Tuesday, October 29, 2013

i swear there’s gold in those hills / acres are plenty in heart.


photos by jon canlas

this time of year, my thoughts shake and scatter. i muse and mull and look for meaning in every nuance.
i play piano again, pick up poetry, write messy words from wondering thoughts.
then there are late nights, piled up deadlines, cups of coffee . . . tangled like string.
knit me a reminder saying, season by season, for such a time as this.
i need rest. a place, the space, to breathe. just be filled.
i don't know what it will look like. i know what it will hold.
slowness. resting. being honest with myself and others. simplifying.
stretching and breathing through everything.

it's been a tough season. not leaves falling, pumpkins and orchards, hot apple cider season.
but this here and now place, these weeks winding around and around into months.
i've been living with so many layers. going through the whole gamut of emotions.
this is what i want
depth and richness
not shallowness and instant gratification -- fleeting
i want lasting
and there are cadences to that
bittersweetness rolling around on your tongue.
sorrow ringing and laughter singing and gratitude stretching through your soul, morning by morning.
i want the pauses that come between heartbreak and joy.
i want the evenings of weeping.
i want the afternoons of growing.
i want the hard days of planting, the long years of process and practice and belief.
i want to sow hope deep in my soul for the white walled years like winter winds.

i need the habit. the hours of work and wrestling. discipline.
to find myself remembering seeds grow unnoticed, at first.
walking barefoot in the fall with the smell of earth heavy, turning, changing.
i want to see that picture as a poem for my life.

able to see mundane as meaningful. turn routine into ritual. live wide eyed.
notice and laugh. notice and weep.
notice and work. notice and rest.
notice and make. notice and sing.
turning each sweeping breath into a prayer of thank you, thank you, thank you.
until there is no longer a hollow ache, a knotted lump, a tightness. but openness, depth, rest.

seasons and seeking and seeing.

further up, further in.

Friday, October 25, 2013

Wednesday, October 23, 2013


you, of breath and sky, I call soar.
cradle the swallow of air in your lungs.
weave your song into ribbons you leave
marking presence. your wings tipped with
whispers someone will one day                             softly drop
in your ears. these steps and stones, bare bones
are a soft place to land. settle. here is
where you will find flight, gather foundation.
dusk deepens, do not be afraid of night. there
is a time for rest, in wild violet twilight where trees
grow tall from wondering. morning breaks soon
enough, still your beating, still. your eyes leave
petals in the dawn of the world. at length, the sun stretches.
take your flightless arms and reach. this is when you
take heart to sky and find home beating inside you,
light like stars. this is a song you alone sing.

Monday, October 14, 2013

you and I.

Someday, let's pack a picnic of cheese and chocolate and bread. Drink sparkling water like it was wine. Let's spend all our money on photo booths and get lost running in the streets. Buy hot sugared almonds and pick bouquets of wildflowers, leave a trail of petals to find ourselves by. Let's watch the stars and point out constellations for which we have no names.

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

And so, you get up.


by beautiful anda

Sometimes, life is heavy.

You don't notice it at first. It's like collecting stones. You start slowly, gently. At first, you can't feel the weight. Then it becomes harder to notice what's in front of you. You can't see the scope, the slope of the landscape, because you're focused on carrying the foundation. It's easier to shoulder it all and numb yourself to the weight.

But there's that place. That point where you read your threshold, your valley. Maybe you've walked for so long that you are bone weary and ringed with grief. Or perhaps you ran, the entire way, and your breath is knocked out of you. And you realize . . . you don't know where you are. Or more soberingly, how you arrived. You look back and see that you've missed the markers, missed the milestones, missed the moments. Too busy holding onto the heaviness of the journey. It's been like that for so long that you're afraid you won't know who you are without it.

You have to let it go. To not go apathetic. To not go numb. To not go quiet.

Don't let sorrow swallow your song. You need to be awake - to the world, to life, to yourself. It feels like running for the first time, like stretching your shuddering muscles, like walking in the cold dew of morning. It stings. You start in the dark, with only the promise of sun. There's no light to outline the path. It doesn't matter. You've forgotten the road anyways. You've walked so long without one that trails are unfamiliar and foreign.

There is no hiding from brokenness. There is no running from grief. Some manage to evade it for longer, others find it knocking on their door daily. She has a face you cannot forget, leaves her calling card everywhere she goes. We are each stitched with ribbons of our every heartache, except, some of us are frayed. Even the best of us have tears.

This living, breathing, being awake . . . this is painful. Sometimes, it feels easier, better, to go cold. To give into the pain and become numb, and once again, pick up the skeleton of who you were before grief marked your face. To let your heart harden. Lock it away and melt the key and live in the motions, never the moment. At the very point of pain, it seems less exhausting. But passivity is a silent slow killer, a lie that laps away at the texture of life like water on the stone.

And so, you get up.

You keep moving though your bones ache. You walk until you run. You hum until you can sing. You catalogue small things until you can once again take in the scope. You choose to be awake. It's surprisingly painful. It's sobering to look around and realize you have forgotten what it means to be alive, for so long, for so long. It's February and you're barefoot and the ground has still not thawed.

Breathe. Again. And again. Dive into the core and pressure point of your pain, the heart of your ache. It's red hot and white and bitter black. It shakes like starlight. You swallow it like stones. But you emerge and understand, it hasn't added a layer to your heart . . . but a ring. It's not a mark, but a message.

The thing about being awake is you notice things. Good. Bad. Beautiful. Painful. Sorrowing. Sweet. Bitter. Broken. Dizzying between everything. You cry more. You laugh deeper. You understand broken things and encourage flowers to just be. You find your soul sprouting little green things, that the roots of the marrow of being haven't left after all. And it's painful, the fire of wakening running like blood. You've been asleep for so long feeling is foreign.

But you begin to appreciate what is small. You begin to breathe gratitude. You stumble on meaning, find grace woven alongside ache. It's not easy. It's not quick. It's gradual, a journey. This time, instead of collecting stones, you're collecting colors of the sky. You jot down thanks and let them go wild in the plum breath of the evening. The smear of jam on toast, black coffee in the morning, a walk in the evening that lingers.

Look at the trees, how they burn. Look at the fields, how they deepen. Look at the world, how it cries.

It's a choice to go deep and live through your pain, to feel it all, to choose to be awake to what comes. Bravely, when the time beckons, to let it go. Knowing that the struggle and searching builds strength, story, a song. Only, you are alive and present and find the words to sing inside you, and they were, all along.

Sunday, October 6, 2013

three sisters.


i. Grace.

When it rains, she collects water in
wooden bowls. Makes soup with
dandelion greens. Down the road,
a boysenberry tree stains the
neighborhood. She gathers the fruit,
barefoot. Her fingers remember
green things.

ii. Beauty.

Inside, she unties string, weaves straw
into gold. She plaits forgiveness into
her roots and drinks moon in her
mother's china. Her laughter
crystallizes the air. When she moves,
it shatters. She slips from the room,
running from the remnants.

iii. Truth.

They had a sister with a voice full
of sun. In the morning, her words
sprouted leaves. She gave the sprouts to
anyone who asked, forgetting people
lost earth. Weeds swelled between
sentences. Her hair faded. She fractured
on thorns. In her hand was a seed.