When you come to the end of the path
it isn’t obvious.

There are openings under the trees
where small streams have carved what looks like

a way forward.

The forest floor is golden with fallen fir needles
and at first you think Ah yes! Here’s a trail

or at least a deer path to follow.

A half-hour later, maybe more, you find yourself
lost. The same heavy-boned trees all around

the same openings that lead nowhere.

The drip drip drip of drooping branches. Weird creaks
and groans, echoes without direction.

You lean against a slick black rock, slippery with mosses
clusters of emerald stars in no visible constellation.

You’re not afraid, exactly. After all, there are paths
through these woods. You’ve walked them before

on Sunday afternoons much like this one. You have
a nodding acquaintance with several spectacular ferns

and at least one flaming arbutus tree whose scarlet trunk
you pat fondly whenever you pass by.

Now, you sniff the air the way you’ve seen dogs do—
that keen alertness, that panting relationship with geography.

Maybe you’ll don a dog’s intelligence when you assume
its stance — the hidden pattern of the woods revealed

in your canine nose.

The trees stand, inscrutable, silent. No sun-dappled path
appears magically before you, inviting your foot

to its ordained destination.

You’re hungry, now. You’re cold. The light
thins overhead.

You lean your heart into the slanting rain
and walk.

This poem is dedicated to my dear friends, Jen Louden and Mariko Gordon, and to my heart-sisters everywhere: powerful, creative, freedom-loving women who are shaping a world of kindness, courage and love for everyone.

If this post spoke to you, you might like these as well:

• Fog
• Last night the full moon shone a slanting light
• Inspired Monday

Last night the full moon shone a slanting light
across my winter garden
where two deer lay sleeping

under the leafless apple tree
whose arthritic arms beamed wands of light
through the twitching caverns
of their dreams

while I, too restless to dream
climbed the vanilla mast of my bed
and sailed out to the curved elbow

of the far horizon whose There
hauled me home
without apology

If this post spoke to you, you might like these as well:

• When you come to the end of the path
• What You Know Now
• You Opened Your Mouth…

“And the soul is up on the roof
in her nightdress, straddling the ridge,
singing a song about the wildness of the sea
until the first rip of pink appears in the sky.”

–Billy Collins, from The Night House

If this post spoke to you, you might like these as well:

• World-making
• No. Yes.
• Elegy

1.

Empty of sight you gave yourself away
to those

who were blind to your gift–
as you were. You.

They devoured your sweet juices,
spit out the pith and rind of you

as you did. You.

2.

Years went by. Watchful, rind-thick, rind-bitter,
you cradled the memory of your treasure—

buried it
in a mountain cave

guarded by the stench of dragon breath.

You did. You.

3.

Your sweet citrus selves, deprived
of light, of air

shriveled, curled their pithy threads
around your dwindling heart.

In your dank cave, you dreamed of orange groves—
the sun-drenched country of your becoming.

4.

Now, on this dappled mountainside
you’ve built your home.

Windows open wide to a curved horizon.
Skylights, for visiting stars and spilled constellations.

A floor and walls of hand-rubbed stone.

You made this. You.

5.

Strangers sometimes climb the rocky path
to your front door.

You welcome them with cool water,
oranges in a blue clay bowl.

You do not give yourself away.
You do not withhold.

6.

You know this, now. You were always
yours to give.

Yours, and more than yours—
to take, to bury

to hold, nourish, offer, radiate.

What are the ways in which you’ve given yourself away?

To learn how to be present, and creatively sovereign, please join me for How to Rule Your World from the Inside Out, starting February 6th. You can listen to a recording of the free preview call here.

If this post spoke to you, you might like these as well:

• Sunday Poem #8
• When you come to the end of the path
• Last night the full moon shone a slanting light

This.

This log boom gliding silently
on pewter waves
tethered umbilically to a single
tug.

Squat, snub-nosed, face only a mother
could love–
This small bundle of muscle
and will

pulls a once-upon-a-time forest effortlessly–
a loggy wake.

O, the power of purposeful alignment!

The power of faithful service
hauling a forest

home.

If this post spoke to you, you might like these as well:

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GOING AWAY

Strolling on the beach with my son
yesterday, sun licking our faces, a sparkling sea
washed over our feet. I breathed a prayer:
Thank you. Thank you for this day.

Fronds of seaweed licked the tidal sands, flickered,
receded–
returned twirling on the next wave.

A little boy, maybe ten years old–freckles,
sandy hair, nose
buried in a melting ice-cream cone–wailed:
My ice-cream is going away! It’s
going away! His mother looked bemused.

Vanilla ice-cream dripped, a bone-white froth
down his fingers. His mouth a jagged sob, face
flushed, furious with refusal.

All month, since I moved from my beloved
home, a ten-year-old in me has wailed:
My home is going away! It’s going away!

