On the way home, a magician   stops you with his banter as he   discovers a quarter behind your   ear, and suddenly there’s a soft-  ness in the back of your throat.     And, as you admit to being soft,   the magician pulls a gem from   your sleeve that you didn’t know   was there, and you start searching   your pockets for what you need.     A Question to Walk With: Discuss with a friend or loved one what magic means to... Read more

Because eating-air-without-holding-back tastes like   music. It’s why I stop when kissing your shoulder,   stalled in the wisdom of your skin. Look how we   keep growing despite the impediments. Look how   weeds bust through the cracks in the road. Look   how the streets are filled with beaten-down souls   rising through the hardness of their lives. Oh, the   pianist is learning how to play, as the piano maker   is learning how to string the thing that saves us.   And I am learning... Read more

  The drop of a glass brings us running  but we have to climb to see the view.   In this, the vow to love: to be there   when we break and to never stop   climbing.   And to enter the vastness, side by   side, is like walking through a   forest at dawn.   And listening to each other squawk,   again and again, is to stand firm   before the waterfall of trouble.   Day in and out, we share the... Read more

In what you suffer and miss   and hope for, you are alone.   No one can feel your pain   or fear but you.     Yet on the edge of your   canyon, I am here, eager for   the view, waiting to lift you   and hold you.    We could have been born   on different continents or in    different centuries but here we   are, loving each other through   the silver weeds of being here.    It is a tangled knot in the   fabric... Read more

  In a moment of weariness with  who he has become, a sex trader  tells the six frightened girls cornered  in the back of a laundry that he will  let one go. They pull hairs and the  longest is left behind. That night,   on her father’s small farm, a little   worm carrying blight tires and lands   on the elm, sparing the willow. The   next season, a sudden gust through   the willow pushes the bee to the next   flower, which given... Read more

  When I try to describe you  to someone who doesn’t know  you, I smile deep inside, as I do  when remembering a hike up a   mountain or a day at the ocean.    You give your all to everything.  Whether tilling your garden, or   mitering a joint, or wanting to   drive to New England to see a   certain type of tree, you hold   nothing back.    This is what it’s like to be loved  by you. You will go... Read more

Somewhere, along the way, I learned that Plato had no formal curriculum. He was simply exploring deep questions of living with fellow seekers. He actually had no place to gather, when he inherited a grove of olive trees from an uncle who had died. He began to walk with those he loved in the sacred peace and beauty of the olive grove. It is not by mistake that the word Academy in Greek means “Sacred Grove.” And there was the... Read more

Something beats inside   the soul, the way the heart   beats inside our chest.     While the mind plays its   melodies, the beat inside   returns us to whatever it   is we think we have lost.     This is the tuning fork   of the sacred by which   we find our way.     I felt it as a boy watching   the endless waves lap   against the bow of   our boat.    I felt it when I awoke   from surgery too soon   as... Read more

The things we can’t see feed us,  the way the soil feeds the rose,  the way the wind lifts the hawk,  the way the deep pillows the  jellyfish.    Yet in our insecurity,   we insist we’ve done it all.    When nothing—from atoms   to planets—makes its way alone.    Bow, then, to the Mysteries that   hold you up while you sleep.  They need our love, too.    This is from my book coming out in Sept, Falling Down and Getting... Read more

The leaf twirled this way and that and finally landed on the pond like the one thought, after all my suffering, that cleared my mind.   You happened to look at me with all your love at just that moment and we understood each other.   No matter the conflict or mis- understanding, we see through to the bottom together.   This makes the fall into life bearable.   From my book of poems in progress, Elsewhere.    Check out... Read more