______________   My new book of poems, Reduced to Joy, has just been published. The book contains seventy-three poems, retrieved and shaped over the last thirteen years, about the nature of working with what we’re given till it wears us through to joy. For the next few months, I’d like to share poems from the new book with you. We live in an age that is obsessed with the new; so much that we have been called the disposable society.... Read more

______________   My new book of poems, Reduced to Joy, has just been published. The book contains seventy-three poems, retrieved and shaped over the last thirteen years, about the nature of working with what we’re given till it wears us through to joy. For the next few months, I’d like to share poems from the new book with you. Since the beginning of time, we as human beings have always called out for a higher power or larger force to... Read more

______________ My new book of poems, Reduced to Joy, has just been published. The book contains seventy-three poems, retrieved and shaped over the last thirteen years, about the nature of working with what we’re given till it wears us through to joy. For the next few months, I’d like to share poems from the new book with you.   Each of us is made up of eternal forces—part masculine, part feminine, part animal. Often, our creativity and our proximity to... Read more

______________ My new book of poems, Reduced to Joy, is just being published. The book contains seventy-three poems, retrieved and shaped over the last thirteen years, about the nature of working with what we’re given till it wears us through to joy. For the next few months, I’d like to share poems from the new book with you. I spend a great deal of time in planes, on my way to and from. In this poem, I tripped into a... Read more

______________ My new book of poems, Reduced to Joy, is just being published. The book contains seventy-three poems, retrieved and shaped over the last thirteen years, about the nature of working with what we’re given till it wears us through to joy. For the next few months, I’d like to share poems from the new book with you. Here is a reflection that explores what I’ve learned over the years about the nature of joy and what kind of teacher... Read more

______________ Though we do our best to stay strong and keep going, it’s often the moments we’re forced to stop that introduce us to the aspects of life that matter. This reflection comes from a moment of caring for our dog, Mira. Taking Turns Our dear dog Mira has an eye infection and so each day for a week, three times a day, we take turns, calling her to the kitchen where she sits against the cabinet as we hold... Read more

______________ Once in a while, we are stopped in our race through the days, like driftwood near the bank of a river, caught for a second in the mud before being swept along. In those moments, we get a rare view of the non-stop world we are a part of. This poem came from such a moment. At Stadium and Drake I was waiting to make a left, to get out of traffic. She was across from me, in a... Read more

______________ When we can be wholehearted, we welcome everything. Then, the journey is to see how everything goes together and works together, no longer choosing one way over another. This video clip from an interview with Sounds True took place in Colorado during a week of recording my box set of teaching conversations, Staying Awake: The Ordinary Art.   WHERE PATHS MEET   A Question to Walk With: Recount a time when you discovered that some way other than your... Read more

______________ Every life, in every age, has had to find its way: discovering a foundation, a self from which to meet others and the world, only to open beyond the confines of a single self, so we can receive meaning from everything that is not us. In this journey, we learn how to lessen our pain by accepting life and our part in it. This poem works at understanding such acceptance.   LESSENING OUR PAIN When the flower finally opens,... Read more