Stirrup of the Sun & Moon. Frank LaRue Owen

      and caused your eyes to open briefly.

      Even in those first fierce moments

      some part of you

      was already wise to the world;

      it wanted to throw off the harsh, unnatural light,

      to join in with the wild and unconstrained.

      Buried deep

      behind your tightly-bound cage of ribs,

      that ancient yearning to be received by the untamed

      is still pulsing within you

      despite all of your other disappointments.

      The keeper of the old library of souls knows

      until your need

      for galloping through the terrain

      of your wild-belonging is met

      all manner of trouble

      and destruction can occur.

      The conversation can be put off for a while

      but at some point

      if you are to remain alive to yourself

      you’ll have to swing yourself up

      onto the windhorse of your original yearning

      and join back up with the part of you

      that already began the journey without you.

      __

      To the tune of “Heart’s Core” / Fever Dreams II / Steve Roach, Byron Metcalf, Jennifer Grais

      Tendril

      —in honor of Mary Oliver (1935-2019) —

      You reminded us

      how to humble ourselves

      before the Great Mother again…

      to lay down with the deer

      in the rain-dampened pines.

      You taught us

      how to have our weariness lifted by soft renewals

      and the caked blood-red dust

      washed clean from our eyes

      through a flowing green devotion.

      Through simple ways

      human ways

      natural ways,

      you gave us a mischievous glance

      a knowing nod

      and permission

      to love what we love

      to ache for what we ache

      to remain steadfast in our wonderment.

      Like the haunting call of a mourning dove

      a rutting buck deep in the wood

      curious tiny fingers

      gliding astonished over rainbow scales

      a handful of dark soil

      reminding something ancient within us

      of the promise of seeds and seasons

      we were all made

      all the better by you.

      In our sudden and terrible orphanhood today,

      may we tend the fragile tendril placed so softly in our keeping.

      __

      To the tune of “The Sentience of Touch” / Tactile Ground / Robert Rich

      Layers and Receiving

      Full Moon, August 2017

      Let us speak of it clearly.

       A deeper part of you knows

       you were sent here with an inborn understanding —

       a thorough fluency in a vision of arriving-beyond-striving.

      Not unlike dreaming,

       subtle memories of effortless belonging

       enveloped you in peaceful-abiding

       as natural and inseparable from you

       as your own breathing.

      With a slow cascade of

      descending

      arriving

      rooting

      unfurling

      rising

      expanding

      embodying —

      you bloomed.

      Woven into the silent tapestry of you

       was a closely-held assumption

       there would be a soft place to land —

       a trait of our forgetfulness

       of where we were all going.

      Then, it happened.

       Your second day

       your second year

       perhaps your second decade in,

       you came to a harsh realization:

      Not every corner of the fabricated Overlay World

       is rooted in the softness you needed.

      Not every place, or person,

       flows with the Heart-Mind-River

       of evolving, becoming, blooming, Being.

      This tumultuous ‘coming to your senses’

       had all the same color, taste, and dark texture of betrayal.

      As you gazed out at the Samsaric World,

       you may have whispered to yourself:

       ‘This is not what I signed up for.’

      You may even have said:

       This is not the place for me.

      And,

       you would be right,

       ultimately.

      This is why it is so important

       to finally let go

       and turn the page;

       to realize

       your original vision was true

       but on the other side of it

       was a list of instructions.

      Among them:

      Found within that which you long to steep is the very thing you must eventually create.

      __

       To the tune of “3,000 Years” by French-Malagaasy ethno-ambient musician Ujjaya

      Here’s the Catch

      …a love poem…of sorts

       Part One: The Longing

      Are you fishing in your sleep again?

      Oh come on. We all know how it starts.

      A deep pang inside.

      A longing.

      That old familiar question rattling around inside your mind:

      “Where is the one for me?”

      So, you start imagining a soul.

      What