Enormous Stakes

In two empty spaces miles apart
without a burning candle we meditate together in silence

and a transmutation takes place:
like brain waves at the speed of light from the flesh we live in
shot through by all the stars we greet each other
at the depth of sanctified emptiness

we are wearing crown jewels from the forces of harmony
the earth alive within us
and I am in your eyes
you are in mine

we travel guided by a primal radiance
all is here now
from the far ends of past experiences
sprout new frontiers of the open sky

generations of evolved transformations
allow us to notice the glory of our own beings

the present an embrace of all the joy that ever was
the soul extracted antidote for not seeing each other

Thought for the Day

"And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
I felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke loose on the wind."
— Pablo Neruda

A Meditation Like This

What sudden enlightenment
hides in your words,
what?

What sun-hot altar
lies buried in our bones,
what?

What magic dancing
waits
to flaunt itself.

In the delicate fire of our communion rhythm,
I love you
in the spaces in between.

Thought for the Day

"This is my living faith, an active faith, a faith of verbs: to question, explore, experiment, experience, walk, run, dance, play, eat, love, learn, dare, taste, touch, smell, listen, argue, speak, write, read, draw, provoke, emote, scream, sin, repent, cry, kneel, pray, bow, rise, stand, look, laugh, cajole, create, confront, confound, walk back, walk forward, circle, hide, and seek. To seek: to embrace the questions, be wary of answers."
- Terry Tempest Williams

I Celebrate Us

I will clothe myself in your nearness, in your loving nearness and fearlessly I will go out into the world. I will stand there with your nearness, with your loving nearness inside me, and so many winter solstices will pass neither of us will remember, a thousand years, until the sky takes over your nearness, your loving nearness, to remind me to not be afraid because our love is good and shines with the radiance of a burning, everlasting clearlight.

Thought for the Day

Climbing the Mountain


I burned incense, swept the earth, and waited
for a poem to come…

Then I laughed, and climbed the mountain,
leaning on my staff.

How I’d love to be a master
of the blue sky’s art:

see how many sprigs of snow-white cloud
he’s brushed in so far today.
—Yuan Me

Commune

It's time to find a place
to be in silence with each other.
We 'll shine within each other
then scatter in the light.
I've carried on a thousand
conversations with you in my head.
Even this poem has forty-four
too many words in it.

Thought for the Day

"True dharma practice is a revolutionary activity, and you can't do it in a comfortable way. You really have to challenge the whole identity of your life. But the strength that's asked for is not necessarily the strength of eliminating the impurities of body and mind, or fighting against the defilements of greed, hatred, and delusion, the inner corruptions, though this language is very common in Theravadin, Tibetan, and Zen Buddhism. The strength that's needed is the courage of heart to remain undefended and open, a willingness to touch the ten-thousand joys and the ten-thousand sorrows from our compassion, the deepest place of our being. This is a different kind of fearlessness, which requires as much or more passion and fire."
- Jack Kornfield

On a Shining Sky

How miraculous to shape the day
with you and gentleness
Do you believe
there are laws of sky beyond this earth?

Language senses poems can breathe
Shed tears to cleanse all things
And celebrate your eyes

If I lean into my longing
Beneath a stretch of bleak midwestern sky
I find myself the Buddha's
Wild sweet child
And fall into the cold vista's open calm

Thought for the Day

"Even though you may want to move forward in your life, you may have one foot on the brakes.
In order to be free, we must learn how to let go.
Release the hurt.
Release the fear.
Refuse to entertain your old pain.
The energy it takes to hang onto the past is holding you back from a new life.
What is it you would let go of today?"
— Mary Manin Morrissey

Thanksgiving Love Poem

I worship at your altar
I sing your praise all day
It's hard to be here when you're not

For the whole day I flew in our sky with you
Our love is tangled up in everything

A Brief Summary
I adore you
Always you
I can fly
Only you
I can't stand it
Yes
We'll be in love forever
I'm laughing and I'm smiling
My soul's on fire and
You're the whole damn galaxy to me

