The poetry of Being is scattered throughout time and the cultures of the world. It is written by Sufis, American Transcendentalists, Asian Zen and Taoist masters, a myriad modern poets, as well as many others. The profound experiences they convey can be felt in Celtic legends and Native American prayers. Their authors not only document the wonderment of life but the deeper presence that is evoked by their experiences. They relate an expansive sense of Being awakened through nature, creating a synergy between the inner and the outer that dissolves separation between self and that greater presence.

Though centuries and cultural differences may separate us, their words have not dimmed, they still light the way.

Sitting Alone on Jingting Mountain By Li Po - (701–762)

The birds have vanished down the sky,
Now the last cloud drains away.
We sit together, the mountain and me,
Until only the mountain remains.

From Don’t Go Back to Sleep, by Rumi

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.

You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.

People are going back and forth
across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch…

From The Song of Amergin - ancient Irish legend

I am a Stag of seven tines,
I am a flood across a plain,
I am a wind on a deep lake,
I am a tear the Sun lets fall,
I am a Hawk above the cliff…

From Meditations by Sarah Margaret Fuller

Today, for the first time, I felt the Deity,
And uttered prayer on hearing thunder. This
Must be thy will, — for finer, higher spirits
Have gone through this same process, — yet I think
There was religion in that strong delight,
Those sounds, those thoughts of power imparted. True,
I did not say, ‘He is the Lord thy God,’
But I had feeling of his essence.

The Beauty Way Prayer from the Diné, a First Nations People

In beauty I walk
With beauty before me I walk
With beauty behind me I walk
With beauty above me I walk
With beauty around me I walk
It has become beauty again
It has become beauty again
It has become beauty again
It has become beauty again

From At the River Clarion, by Mary Oliver

I don’t know who God is exactly.
But I’ll tell you this.
I was sitting in the river named Clarion, on a water splashed stone
and all afternoon I listened to the voices of the river talking.
Whenever the water struck a stone it had something to say,
and the water itself, and even the mosses trailing under the water.
And slowly, very slowly, it became clear to me what they were saying.
Said the river I am part of holiness.
And I too, said the stone. And I too, whispered the moss beneath the water…

Poetry is one of the arts by which we can both experience the presence of Being and guide ourselves deeper into its fullness. I imagine Mary Oliver amplifying the voice of that river as she sat in its company and wrote, her pencil conjuring forth the many voices so audible to her.

I’ve been migrating back into the practice of opening to Being (a word for God/Goddess/Spirit I use as it conveys both a presence in the physical world as well as timeless transcendence), as my focus on grief and family pulls less on my creative process. Developing an awareness of Being through the arts is not only nourishing for those of us invested in it, but essential if our culture is to grow any well rooted wisdom about living with love and gratitude on this beloved planet of ours.

I hope the following poems, arising out of my daily life, encourage you in opening to and receiving the essential presence of Being available to us all.

*For those who want to sit back and listen, I’ve arranged the spoken poems as a video playlist on youtube. Click here to listen.

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: