Maybe souls are not a given thing
but something we conjure in each other,
from a Mothers first glance,
and the endless friendships that are the quilt of our childhoods,
to the attention of our beloved animal companions,
silent but seeing us truly, always,
and all the nectar and wounds of lustful partners that may batter us,
but also rebirth us,
making a single life into many lifetimes.

Isn’t it all conjuring soul?

My dance with you has placed me at the edge of an endless pool of being.
I waver for a moment,
before slipping in,
again.

In my dream I was the first to wake up in our summer sleeping cottage uphill on our land. We had several beds in a communal space, enjoying the play and freedom of kids on summer break. Immediately upon waking I saw a strange bird zipping by the glass doors. It was built like a predator, thin and hard, hunting other birds no bigger than itself. Streaking across our land it pierced a bird, harpoon it, ripped it apart and ate what it could before quickly discarding it and moving on. It was completely savage, without remorse. Who knows how many birds it had already killed while we slept?

I had to do something about it, I had to stop this bird. I headed down to the house to find some solution. Just as I arrived it slammed itself into the screen door I was opening. It struggled relentlessly, digging in deeper, shredding the screen. I quickly grabbed it and examined it. Its beak looked lethal, part bone, part spear, but it was also beautiful. Each feather was layered with rainbow colors that seemed to glow. I knew that despite its extraordinary nature I was going to have to kill this creature, it was decimating the bird population.

Sure enough my hatchet was right there, leaning up against the door. I grabbed the bird and laid its head on a stump, and though it hurts my heart to kill anything, I cut it right across the neck. Its head dangled, barely attached by a dab of skin.

I went into the house to discover my wife already in the kitchen. We’d invited guests over and they would arrive soon. I hastily prepared a meal, adding the bird I’d just killed as part of a rich stew. We had a homestead and prided ourselves on using as much of what we’d raised as possible.

In no time there was a knock at the door. When I opened it, a husband and wife were waiting with their future son in law. Their daughter would be there shortly. It turns out she was late because she had a peculiar habit of turning into a bird every day to hunt.

“Yes, we know it’s strange but it’s part of what makes her so unique. She’ll be done soon, turn back into her human form and join us,” they said.

My heart fell to the floor. I realized immediately what I had done. That lethal bird I killed was this family’s daughter, this man’s fiancé. We were all destined to eat her in the meal I’d prepared.

I couldn’t let that happen. I had to tell them.

“I ahhh … you’re not gonna believe this but I just killed a bird, a bird I’m going to serve with dinner tonight. This is horrible I know but it sounds just like your daughter, just like your fiancé.”

“No,” they said, “it can’t be.” They were polite, they couldn’t imagine their host could do such a brutal thing. “Describe her.”

And so I did in great detail, the size of her body, no greater than my hand, her sharp semi-transparent beak, the rainbow feathers that seemed to hover between worlds. I left out no detail, even though it broke my heart to say the words.

“No no no, ” they said, “that’s not her. It doesn’t sound like her at all. Now where is that dinner? It sounds delicious!”

I knew what would come to pass: each one of them would eat their share of this young, magical woman I had mistakenly, stupidly killed. She would get inside them, gather in their bellies. Then and only then would they be struck by the horror of what they had done. They would know that they’d eaten her and surely go mad with grief. I would sit there, watching them feast on the meal I’d made and see their illusion shattered.

Then a voice whispered in my ear, it said “isn’t that just what writing is like?”

I was stunned awake by the realization, sitting bolt upright in our sleeping cottage, my wife and kids still in their own dreams. As a writer it is my job to take something true, perhaps a hard, savage truth, and serve it to those who do not understand it. I was here to serve people, but to serve them something that could crush their denial, slay them. I had been too precious in my writing, I needed to be willing to add more painful things to my stew.

We might to feed it to them carefully, sensuously, even though we know that when it settles in their bellies they’ll feel like they’re dying. Indeed, some half truth would die.

Transformation is sometimes hard, it can involve brutal truths, but it cannot be avoided forever.

My son becomes stronger without me,
adding weight to his lean frame,
becoming keener,
as he always has,
honing himself like a Hawk balanced on the edge of a hunt.

