Clanking Courage

Clanking courage

Squawking play songs

Chipping and bowing and climbing creatures all know how to sit in stillness –

On a balmy mid-day

In a loud city

I listen to the trees –

Bold palms reflect the phosphorescent yellows of the sun.

Tell me I am more

Tell me I am yours and all of this will settle into a brilliant light

A loving embrace

A perfect form

Our human ways.

Days reform and recast into periods. A string of moments, within which I can feel the plans of the blue jay – I concede the concerns of the mockingbird.

I write free to find you again.

To remember my meditations and keep them ever presently on my lips.

I am here

I am here

I am here

I live on this rock – my feet pressed firmly into the sandy soil.

Tiny flowers sway in a barless refrain.

My patch of heaven. My clanking courage. My faith strengthening enough to send me on my way.

Amen.

From I Used to Write Free, 2022-2024

Bloom

What is the very best thing an orchid can do?

Bloom.

And in blooming, and

Radiating a brilliant bold light, and

Offering a clear invitation –

It can hope to be received by a capable admirer, and

Through this,

Seeds are formed, in multiplicity –

What can a seed do?

Tell the same story

On a new today.

From Seed as Prototypical Plant Notes, 2020-2023

On Greatness In a Desert

I used to write free –

And in this space, I declared that I am greatness in the desert!

That greatness is only truly tested in a desert.

I am greatness in the desert and in this body. 

When I first conjured this image –

Little did I know what the desert really looked like. I revered the triumph over solitude.

Do not try to be anything great.

Instead, hold a posture hold on tight – as if your life depended on it – and find your greatness in silence.

What if my whole life has been a striving toward peace? To consecrate my being such that,

in order to –

because  

God loves an empty vessel.

On this solid rock I relish the points of density –

And I do not trip. I do not stumble as I bend down to smell the dandelion flower. The weed who waits in an open field for me.

In stillness, I remember –

Here is what there still is to say, how to say.

The philosopher is a persona. My longing is for a perfection, a releasing of my goal from my grasp.

When you found me, I was on my way to the desert –

I was on my way to renunciation. To a space I imagined would be large enough and loving enough, loose enough to hold me. To praise my unshakeable weakness. To yield to my sacrifice –

A place

That could understand me in its quiet. A place that could redeem me in its empty.

A place I could rest, knowing the sun would never sleep and the moon would not evade.

I wouldn’t be the only one with sharp edges and a soft interior. But I would still be the only one.

From, I Used To Write Free, 2022-23