To Plant with Spring

-------To Plant with Spring-------

 To have the chance

we take a chance
and plant our flowers into the weeds.

 Because we are stubborn

and can't listen any more
to the tired doctrines of "master gardeners".

 Because we trust in the beauty and fertility

that is about the roots
of all things.

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A Breath to Remember, A Breath to Forget

-------A Breath to Remember, A Breath to Forget-------

Every day,

   and many times within,

we give up and fall,

   inhale and again begin.

It is a gift we sing,

   through heart, 'tween breath,

to love the other

   through life, through death.

Let's take it honest,

   let us take it slow,

humbled, by every little thing,

   how little we truly know.

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Cuts and Bruises

-------Cuts and Bruises-------

Dirty hands make for a clean living,

say the souls who have strayed 

beyond 

the classroom and school yard.

To the wooded places and colored fields,

under rocks, on skateboards and tree-houses,

is an education that transcends

what the discerning mind does judge.

Maybe 

there is more to learning than can be taught.

Maybe 

those who are told they have failed just see falling in a different way.

The nature of the lesson

is what children and wanderers already know,

and where we long 

to return again.

-------

Like Begets Like

-------Like Begets Like-------

The color of our intentions

charge each stroke 

in the forms becoming.

It all makes sense

when likeness 

is realized,

that thinking

sets the act 

to be received,

and each one's separate piece

becomes the Maker's 

self-portrait.

-------

It's All Been Done

-------It’s All Been Done-------

The same few words have been shared by every poet,

   in the field of the Commons where they were first sown,

today we gather,

   today we make bread,

from their ground and leavened seeds.

-------

Held and Home Again

-------Held and Home Again-------

We are held in place by the ever-moving, and

called to live by the promise of death.

There are prophets here who do not shout doctrine

nor look to the sky to answer their disease.

But who, when the willows start toward yellow,

with Spring anticipate the scythe.

We are held

by what we hold in our hands.

Our ethics born not of convention

but of duty,

to love in the old ways,

what has called to flower.

From seed to straw and home again

by the prayer of a steady swing.

-------

Poems in Your Eyes

-------Poems in Your Eyes-------

Say little, and everything you say will be heard.

Say it from the place that is honest, and everything you cannot say will be understood.

There is so much we could know,

so much we can do and say.

For we are 

Great.

But in our ultimate greatness we are humble;

shy almost behind a leg of the Mystic -

Not wanting to go too far out into the world

before knowing better the world just before us.

We have said it all

already.

Its purpose distilled 

into silence.

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