On one foot

…brief updates about me and those I care about

*Autumn is moving into my neighborhood. Our 12-foot sunflower has succumbed to the rains and we will be trying to harvest this giant’s sunflower seeds along with those of its smaller brothers.

*I just finished reading a fascinating book about American literary giants in 19th century Concord Massachusetts: America Blooming. So now I will need to read more about Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne and Louisa May alcott.

*And to keep the giant theme going, I am less of one thanks to my continued yoga practice and the addition of morning sit-ups. I’m up to 90 a day, hoping to make it to 100 by the end of the year.

**What’s new with you, my darling readers?

How sweet

To see a thing plainly

To glimpse its nature

And its possibilities

You say

There’s something white on the lawn

Some tiny scrap of paper

And bending to pick it up

You see

Wings open to the air

The white creature flutters near

Then away to the garden

Two days later

Clothed in white

From kippah and prayer shawl

Down to my shoeless feet

I stand in the sanctuaryI

Bend the knee and bow

Lower my body and my being

Before the One

All the way down

Touch my heart to the floor

Feel the earth

its rhythm

Press my thoughts and forehead into timelessness

And rising

Feel my wings opening

To the light

To the sweetness of seeing myself

Plainly

To the possibility

Of drawing near

I remember July mornings

Stepping among pools of shade

And leafy bird song

To find your purple door

A portal

Your kitchen garden

A haven to deer

And other shades of beauty

My words can’t express.

Night is waiting

Unknowing is openness

Potential undiscovered

Masked goodness

Still I tremble

Strain to see

What remains hidden in shadow

Strain to touch

What is beyond grasping

The sun is my playmate

Bids me to explore the world

The moon is a mirror

Beckoning me inward

To explore unmapped worlds

To claim the light of my soul

The sea moving between shores makes sense.

The sea , which transforms itself from a quiet glass of rippling reflections

into a rocketing mountain of foam

And fury, wild with watering eyes.

And I have been taught from every side

Life is a sea carrying me between two shores.

(Humans seem to like parentheses)

Beginnings and endings are tidy,

Tell us Where we have been and where we’re headed.

But just maybe, life has no parentheses.

Maybe Life is one infinite line with a few points that leap and dance.

Maybe an infinite circle, a place of silent

Knowing and bliss and love.

And we all–squid and algae, salmon, starfish and rubber boots–

Flail about frantically, suspended in darkness.

As we frolic and fight and spawn

like fish in the sea,

The sea of silent knowing, bliss and love.

Because we are the ever-shifting sea foam

Floating in the vast blue eternity of God.

Everything has a voice

Even little things

A drop of rain has stories to tell

Its travels to distant places

The people it has kissed and soothed

And the fields it has nourished

We are too busy to hear

And its language is beyond our knowing

Everything has a voice

Even destructive things

An earthquake has tales to tell

Its dance gone wild with longing

Its arrogant surge upward into the spotlight

For all to measure and marvel

We are too busy to hear

And its stories are to familiar

Meanwhile little fox asleep

Between my hands

Awakes

Bright eyes peer deep

She blinks then stands

And takes

No backward step

As into wilder lands

She breaks

in the night of knowing

A star glimmers

A shudder of light

Far far below

One willow leaf

Released and flying

Floats

And after

Bathed in dew afresh

It gleams

When words come

Gentle

As morning dew

It’s easy to walk past them

Without noticing

Easy to miss the way

Living things respond

With welcome

With gratitude

With the memory of thirst upon their tongues