Thanksgiving Thought for the Day

"The wonder of a moment in which there is nothing but an upwelling of simple happiness is utterly awesome. Gratitude is so close to the bone of life, pure and true, that it instantly stops the rational mind, and all its planning and plotting. That kind of let go is fiercely threatening. I mean, where might such gratitude end?"
- Regina Sara Ryan
Praying Dangerously

Dreams Between Stars

NGC 7049 in constellation Indus, with a family of globular clusters appearing as glittering spots dusted around the galaxy halo: the halo is made up of diffuse stars, and the faint points of light are globular clusters, densely packed groups of stars that orbit the galactic core, some of which are among the first stars born in the galaxy: Hubble Space telescope image by W. Harris, 1998 (NASA/ESA)


She wipes the tear traces from his face
She removes his fear with the light of a poem

She questions herself
what grace is not also death.

She holds him within
& they climb a hill & are at rest together

& she opens into the air above his face
which in his dream is breath
Something like a holy egg
is in his hands, dreaming

everything taking shape back in space.

Something like the moonlit night
is in his veins and her pure snow

fills his soul.

A strange grace has made plentiful.

Thought for the Day

“There is a fundamental reason why we look at the sky with wonder and longing—for the same reason that we stand, hour after hour, gazing at the distant swell of the open ocean. There is something like an ancient wisdom, encoded and tucked away in our DNA, that knows its point of origin as surely as a salmonid knows its creek. Intellectually, we may not want to return there, but the genes know, and long for their origins—their home in the salty depths. But if the seas are our immediate source, the penultimate source is certainly the heavens… The spectacular truth is—and this is something that your DNA has known all along—the very atoms of your body—the iron, calcium, phosphorus, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and on and on—were initially forged in long-dead stars. This is why, when you stand outside under a moonless, country sky, you feel some ineffable tugging at your innards. We are star stuff. Keep looking up.”
— Jerry Waxman

Looking Up In The Sky For A Long Time And Thinking Of Us

Capillary waves produced by several droplet impacts upon the interface between water and air: photo by Milo Zinkova, 2007

I am humble
before you,

at times I must
drink my tears.

Want to look into the sky
so long it reveals how I am a window,

left open to heaven
singing burn in the blue, love in the awe.

But nothing—like how you are braided
into my depths, honeycombed, swirling dream—

a sun-laser, burn-hole,
right through me—

the glad realization of all these prayers,
piled to the mountains, I am here to tell you:

There’s a pocket in space,
A hollow of bliss—

and here’s the good news—
we’re hurtling toward it.

Loose your feet from the earth
and feel the astral heat, accept the momentum.

Yes, it’s worth it,
I’ll recite an improvised prayer—

when we hit the bliss hole,
let us race through it, a gift on the other side—

from a light year away,
a white holy lint strand

of a calm and great grace
from inside of the vast.

Thought for the Day

When it’s cold and raining , you are more beautiful .
And the snow brings me even closer to your lips.
The inner secret, that which was never born,
you are that freshness, and I am with you now.
I can’t explain the goings or the comings.
You enter suddenly, and I am nowhere again ;
Inside the majesty.

~Rumi

you here you there

A gentle world lies behind our stars
and what lives in the soul
cannot be purchased It inhabits our dreams
like an angel sonata

Incomprehensible grace flowers
it sprouts when you look
straight into my eyes
with the perpetual urging of desire

The higher we go
up the calling ladder
a miraculous visibility
and the outer perimeter of radiant joy

Pure seeds never touched
grow into permanent revelations
dazzling, overflowing bounty
Words from our poems

Light the light

Thought for the Day

"Anyone can see that if grasping and aversion were with us all day and night without ceasing, who could ever stand them? Under that condition, living things would either die or become insane. Instead, we survive because there are natural periods of coolness, of wholeness, and ease. In fact, they last longer than the fires of our grasping and fear. It is this that sustains us. We have periods of rest making us refreshed, alive, well. Why don't we feel thankful for this everyday Nirvana?

