves
waking me up OH don’t hit the wall
adrenaline then slithering down
towards sleep again

zen mind, blank mind?
my mind wanders off again and again
what is for dinner? grocery list?
that annoying thing or person
at school or work
the mind busy as a squirrel
burying nuts and digging them back up

bring the mind back again
again again again
to the breath the wall letting go
of this well trodden mind trail
only to have the mind wander off
down another: this with briars
and falling into a pond
that has ice and cold

back shake like a dog
shake it off
focus on the breath the wall again
vivid multicolor cats
with paisley and stripes and spots
there is the BELL
forty minutes

Bow to the wall
and stretch
get up
ready zafu for the next time
meditation
mind

_____________________

Written today for the Ragtag Daily Prompt: blank.

The translation that I originally learned is here.

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Goals

Are they called goals in cornhole?

Sol Duc has a goal.

Warm belly fur. I am not sure she is going to like going home. When we first drove up the Olympic Penisula, my daughter was two. It was three pm on New Year’s Eve, getting dark, and we were on 101 with the very tall trees blocking most of the light. “Where sun, mom? Me no can see sun.” Sol Duc will probably ask the same thing: Where did the sun go?

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: goal.

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Wild

I keep wondering at the stubborn part of me that will not let go.
 That wants to reconcile with all, no matter what they’ve done.
 I go inside, deep and deeper, in the depths all is slow.
 That part is the holy part that longs for the One.
 I have been told to let go of things, forget, no more longing.
 But the longing is a sacred place, a longing for the Beloved.
 I think that excising it would be a horrid evil wronging.
 Handle gently, with care, with love, and gently gloved.
 I meet someone who says, “You are very in touch with your inner child.”
 I know it’s not a compliment, I smile and pay little mind.
 My Child is my connection to the Beloved, fierce and mild.
 Jealous judging rolls right off, people can be unkind.
 I won’t excise the holy core, the Beloved inner child.
 I feel the Beloved’s laughing play and joy, heart running wild.

_________________

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: realize.

https://www.playingforchange.com/videos/words-of-wonder-get-up-stand-up-song-around-the-world

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There must be

There must be a bell here somewhere. I am sure of it! This is Cinque Terre, taken when my daughter and I were hiking last September. It was a beautiful and fabulous day! We hiked the trail for three towns and that was enough. I thought my legs might fall off.

And the water! Gorgeous.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: bell.

Keb’ Mo’, sing it and ring it!

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All of my patients are smart 3

Human behavior doesn’t surprise me, really. Sometimes it disappoints, depresses, demeans, dispirits and demoralizes. And it’s not the patients. It is the corporate workplace and how it abuses people. And circles the wagons against a threat. Including against employees that it views as threats.

I think all of my patients are smart. “You got this,” I say. I explain what carbohydrates are and that they are in everything, practically, except meat and oil. And some meats have carbohydrates too: shrimp, for example. But my patients can figure this out! My patients rise to the occasion! I am not saying that they do smart things all the time. No one does, including me. Even the smartest ones can do things that are not a good idea or are a really bad idea. Growing up in an addiction household, I think I escaped addiction mostly because I had decided that no adults could be trusted by the time I was three. I thought they loved me but I couldn’t trust them not to give me to someone else. Ironic, that the distrust saved me from taking the same path. My sister took it and is gone. My patients are smart and all I have to do is share my education and experience! They take the ball and run with it! Not all. Sometimes it’s too late and everyone dies eventually.

Corporations, on the other hand, are infuriatingly stupid.

The photograph is me in 2015, sailing my father’s boat with my daughter, in Port Townsend Bay.