Time and Being

It won’t always feel this way,

Glittered hearts falling from the sky,

Flower petals etched into the concrete

After the rain like butterflies or stardust.

 

It will hurt to walk, to breathe,

The sky’s weight will be unbearable,

So you’ll try to shield every part of you,

And then it’ll all come falling down.

 

The rain has no message,

The leaves and petals are leaving this world

Without a second thought

About who will witness their passing.

 

We are human; we imbue

The colours, textures and sounds around us

With our own histories, until

They sing or grasp or wail,

 

And it is all we can do

To look at what we have made

And soothe our tender heart, and wait

For our ever unfolding in time and being.

 

– TS

Love is Real

How many times

I’ve tried to find you

using the only

language I know

in hopes bringing

you closer,

 

But my eyes

were travelling

faster and farther

than I could

keep up with;

you knew.

 

I couldn’t find

rest at all.

I didn’t trust

that in stillness,

you would

find your way

 

(to me. That

this is what you

wanted, too)

 

I couldn’t close

my eyes, which

gave me, at least,

enough of the

world to pacify

my fearful heart.

 

But this is

no longer enough.

You are here,

yet not here; my

blindness compounds

the closer you are.

 

My belly knows;

it pulsates,

Feverish.

My heart knows

it has been in

darkness too long.

 

What terrorizes me,

beyond the seen,

will take me to

everything. I know

this now. You

always did.

 

Will you wait

as I close my eyes,

and still my fledgling heart,

and trust that

the whole world

remains, and bigger

 

(and that you will

still be here, and

that love is real)?

– TS

The Sunflower

I would like to bring

my soft-hearted eye

to the great sunflower,

that lion and lioness,

each one of which

forms a cosmos,

its ring of life inside

harboring infinite pathways

outward from

source we seek,

its bright yellow invitation

to come closer,

to travel beyond

the velveteen mane

of petals,

to land on the sacred

cushion within,

but just as I am readying

to fly,

my soft-hearted eye

finds another,

and now there are two,

and I don’t know

which way to go,

and if I close my eyes,

I fear annihilation

before destination,

dissolution before union,

fear itself before love.

Then, a voice of power

speaks from within:

this is your journey,

and you can always re-frame.

And so I try: not to isolate,

or close off my view,

but to widen it all,

until it is One.

The River

I know but do not know the river.

I try to search its depths in the fog,

To find myself in its grey expanse

Like I’ve done so many times before,

Like I’ve come here, in the end, to do,

But the day is thick, impenetrable.

The only movement is the current,

Strong, taking the river away from me,

Reminding me it’s never been mine

In the way I thought I so badly needed.

The sea of clouds, above, is shifting too,

Though the rain promises, for now, to stay.

The river knows but does not know me.

I see in its strong eastward current

My own trajectory, which brings us close,

And so here there is understanding.

There is an essence to the pull of our lives.

Yet there’s a dissolution only the river knows,

As I do not yet flow like it does, mutable, strong,

Ready to take form or spread its reach.

But in my efforts to open, the river is there,

If only to witness my eventual unbecoming,

As I witness and welcome the waters within me,

And we continue to know and not know.

– TS

Our Own Evolution

There must be no

mystery, really, even to

The fathomless depths

Of the ocean that so beguile

(I remember once,

in a vision, descending

and not wanting to emerge),

or where the spiral

of a budding flower begins.

We might be looking for

Creatures of unknown origin,

Ghosts and mirages

Who have seen what

We have not,

Been where we have

Not dared to go,

For source and origin myths

That lift us even

In our quiet unease

Over all we may

Have almost forgotten,

Because we still

Want to dance there;

We have still not

Forgotten our most

Primal desires,

At the heart of which,

Our longing for

All of love’s

Various embraces,

Wrest us from life

As are living it,

Move us away from

Harsh contours to where

To where the flow

From one thing to the next

Reminds us that we, too,

Have this power to become

The unfolding of

Our own evolution.

-TS

We are the Blessed Ones

to the gods and goddesses

living inside us,

to the parts of us that are

wounded and unsure,

to the depths of power

we hold within such fragile frames,

to the fear we cling to

to keep ourselves smaller,

to our celestial visions

and our subterranean workings,

to those who scamper to treetops

and those whose feet hold firm to the ground

to the singers, dancers and dreamers of light

and those who dwell in the shadows,

to our mothers and fathers and children

and to the families that we make:

we are the blessed ones,

even when the sky has fallen

and the waves have receded from the shore,

and everything seems to be slipping away,

we are the blessed ones

and we are not forgotten;

may we never forget.

– TS

Imagination

Where will my imagination take me?

It will never be as vast as the sky,

As voluminous as the fruit of one tree.

It will never set me soaring

In the way of the clouds

That are ever shifting,

Always finding new formations

Without any need to express at all.

Can my imagination expand

The way a bud unfurls to flower,

Holding nothing back

Despite the transient nature

Of her existence

Between coming and going?

Can it rest as sweetly

As a bird landing on a branch,

Knowing it won’t stay long,

Not finding any sadness in this?

Imagination is a winged bird

When the path is not obstructed,

When nothing stops the intuition

From honing in on home.

Imagination does not desire,

And so it is limitless.

I Belong

Where does

the path begin

and where does it go?

Sometimes I feel

I’ve landed

right in the middle of

an ecosystem

with its very long history

I know nothing of,

and I fear

I’ll never catch up

or be able to

feel my way around,

that I don’t meet

the preconditions

for harmony.

I feel my senses

don’t serve me here,

do not point the way.

It is in the digging deep,

though, the excavating

of my own right

to a history,

that I will lay claim

to what must be

a simple, if profound feeling:

that I belong.

That I am here,

as you are here,

and we are each

finding our way

through the jungle of

our own ancestral histories,

reaching out

with hope and

good intentions,

with one essential,

sacred goal:

to be love.

 

– TS

The Butterfly

It’s what we’re always

trying to do, isn’t it?

To be?

The butterfly,

the end result

of all that struggle,

all the transmutation,

to be there,

on the other side

of all the discomfort

where the colours sing,

where the air

is our magic carpet,

and we can take

ourselves anywhere.

May we always remember

to enjoy the struggle,

the getting there,

and may we enjoy

being there,

being the butterfly,

even more.

 

– TS

We are Home

we find ourselves

turning away from what

we’ve had and known

dreams of distant suns

and faraway moons

proving too powerful

to calm the restless heart

and allow us to stay

we see ourselves

getting lost in the

seas and oceans of

the hearts and minds

of others, the din of

all that came before this,

as we search for the compass

the gravity, the ground

until we experience,

in one moment, a return

that is not quite a return,

and it can be the glint of an eye,

one embrace, the rustling

of one leaf or the magnanimity

of one ancient, holy tree,

and we know:

we are protected

the ground is ours and not ours,

yet yet, in our humility,

an opening as wide as

a cave that promises the world

has offered itself, and we are ready to

find the treasures and shadows within:

we are home.

– TS