Next month, my son, my beautiful baby
boy-six feet tall now, and married to his love-
is going away. A new city will hold him
in its lap. A new home. He’s going

away. No no no no no. They’re all
going away.

If this post spoke to you, you might like these as well:

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NO. YES.

What gives you the right to grab what is not yours
to take? You have grown large on piracy,
swollen like a balloon on breath stolen
from children who no longer sleep or fill
their lungs because you have convinced them the
air belongs to you; their breath, their dreams
belong to you. You have taken the tender
bamboo of their hearts and boiled it into
broth to nourish you, appetite.
You have sucked the marrow from their bones and
grinned with relish at the brine of blood on your
tongue. Your table d’hote is not unique. Genghis
Khan fed at it, made menus of the lives
of those who loved him; cast around for more–
always more–to fill a hole as cavernous
as you.

No

Every no bears in its belly the sibilant
yes: a pomegranate seed white in its
sheath of translucent red

As always, I’d love to hear your poems in Comments. This Sunday ritual of sharing our poems and our hearts nourishes our sovereign selves. It brings us into creative community. Thank you for playing poetry with me!

If this post spoke to you, you might like these as well:

• Sunday Poem #8
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• Going Away

FLIGHT TO FREEDOM

My ancestors launched into the Arabian Sea
in tiny coracles fragile as leaves
to escape the jihad.

Their country
torched by Arab invaders, their people
slaughtered in the name of Allah,

they entrusted their bodies to the tides,
sailed east to India; fled
for their lives and for freedom to worship

Ahura Mazda, the god
of their ancestors. The year
was 760 AD.

Thirteen hundred years later, I took flight
westward across that churning sea.
Seeds of their spirit

in me. Those ancestors,
with their wandering blood, keep me questing,
peregrine.

I do not own the comforts
of their religion, seek instead a god

who lives in me; am impelled
not by raiders but
by this spirit’s urgent embarkation

to be free.

…………………………………………………

As always, I’d love to hear your own poems in Comments. Let’s share the freedom of making poetry together on this Fourth of July Sunday.

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• A Capella

TENARAMENTE

I stand at the boundary. On this side, familiar
terrain. Hills like lyric waves brushed with sage, dew
an aria on my tongue, golden wedge of light on my
elbow. My arms know precisely my baby’s
milky weight, his warm mouth loose against my
breast, my nipple cooling in this lambent dawn.
Moss fur nuzzles the soles of my feet.

This is the threshold: this granite arch soaring
skyward in the middle of a mustard field, keystone
lost in the limpid blue of heaven. Ahead, unknown
country. Images pour through my head like rain:
Death in rusty black cloak, hooded, faceless, scythe
gripped in blanched fingers. And bodies, light as
dried laurel leaves, borne on bamboo biers, covered
in marigolds; tinkling cymbals, heartbeat of drums,
chanting voices bearing the soul back home.

That which is before me is veiled in light. My hand
through the archway no longer a hand, effulgence
of ultraviolet pulsing to a rhythm familiar as my
heartbeat, enigmatic as an atom. I lean my upper
body through the arch. Soft. Smell of almond
blossoms, sticky fig-juice, olive groves. Shiver of
argent sound, bells, chiming inside and out into one,
my skin no longer my skin, no boundary, but a
dissolved definition. An exchange of electrons and
protons with ambient life which once bore many
names–tree, fish, star, mud. My flesh and theirs
transmuted into vibration, dance of particles into
waves, waves and particles, call and answer, calando,
dolce, dolce, tranquillo. I am a sympathetic string in
a great aeolian harp, vibrating to the melody of these
rushing winds, vast ripples of light and air and spirit.

Step now across the slate-gray stones. Prelude over,
my voice flows into this canon which sings the Real.
My infant son plays in the crack between worlds,
time in his right hand, eternity in his left. He puts
God in his mouth and savors, rolling divinity on
his tongue, face rapt, chortling his own cantata.

………………………………………

As always, I’d love to hear your own poems in Comments. Let’s share the voices of our hearts with each other.

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• A Capella

ELEGY

When I bend and bind
squeeze my soul into narrow shoes,
deck it out in gaudy hues
of other people’s clothing;
when I alter my inherent shape, strut
through attenuated alleyways of dialectic,
I lose you, crumble. I know
you are in me but I cannot reach you
in the rubble of my ignorance.

Such loneliness engulfs me
then, not all the soft-voiced friends, sultry
gongs of lust and wine assuage.
I am orphaned,
a lover bereft, a leather-shod beast without
breath, a vast homesick wail
in the wilderness.

I am homesick.

…………………………………………………………………..

As always, I’d love to hear your poems in Comments. Let’s celebrate the poetry of our hearts together.

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• Tenaramente