He is his own heart now,
has been for more years than I would like,
if it were my choice,
and it’s not.

He can hold the portions of life served to him,
savor them, begin to sculpt them into a path that winds well enough.

Still, my part is not yet done,
he hasn’t held my weakened body as everything of me fades,
leaving him with my haunting self.

I have a yearning prayer that my son will find soft purchase somewhere, anywhere.

He is my bones,
he will take them and make new songs in the world.

I’ve been held up within myself this winter,
gathering the smaller pieces of me,
sorting them, remembering them, releasing them,
cherishing a few.

I’m ready for green sprouts as the heavy sky releases its gift.
I would be buried in rain hands of remaking for days if I could stand it.

When the sky is done shouting its glory,
Dog and I will walk out into the intoxicating cathedral air celebrating each other,
and the trees and dirt that know us so well.

I don’t know if I’ve ever needed this rain sky so much as now,
something to remake me,
something so that I can feel new again,
ready to birth a small portion of splendour
back into the world that has held me as an unexpected treasure all of my life.

I see my daughter and praise our universe of infinite, separate things.
I follow her mind as it wanders down strange staircases she makes,
painting new worlds insider herself,
running with them out into the day,
scattering them everywhere.

She’ll share her stories with you, whether you want to hear them or not.
Suffering bruises, small wounds, she heals easily now, already having learned that way.
I think she’s decided, after some great time of braiding tall grass into crowns,
that growing up might not be such a bad thing,
someday.

If she arose out of emptiness,
the great fullness of possibilities,
with her strong hands and weaving ways,
then something profoundly glorious must be right with that place.

I will visit the memory of the wish of her,
it surely must still be there,
the first words of the first lines of a life waiting to be written,
like poems that wait for me in the place I thought was barren
but turned out to be full of radiant beings
waiting to be born,
given the chance to fly,

just like her.

A brief break from poetry, to talk about another creative stream in my life—sacred movement.

Out on the dance studio floor last Sunday, letting the music open me up in that familiar way, I found myself pulled back to the moment dance became a gateway to something much bigger for me. Our movement facilitator, Lynne Herbert, holds space for all who venture onto the floor on Sundays, inviting us to allow whatever needs to show up to arrive in full splendor. I guess that morning, that studio was the right place to revisit my experience.

As I started to look within, I saw the brightness of that day in my teens. It was in its otherworldly state, the way things looked after I’d accidentally altered my consciousness through movement. There had been pain that day too, of course. But by then, the pain was all gone.

I don’t like to admit it, but my body usually hurts, if only just a little, since I was young. Truth be told, if I gave up sugar and food from the nightshade family, as I did for several years in my twenties, I would feel perfectly fine. Still working on that one. The effects of a case of serum sickness (an immune reaction to some bad medicine) impacted me and a cohort of kids back in the ’70s. I didn’t really realize everyone’s body didn’t feel like mine, so I learned to push through it—which usually worked. Except on really cold days like that one.

I was, of course, underdressed for tromping through snow and skating across ice to get to high school. Many parents will recognize my teenage propensity to pretend I wasn’t frozen to the bone as I headed off wearing something that looked cool but was completely oblivious to the weather. I think I had a trench coat over a T-shirt, over torn jeans, topped off with Chuck Taylors. Too cool for the cold.

My joints were starting to feel like molasses as I worked my way across the ice. Instinctively, I leaned into my ballet training. If I could flow from the street up onto the sidewalk, it hurt less. Anticipating small heaps of crusty snow, I landed toe-ball-heel, extending a pointed toe to the next drift coming my way. I was really starting to enjoy myself. Not a choreographed masterpiece—more like dance turning me into a river of body that could flow over everything. I squeezed every bit of momentum out of each step, every gesture, paying it forward to pull me like satin over the rough terrain.

Before I knew it I was totally high. Not only did my joints not hurt, I actually felt pleasure moving through me like warm soothing honey. The brightness of the day took on an etheric quality. Scraggly trees and snow topped bushes glowed from within. The world itself had changed, I was walking in a totally new terrain. Somehow the intensity of my focus along with releasing held energy in my joints had brought me into a completely different state of mind.

The world had revealed its true, radiant self. Moving easily across the floor, forty-five years later, I could still feel the essence of that glow. What a gift that day was.

Yes it was pain that led me there, but once I became aware that movement could open up bigger, deeper places, I never forgot. Every style of dance, every martial art I trained in after that day was a way of cultivating a sense of presence in my movement. Everything was a doorway to something bigger.

When I move with Lynne and the others who show up, I feel totally connected to that place of endless possibility, knowing that each step forward I take might lead me to a new movement that transports me away from pain and more deeply into the present moment. I never know what will come up next, but because of my younger self, I’m more than willing to trust.

This morning, I woke up at five a.m. and (after feeding many animals) found my way to the circular canvas mat at the foot of my bed. Its creation was inspired by years of training in Aikido in a dojo with a large circular mat. In graduate school for my arts degree, I made a mini dojo mat. It became the place I used to cultivate combining shamanic journeying with movement, drawing again on that space I discovered so many years ago. The circle I have now is the third incarnation I’ve made over the decades, as I’ve dragged it through the many phases of my life.

This morning, as with so many others, I put on a blindfold and grabbed my rattles. I now know many ways of altering my consciousness through music, percussion, and movement. After only a few moments, my body becomes a gateway as I dance into other worlds. Recently, my helping spirits encouraged me to deepen my experience of the Ocean, dissolving into her currents. It is an experience so sensuous, transcendent, and relieving I really can’t convey it. You have to dance it to know it.

Maybe if my joints hadn’t ached and ballet hadn’t given way to those knee problems, I would have become the dancer I dreamed of becoming as a young man. It took me years to let go of the grief of that loss. But I have known the world in a way that few Westerners are given the chance to know it. I have felt the soul of the Sun pulsing through the conscious, living bodies of a forest. I have flown as many beings into places few humans have ever gone.

This morning, I learned how the Snowy Owl prays.

It’s amazing how those cracks that open up suddenly, unexpectedly, in our lives can lead us straight into the hands of divinity.

Hope to see you on the dance floor soon…

I practice Ocean flowing through me,
all the tiniest creatures of me,
with their glistening shells and spiral swims,
cherished alongside the goliaths of my heart,
all dissolving into the motion of the embodied breath of life.

Pray like the Ocean prays
with open stretching arms
and a receiving body of fullness.

Ocean yearns for the One and Ocean is the One.

She does not want,
instead She Desires from her depths,
to hold it all,
the singing master of the chorus of everything.

Along with the sunrise Ocean makes way for the winged hunters
that dive and thrash
feeding on the body that will never stop eating,
and nourishing.

Praise the Ocean flowing through me,
pray and praise for the One who is Ocean
and everything.

I’m far less than half a saint,
my grief, anger and frustration,
levying penny taxes on us all from time to time.

The scrapes I make are never too deep,
even a glance from love will do,
but in the mending we weave ourselves back into each other,
and the world.

This morning Dog and I ran in shallow spring snow,
a gravel trail written out by her calloused winter paws.
This is how the world mends me -
a day conjured of dog-magic,
singing through the puff of a widower’s breath,
inviting me always
to say yes,
and again yes,
to all that I have been given,
and all that has been taken.

I’ve needed to mend the hand sewn quilt
made by a mother who is gone,
letting threads that reach from here into the next world
guide me.

That’s how I learned to become a Father who mends.

She will teach me to be humble, kind, protective and always practice good hygiene.
She will be alert to all sounds and smells that come our way,
hopeful that a friend will visit,
or at least a worthy adversary.

Ravens are not to be tolerated because they steal marrow bones.

She will trust me and nuzzle into me, snuffling with deep satisfaction,
not talking about sacrifice, or damnation, or surrender or divinity,
but never holding back a wag,
that would be a sin.

As we walk together our story of the day folds us in its arms, affection growing as we tend it with food and play.

She reminds me it’s OK to eat anything you want, and as much of it as you want, so long as it’s not broccoli.

She accepts that we all have to wander off by ourselves from time to time,
but only for a little bit.