We already know how to let go - we do it every night when we go to sleep, and that letting go, like a good night's sleep, is delicious. Opening in this way, we can live in the reality of our wholeness. A little letting go brings us a little peace, a greater letting go brings us a greater peace. Entering the gateless gate, we begin to treasure the moments of wholeness. We begin to trust the natural rhythm of the world, just as we trust our own sleep and how our own breath breathes itself."
- Jack Kornfield

New Art Forms Are Endless

when my love

I wander in the open meadow of you. I wander in the soft solace of your arms. I flare upon the puzzle of the day with you and you are sweet, lavish silk. Yes! When you’re not looking I’m right here. Gently, my hands are having a dream of holding you. This is the beginning of our next kiss. During the years between this one and the last I cry. I’m going to grow a sun in my heart for us where we will forever be an oasis of light to each other.

And when we die and sparrows carry us to heaven we’ll “always have ripe blackberries to eat and a sunny spot under a pine tree to sit at.”

*from Gary Snyder’s Smokey the Bear Sutra which states (may be reproduced free forever)

Thought for the Day

Most people can look back over the years and identify a time and place at which their lives changed significantly. Whether by accident or design, these are the moments when, because of a readiness within us and a collaboration with events occurring around us, we are forced to seriously reappraise ourselves and the conditions under which we live and to make certain choices that will affect the rest of our lives. -
Frederick F. Flack

being with you being

The idea the glorious idea that we
are capable of anything
Pleases me when the angels remind me

As stars please the night
Loving you my soul
Indubitably

So much letting go
Aimed at the deepest inside
Rapture from the bottomless well

One more breath, one more breath,
Your blood, my blood
In the hours that come and go
In the hours that come and go.

Song of the Day

Thought for the Day

"Love lays siege to each being and seeks to discover an opening, a path leading into the heart, by means of which love can permeate everywhere. The difference between the sinner and the saint is that the sinner closes his heart to love while the saint opens himself to this same love. In both cases the love is the same and the pressure is the same."
- Lev Gillet
The Burning Bush

me and you and the size of the sky

Ancient Arch, Highlands



I huff you again
in the sky.

My name written with yours
in the name of love on earth

you, miracle rising,
Following tender stars.

And fall
and swallow me.

You musical fragrance,
grace of gods,
and the endless ways of loving
the thousand messages left in the sky
invisible hands
that throb for you
love and hope for you.
I feel us falling

some time ago in summer
our essences breaking open
in the perfect gift of nature.

i love you

Thought for the Day

"Love is an impulse which springs from the most profound depths of our beings, and upon reaching the visible surface of life carries with it an alluvium of shells and seaweed from the inner abyss. A skilled naturalist, by filing these materials, can reconstruct the oceanic depths from which they have been uprooted."
- José Ortega y Gasset

Without Logic

I look for you everywhere
In the shining life all around
In the summits of my desire
And even in the dark skies

I watch through the radiant labyrinth
I watch through long nights like this
Blessings will come again soon
Every moment matters

Always the now, the same now, now, now
Which causes me to burn for you
At least until the hours of rising
When your colors return to me
And everything’s a triumph of the holy

Thought for the Day

Down near the bottom
of the crossed-out list
of things you have to do today,

between "green thread"
and "broccoli" you find
that you have penciled "sunlight."

Resting on the page, the word
is as beautiful, it touches you
as if you had a friend

and sunlight were a present
he had sent you from some place distant
as this morning -- to cheer you up,

and to remind you that,
among your duties, pleasure
is a thing,

that also needs accomplishing
Do you remember?
that time and light are kinds

of love, and love
is no less practical
than a coffee grinder

or a safe spare tire?
Tomorrow you may be utterly
without a clue

but today you get a telegram,
from the heart in exile
proclaiming that the kingdom

still exists,
the king and queen alive,
still speaking to their children,

- to any one among them
who can find the time,
to sit out in the sun and listen.


~ Tony Hoagland

love more than love

Your soul in love with mine,
mine with yours, breathe when we want to cry.

Prayers in the silence, consecrated psalms,
stars spread across the heavens.

Our feet rest upon the bridge
thousands upon thousands of yeses wide.

On the wings of a single yes,
how many lifetimes brightly lashed.

