christmas eve

if at first it feels like loneliness
and missing my family
then on further inspection
it's the feeling of wanting to
give something, and compassion:
who is suffering tonight?
and the feeling
of how much my past means to
me

while emptiness dances with tradition
and non-attachment with memory

i fold laundry, send texts
and brush the cat
talk on skype to my sister in new zealand
where christmas has already come
in the middle of summer holidays

i'm waiting to feel that familiar feeling
and
all i want is to let go

yet when doris writes in susan's letter to
kris kringle,
"i believe in you, too"
i start crying
for something that hurts so sweetly
as Christmas

Dream Yoga

1
every dream i have had
has become a deep and poignant
element of my personal history
an accumulating landscape of my
separate identity

meaningless to others
inexpressible in poetry
inexpressible in art

2
in dream yoga
one becomes lucid
and controls the dream, by being aware that it
is unreal

as is our waking life

this teaches us to have clear thinking
and know the nature of reality

3
i find that i don't want to control my dreams
they delight and surprise me with a heart pain
which is the source and ground of so much waking experience and memory

they arise mysteriously, spontaneously
i explore my experience within the familiarly strange
in ways i fear to do in waking life

they are my one place of experiential freedom
where i do not avoid the mystery of pain
they are an un-careful place
a counterbalance to the necessity of disipline
they are a wild place
where i live by instinct, wits and insights

they are that time of suffering that we all look back
and are touched by,
that difficult time together we made it through
that made us as one

4
in terms of letting go and seeing clearly
my dreams are the distillation of what i think of
as my personal samsara
and oh, i'm attached.

conditioned

to love
you!

love my father
(as a new friend)
love my past lovers
(for the future they make possible)
love my friends
(for the intimacy)
love my crushes
(for the self-reflection)
love my mother
(as my self)
love myself
(as my lover)
love my rooms
(as my creation)
love the world outside
(as my home)
love men
(through the chaos)
love women
(through the confusion)
love beings
(it's uncomplicated)
love my community
(in it's complexity)

love silence
(for abundance)

love sound
(for the teaching)

love breath
(for the ground)

- for robbie.

snowy day

a small black bird
flying past a forest
white with snow-leaves
on a white sky