She will demonstrate with elaborate care the many ways napping can be prayerful, saying a firm yes to the grace that has delivered the place on the carpet awash with sunlight, yet again.
She will do all of this without speaking a word or being foul tempered.

I will lay down tonight with her days benedictions resting in my heart,
imbued with sainthood because of her.
I fall asleep meditating on the revelation of a mountain stream on a summers day,
when you have a dog with you.

No religion has been truer than a day with her.

More than breath,
water makes us who we are,
wending our bodies through life in a receiving way,
reminding us how to fail at being rigid every day.

Water is our true genius.

When I can feel the softness of you,
through your gentle hands,
water is whispering ancient stories in that touch,
of rolling over rocks,
down throats,
frozen for eons then cascading into fjords,
sailing as mist or falling as life giving rain endlessly over our world.

Water is the way blessings come into being here.

What will become of me
when the final sinew that bound us,
made us whole,
is broken?

I run to stop my last grief from taking flight.

You’re still there, waiting for me to say yes,
let go into dreaming without you,
a true ending for a new beginning.

How do I find the courage to let you go?

You sunk so deeply into me there is no place I don’t find you
when I look within.

If I were to say a final goodbye to you,
it would have to be in a forest beloved by you,
crowded with birds and other creature angels you adored.
If you were to dissolve into a deep thicket of green,
then I think I could say goodbye,
at last.

You have given me a serenade for the world,
now I must remember to sing it
without you.

Now her tides pass through me,
and I into her.

I don’t try to measure her vastness,
or gauge her mood,
I stand at the tips of her infinite fingers,
sea foam lashes greeting my feet,
and let go.

I needed to learn who I was again,
before I could surrender on this cold night,
when I am finally no longer afraid.

She gives the first breath.
She gives our animal bodies,
that crawl and hunt, birth and feast, live and die.
Through her we are cleansed,
through her we awaken.

She, the original pulse, dancing within each of us,
here before our first ancestor,
irresistible and gentle,
our teacher of sublime danger and grace.

Ocean prays through me
because I’ve become transparent to her,
and all that surges from her arms,
that births itself from her many wombs opening in the deepest canyons of the Earth where light does not venture.

Ocean has always been praying through us,
now I yield to her.

Yes.

When did we decide the way forward was always alone?

Those who just arrived still know how we’re entwined,
endless soft sprouts gathering each other in nursery bundles,
unafraid of the fragrance of entanglement,
ready to squeeze and hold and cry together.

I would wear grooves into myself laying against you,
with the heavy world pressing in,
if you would allow it.

If we can reach out for each other
I know blossoms will erupt in our shared silence.

I don’t think you even noticed when loneliness grew so big
it became its own island in you.

It settle quietly alongside the other parts of you,
nobody saw it, you made sure of that.
Then came the inevitable day when it became your place of residence,
the home you could not leave.

I think it’s fine to live there, but you must plant things nobody would expect to find,
craft beauty in your own way out of what may arrive on your shores,
make it a worthy place to wander through.

Then others will want to visit you there,
it will become a home for wisdom,
its warmth will be renowned.

Loneliness is not the enemy,
it’s just the soul’s way of pointing us to what is true.

You don’t have to live alone
in the place loneliness has made for you.

This is what will be taken from so many of us,
this moment to chop and grate and prepare,
this moment to let our minds rest on the mouths we will feed,
their smiles, their pleasure as they taste our caring, feel it rest in their bellies.

Have we always taken more than our fair share? I think so.

War does that, takes lives, many lives, and gives peace only to those who can forget all the mouths that will not be fed,
that will be made silent instead.

But I get my clean cutting board to start the day with,
a place I paint with food, try to make bright things, beautiful things that affirm life,
even as life bleeds away for so many.

I will have my clean cutting board, for today at least.

There will be flowers there, even if they’re only the invisible kind.
My dog waits for me there along with all the other animals in our home.
They live in this place, always wondering why we only visit.

Walking days can begin with a rats nest of thoughts.
I slow my pace to unscatter them, mosaics waiting to be discovered then discarded.

I’m left with my wandering way that now measures everything in the rhythm of my boots, the cadence of gravel sentences.
If I stagger a bit it’s only because I’ve found some perfume to follow.