Thought for the Day

"You are standing in the sky. When we think of the sky, we tend to look up, but the sky actually begins at the earth. We walk through it, yell into it, rake leaves, wash the dog, and drive cars in it. We breathe it deep within us. With every breath, we inhale millions of molecules of sky, heat them briefly, and then exhale them back into the world."
- Diane Ackerman

Counting Blessings

My days begin with you.
In the morning pale orange of sky
our love is visible inside to me.
My perfect day from the middle of dreams
grows softer, touched in silence.
Your breath flows through me,
cuts into nearby mountains.
Your smile I hear,
first gift of day - your smile.
No emptiness here.
All the sun shines back.
The sky watches us quietly.
We rest together on our bridge of light.

together and be

Be Yes.
Listen to the wordless sky.
Be Yes, it tries
to call our

names.
Listen
to the loving core of everything.

Who are we?
Who
are we? Of whose
endless realm are we?

Who (Yes)
are we (as these arms
reach out). Do not
think of what we are
still less of
what we may one day be.

Rather
be what we are (but who?)
be the unthinkable ones
we do not yet know.

Thought for the Day

"Wonder begins with the element of surprise. The now almost obsolete word 'wonderstruck' suggests that wonder breaks into consciousness with a dramatic suddenness that produces amazement or astonishment. Because of the suddenness with which it appears, wonder reduces us momentarily to silence. We associate gaping, breathlessness, bewilderment, and even stupor with wonder, because it jolts us out of the world of common sense in which our language is at home. The language and categories we customarily use to deal with experience are inadequate to the encounter, and hence we are initially immobilized and dumbfounded. We are silent before some new dimension of meaning which is being revealed."
- Sam Keen

on wonder and wondering

In the space between time and the fringes of eternity
In between love and longing.
In the space between grace and looking away
In between late light and the sun.
In the space between reality and something unseen
In between secrets and vastness.
In the space between earth and the sky
In between anguish and the feast set before us.
In the space between darkness and gift
In between lonely-aching and healing.
In the space between prayer and passionate frenzy
In the space between mystery and the surface of things
Loving you.

Divine Enough

I am there with her
either with love
or with death
either the first light
or the first touch
bond between us
a dreamed world
sacrament of intimacy
the infinite intimate
of a fragile heaven
or understanding in
the soul detaching
the angel of hope self
the self that never sleeps
eyes wide open
and I’m you
melted in memories
fragments of images
every part of the whole
fruit in the orchard
blueberries on the tongue
lemon lotion perfume of an empty room
lingering
heart mirrored in mind
skin against skin
the tingle of eternity
of unwithheld hands
full sacred forever
tumbling through earth
together
we remain
in longing
part of an offering
at the edge of what is

Thought for the Day

"The task of genius, and man is nothing if not genius, is to keep the miracle alive, to live always in the miracle, to make the miracle more and more miraculous, to swear allegiance to nothing, but live only miraculously, think only miraculously, die miraculously."
- Henry Miller

hidden like a shadow

I want to be one with you in a million sun bursts
feel our ultimate ash
no body weight but our desire,
be ultimate flash
in the midst of what flows
in open sky
–apocalyptic and translucent clouds–
I want to look inside color with you,
in the all and everything of greater being and the wheel
of creation that sparks
lights up and fades
I want to be your vaster shadow
through to the other side of love
and carry you inside my story,
to be your blood
and possess its limits.

Thought for the Day

The sky said I am watching
to see what you
can make out of nothing


I was looking up and I said
I thought you
were supposed to be doing that


the sky said Many
are clinging to that
I am giving you a chance


I was looking up and I said
I am the only chance I have
then the sky did not answer


and here we are
with our names for the days
the vast days that do not listen to us



~ W. S. Merwin

Contemplative Thoughts for the Day

You are the future,
the red sky before sunrise
over the fields of time.
.
You are the cock's crow when night is done,
you are the dew and the bells of matins,
maiden, stranger, mother, death.
.
You create yourself in ever-changing shapes
that rise from the stuff of our days -
unsung, unmourned, undescribed,
like a forest we never know.
.
You are the deep innerness of all things,
the last word that can never be spoken.
To each of us you reveal yourself differently:
to the ship as coastline, to the shore as a ship.
.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke
from The Book of Pilgrimage

and

The contemplative life has nothing to tell you except to reassure you
and say that if you dare to penetrate your own silence
and dare to advance without fear into the solitude of your own heart
and risk the share of that solitude
with the lonely other who seeks God through you and with you,
then you will truly recover the light and the capacity to understand
what is beyond words and beyond explanations
because it is too close to be explained:
it is the intimate union in the depths of your heart,
of God’s spirit and your own innermost self,
so that you and He are in truth One Spirit."
— Thomas Merton

love taken as is

Lifebird


Saw this day,
we carry the light

like a bouquet, everywhere
we go.

