sunday morning

snow blowing
every which way
morning blue white sky

in a sleepy city
a crow is awake

why am i inside
still?

the purpose-driven life

up and downs
tightenings and releasings
drifting
trying to find my meaning
my purpose in life
all i want is to empty out
and experience
i can't find a purpose in that

the left side of my brain
churning and working
desperately pleaing
earnestly searching
trying to solve existential problems with
practical solutions
turning away in disgust
reaching again
takes my body along for the ride
i'm bumping into things and
hurting myself

now
in the quiet cemetery
after a half hour's stillness
long deciduous needles dancing in the wind
blue snow
the sound of wind, far away
and close
and moments of spring smell
in january

walking
i look down onto the white snow
and see hundreds of crow tracks
mingled with little narrow golden leaves
a pattern so wild and multiple
i can feel my left brain release
into the emptiness of being

delight, peace and joy
profound relief
an awesome mystery
a spiritual magic

"it's just brain chemistry!" says my brain
"nothing special"
and i see it as poetry
and always will
and always will want to

i am a poet
that is what i am

even if i never write a word
even if i find no meaning in the title
even if i still have drifting days
and little to show for myself
at the hour of my death.

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

remembering her moment

in sleepy meditation
i remember a day

her day, not mine
where she and a friend walked the streets of montreal
for hours
and only talked about what was happening
in that moment

is the day as unforgettable
to her as it is to me
who only heard about it
after the fact?