It’s funny how these are the only days I remember as the years pass.
These days teach us how to age,
how to traverse the lonely places, without losing our way.

Walking days are the times when our true destination reveals its path.

Still, I think they’re pretty.

Everything we have is borrowed -
homes, money, cars,
all borrowed.

Our feet only belong to us for a time, we’ll have to return them at the end of our journey,
when they’ll be remade into something else,
made useful again.

Feelings are the only things I can claim, though I’m not sure they last,
they are of me.
Sometimes they reach out to find you,
smoke tendril fingers searching,
hoping to be met,
to twist into a bond together,
that I know will last,
even if we don’t.

My heart is the one borrowed thing that knows what’s real,
when it’s finally surrendered, what glorious birds will be released?

After Terry died, the stillness before dawn became my church.

For the first few months, every morning when I awoke, I sat in the dark making sure our children had some semblance of a father to greet them. Was I a chaotic mess of missing puzzle pieces, trying to remember where and when I was? Was I blissed out from a dream visit with her, savoring the feeling of being together again? I spent many nights crawling through dank dreamscapes made of sorrow, grief, and anxiety. Those mornings, I didn’t want to hug our two children until I’d had a chance to clear the residue of those lands.

When you have young children to care for by yourself, how you feel each day has an enormous effect on how they experience life. There has to be room for their wings to open to the fullest, whether or not they’re using them for flight that day. They have so much growing to do despite their loss. They need to know the person supporting them has a steady hand and an open, loving heart.

I began to spend every morning going within. After the most intense aspects of my dream experiences had settled, I journeyed into everything bubbling and shifting inside of me. I faced my resistance. I went into the places that hurt. I soaked up the joy, savoring the smells of cedar-soaked desert rain floating through the open window. I held our cats, sinking deeper into the moment.

Eventually, I found stillness.

As months without her turned into years, stillness became my ever-present practice. I could be driving, listening to one of the kids talk about their day at school, but I was finding and sinking into that place. Once you spend enough time there, you know how it feels, how to locate it even when you’re stressed out. You learn to share the peace that arises with others.

I began to understand that stillness was about so much more than feeling at peace; it was about being fully present to the sacredness of being.

Much of what is written in the following poems arose out of my morning sessions. In fact, those times became the time to write, to polish insights I received. The inspiration for some pieces might come on a walk, during my day job, or in any number of moments with the kids, but the cultivation of these poems happened in the terrain of bed and morning. There I harvested from stillness what I might, shaping it into an offering that others might find nourishing and resonant.

I hope these poems inspire the instinct of connecting to that deeper place within. We all have stillness within ourselves, it’s always there. I think we should help each other find it if we can, receive it fully, and live from it.

*note: during this period I moved from audio to video, to video with subtitles. This collection reflects that process.

Follow the links to experience this collection:

We’re all there,
serenaded by the momentous serpent of living and dying.

You were tiny beings then,
us struggling beside you to find our way as parents,
while Mommas body grew heavier,
settling ever downward.

I never lost sight of either of your faces,
food going into your mouths,
grins riding a collection of half broken bikes and trikes and wagons
down our dirt road with a pack of neighborhood kids.

As I tend my scars I can feel that day so easily,
the house bursting with your laughter wrapped in jasmine breeze,
the gift of dappled light resting with us even as her life began its ending,
moments made indelible to my soul.

We didn’t come here to tread lightly or be wrapped in cellophane bubbles.
We came to journey together,
making rafts of ourselves for each other,
so we can all travel to I don’t know where together.

I dance him before the sun rises,
feathered wings filling my room.

I could have been given any animal
but it was Swan,
the Fathers guide,
the Fathers protector.

He arrived like a glowing cloak
placed over me,
settling in.
I finally learned how to receive him fully,
deeply,
he now rests in my core.

My spinning path leads to arching,
circling,
wings wrapping and opening,
lifting,
flight.

We become indistinguishable from one another,
I think that’s how it’s supposed to work,
Swan becoming my teacher of being.

Being in flight,
being at rest,
being as Father,
being as lover,
being as Cygnet.

Being as One.