Saw a walking angel
accompanied by the glow of an expiring star.

Saw the unknown
in pure form.

Saw you and we
simply begin to dance,

all there is
sacred time and space.

Saw my longing
my glory be,

all the healing
blessed are we.

I’ll look for you
falling in the sky kingdom.

A onespiritmiracle
in the vocabulary of angels.

this world to others

It gets dark early now
This is
when I like to recall
everything hidden,
miraculous, holy,
infinitely far and unsayable,
pure awareness,
perfect circle.
When I was little what I loved most
was creating worlds.
Now, I'm tempted to say,
having been recreated myself
wild and pure by loving you

is everything.

Thought for the Day

"…I can’t think of any greater happiness than to be with you all the time, without interruption, endlessly, even though I feel that here in this world there’s no undisturbed place for our love, neither in the village nor anywhere else; and I dream of a grave, deep and narrow, where we could clasp each other in our arms as with clamps, and I would hide my face in you and you would hide your face in me, and nobody would ever see us any more."
— Franz Kafka, The Castle

another inside

I breathe.
I breathe your name
when I write
from my soul.
I let go of my body and a path opens.
It opens.
It opens in the sky.
I fall through the sky.
I fall.
I fall to hope
which is flowering
which is on the altar
of my actions
of my thoughts
I fall to where the endless
unrolls
where the poem
of my actions
of my thoughts
turns spark into fire.
I fall.
I am inside.
I am inside the path.
I am inside my body's thought
which is love.
It gets repeated in love.
It moves from one human to another
from me to you
like a good pain.
It gets repeated.
I fall into you.
I stay in your thoughts
you stay in my thoughts.
I am inside.
I am inside of love.
I am inside your midnight whisper
and your breath and rebirth
which is inner.
It happens.
This moment.
It happens now.
It happens within
a microscopic space.
The cosmos.
Love.

Thought for the Day

What is a poem? A beautiful affected lie. An insinuated truth….A truth as precious and hidden as anything from a mine. One needs to be a miner of poems to see in its Ethiopias of darkness, its Indias of light. A salt-wizened truth situated between blue and singing. Who sees that the sea in truth is white? Nobody. Nevertheless it exists, it flutters, it alludes in its sculpted spume to the color of the crescent moon. The clear sea — would it be as beautiful as its secret if it were suddenly clarified? Its greater beauty lies in its secrecy.

Miguel Hernández, Mi concepto del poema (‘My Idea of a Poem’), 1933, translated by Ted Genoways.

Five Sun Poems

I. Tangled

Let her
Who is beautiful in joy
Seeks love in the Sun
Beware the dancing time
For unexpected growing–

II. Solar solar

I sing
Sun-gold songs
Slow-basking in our sun-nest –
Sun-poems – and in the dark gold night
Your lips

III. Sun Worship

Weave me
Into your sun and path
Among your fragile dreams
As I have woven you in mine
Alwhz

IV. Dawn Explodes

Twin Suns
Whose flames surge
Into a single sunbeam
Are not more intimate than you
And I

V. New Beginning

Here in the sky
A ladder to the seven circles of heaven
Where everything contains a clue
Where the flower of the heart is open
Where everything is of the same sun

perfect meaning

My Zen is the smile in my throat

Nothing but breaking bread with you,
the wind, a cup of tea, the sun rising,
thinking of you

though we could lie together in the dark
hold stars in our hands
instead
we construct our own universe between stars
or breaths
between our sun-nest
and the miracles of flesh

make love transforming fire our art

Thought for the Day

I know of a place not ruled by flatness
Or constant risings & depressions,
& those alive are not afraid to die.

There wild flowers come up through the leafy floor,
& the fragrance of "I am he" floats on the wind.

...There the love bee stays deep inside the flower
and cares for no other thing.


~ Kabir

Today Is Eternal

I follow the way of the ultimate mystery,
I search for the origin of wholeness,
I go to the center
of all-embracingness with you,
flowing with mutual enhancement
and ascendance, an inner octave.

I collect light for our souls.
I carry it no matter what
into the wild uncertainty of our vast,
unmapped territory.
We feast on flamboyant,
neon colors in the other’s sky.
We love to our own beat,
absorb the other’s ripening glow,
and dance to the inner heat.

It is a time of depths,
undecipherable coordinates,
a time beyond syllables.
The time is today
and the time is now.
How wide the good we know.
How toward the inside unbound.
And how an incomparable reverence
for each other makes all this possible.

Thought for the Day

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn

anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive

is too small for you.

— David Whyte, House of Belonging

You Caused Me to Look up Tonight

I have nothing but praise.
I always see your face
in a sunset glow.
You make death not real.
I follow you in my heart,
so many heavens,
plentiful dreams
satiating all expectations.
I hear a new language
formed of love, your face
like a moon and my life lost
in your mouth.
Come to me with open eyes.
We will swallow the void.
I know we are singing
with strange rhythms.
It hurts to grow wings
but we could live forever.

Thought for the Day

"I want to taste and glory in each day, and never be afraid to experience pain; and never shut myself up in a numb core of nonfeeling, or stop questioning and criticizing life and take the easy way out. To learn and think: to think and live; to live and learn: this always, with new insight, new understanding, and new love."
— Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

untamed force

My life dances in a new world
where my soul is wired with fireworks.

The sky opens
and I float up on fire.

I did not expect to love like this. All the world’s glory inside me.

I sit hypnotized as the sun’s rays embrace me.

I bless the day we met
You delight me even though we cry at times.

I wear you tightly as I burn –
and angels root for us.

Thought for the Day

"Poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves."
— T.S. Eliot

internal state of being

yes, proved by no
i keep remembering anew
and my entire being, 
once again,
imagines you 
in complete 
and utter
rapture.

only then
does the light
of your gift
circle around 
and expand 
to the edges of infinity
and my essence
streams open rejoicing,
for it knows 
it cannot help 
but to absorb 
every motion
of your swirling hair,
every lure 
of your thin elbows, 
and every fearless thought
of your angelic mind.

Thought for the Day

"Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at the moment."
— Eckhart Tolle

where the heart begins

I love you this way
Eons later, liberated from short term thinking

Lie down in the three times, in ancient wells
Undress, while looking to blue sky, fruitful land, clear waters
So warm, so broadening and deepening
In the early evening of our innate deep time
Upstairs to our secret room of scorching union
It is now I come for you, thanking all things altogether now

Thought for the Day

LOVE IS A PLACE. THROUGH THIS PLACE OF LOVE MOVE (WITH BRIGHTNESS OF PEACE) ALL PLACES. YES IS A WORLD. IN THIS WORLD OF YES LIVE (SKILLFULLY CURLED) ALL WORLDS. ~ E.E.CUMMINGS

time comes when

Tessa Traeger, Intuition, 1997




morning dust reflects sun
into memory
enters through the daylight a magical visual mantra
there is nothing holding this tender heart together but I have you

a solar force at dawn rises, an elegant answer
like resting in the elemental: we will dazzle you
with our sparkle and levity
we realize our evolutionary potential, our heads surrender to the sky
we bend with the storm. We seek what we already know
we turn away from the shadows
when it is time, we return
where love wonder flowers

Video of the Day

Thought for the Day

"The more we open ourselves to this hugely energetic and profuse and chaotic and tumultuous world of ours the more shaky and afraid we become; and the more shaky we become the more we try to find things to hang on to, and the more we try to find things to hang on to, the more opportunity we have to see our clinginess and be willing to let go."
— Dr. Reginald A. Ray, from Rev. Danny Fisher’s Gift of Dharma