The Wind … the Wind

The wind, surrounding us

with the sum total

of all the conversations

we’ve had from ancient times

until now, hushed, still,

animated, violent and awed,

and yet, it is the power

of the wind to distill

from our human fragility

all that is sacred, warm,

and flowing in all directions

from our one true heart,

and sometimes this sound

amounts to a gale in the night,

and others, a whisper

by a pond in the heart of day,

a gentle coaxing,

a giggle that beguiles,

a secret that is not a secret

at all, infusing us with

its wisdom, saying this:

You are all that has come before,

You are all that will be,

You, like I, have been everywhere,

And even in silence, you breathe

In your desire to take what is One,

Which is Love, to the edge

of all things, and beyond.

Love is the way; you are the carrier.

You are the the wind; the wind is you,

Communing with oceans and sky,

Rivers and rocks, mountains and birds.

It is all one thing, a progression of love

From the inside out, up and around

From our one never-ending heart,

To the very heart of the world.

 

– Tammy Takahashi

The Heart Song

Sometimes, the heart
will guide the eyes to deceive us,
because we can grow
too accustomed to the view;
what is pretty, what alarms us,
what we find distasteful,
what makes us sing.
We want to sing, always,
the song elevates us
in all of its incarnations,
but we must allow it
to transmute, to migrate
from each of our emotions
as it greets the world
gone by, as it has led us
to this very moment.
To bring the song to life,
maybe, for now,
close the eyes, feel the chest
expand to become the whole body,
allow room for the heart
to swell, rattle, cry out,
encompass the battle
that must be fought
before it can be won.
Allow the battle to play out,
and it is of course not a battle,
but the voices that have been trying
for so long, to be heard,
and hear them, and open your eyes
to a brand new space of your making.
Allow it to look different, and strange,
and even a little scary;
allow yourself to attune
to this brave new day
you have created for yourself;
fall in love with new colour combinations,
sounds and textures; they are
where your transformation begins.

– Tammy Takahashi

Hand on Heart

Where will you go

once your feet are planted

firmly on the ground?

Did you know how far they were

from their sacred origins until now,

as you bring your attention

to the earth under your feet,

feel the cool perfection

of soil, sediment, the network of roots

that is your true birthplace?

Can you breath all the way

into the soles of your feet,

and feel the pulse

of the center of the earth

as it breathes dragon fire

up through your sacrum and spine,

in communion with the sun,

and can you feel that you are

between the two, a messenger

between earth and air,

between fire and sky,

both conductor and part

of the world’s greatest symphony?

Can you place your hand

on your beating heart,

the molten lava of it,

the perfect, messy garden of it,

and ask it what it wants,

what it needs, what it dreams,

and can you plant your feet

even deeper, reach even higher,

bring even more fire to

the illustrious lands of your living?

 

– Tammy Takahashi

Heart Garden

And sometimes, in the fleeting breath

between thoughts, in the moon

that peeks through restless clouds,

in that perfect moment between

lost, shivering memories and lifeless

future projections, we truly arrive,

to where we are, and maybe the gates

don’t swing open and invite you

into your life, but maybe you approach,

cautiously, with feet more assured

the farther you go, and maybe

you stop to gather the beautiful seeds

you can plant and nourish as long

as it takes to grow them into

the wild, stunning garden of your heart.

 

– Tammy Takahashi

The Garden of Your Heart

What is in the garden of your heart?

Is it growing wildly,

according to its nature,

free of the burdens of symmetry,

conformity to the structure of design?

Is it heeding its own rules and principles,

abiding by its own laws of harmony,

does it sing with great abandon

the songs from its forebears

that are embedded in its bones,

or when those do not do the work of healing,

a tune of its own making?

Does it feel joy and sorrow

in equal measure, and celebrate both

as grand pillars of the human experience?

Does it come to stand in great stillness

so as to invite in the whispers

of what lies beyond our precious humanity?

Have you done all you can to ensure

that the garden of your heart

has what it needs to keep growing,

and do you trust it to be all that it is,

to thrive and stand in the light

even when the darkness, as it does, comes?

How do you take care of your heart’s garden,

knowing that the storms and seasons,

like your own caged treasure,

stay true to their own dispositions,

and destroy as they create?

Will you learn you see destruction

as the seed of all creation,

and creation as an infinity of possibility,

depending on what you want your garden to be?

Is your vision gentle, loving and kind,

and is it directed at the beauty of you?

 

– Tammy Takahashi

Grow the Garden

Until we can fully grow,

the garden inside us,

which is to say, to see,

to seek, and to love

the blossoms and thickets

surrounding the heart,

Until we can venture there,

May we seek the gardens,

fields, mountains and trails

we still have left to us,

May we cherish them,

be in constant wonder of them,

and seek refuge in them.

May be first become aware

of the magnanimity of

everything they are,

and vow to protect them,

knowing that as we do this,

we are doing nothing less

than guarding the seeds

of our own evolution,

of the heart revolution.

 

– Tammy Takahashi

Awe

There are times, before the awe

washes everything else away,

when I am confronted by beauty

in all of its varied manifestations,

and all I desire is to stare, without end,

while asking: tell me what you know.

Tell me what you know; I am starving

for the secrets you must harbor within;

you made it look so effortless: this beauty.

At times like this I do not yet trust

what it is that I know, that brought me

along the footpath leading to wonder,

the trails that have led me to awe.

To penetrate the wisdom of another,

one has just to look, to want to see,

not from the mind, always hungry,

not even from the eyes, so receptive,

but from the heart, where no words live,

where we are all, so sacred, already joined,

and from the hands, our heart’s extensions,

that reach out to touch this love, embodied,

that cries with us in our painful searching,

rips away the spaces between me and you,

where doubt grows, where only awe should be.

 

– Tammy Takahashi

Open eyes, Open heart

There is always more

we can strip away,

we have accumulated

so much. For so long.

We’ve buried ourselves

in the things that remove

from us the way of

right seeing, the seen.

We have inherited

and then we’ve created

stories that adorn,

tantalize, haunt us,

give us the false impression

that this is who we are,

that bare their claws

like tentacles around

our well-meaning hearts

just as they catch a

glimpse of a free world,

and an unencumbered way

of being at one with it.

We know that the way

back to this, our world

is the way into ourselves,

but we don’t know

where to rest our gaze

among a dizzying array

of options, and directions.

Hearts beating fast, we rest.

Close our eyes. Breathe.

Allow what haunts to haunt.

Enter the fear like warriors.

Quiet the stories ricocheting

in our bodies’ chambers,

as if to honor their passing.

Open our eyes. Begin.

 

– Tammy Takahashi

The Song of Us

And the song of the wind

That happy but serious whistle

That permeates all borders,

Mingling with the chant

Of the rumbling mountains,

The tinkling whisper

Of the buttercup

Coming into first bloom,

The low and steady hum

Of moss carpeting the ground

In the forests of the world.

There is not one song

That sings louder,

Or tries to override

Or outlive the other.

They are our blood,

The veins that carry it,

An extraordinary number of parts

Working in the name of

Our continuance.

Do we hear any of them at all?

But then, a moment so crushing

That we fall to our knees,

Come to what is maybe

The first silence

In the legend of our lives.

A note appears, a harmony,

Difficult to locate at first,

But it’s not long before

The songs of all the elements

Reach our ears,

And it can only be so,

In the precise way

Our hearts need them to,

So that we are all hearing

Different music, the song of us,

Made of the exact same sounds.

And this is how we are all one.

And this is how we are all love.

As You Are

To see before

Before seeing again,

A look back

Through the storied

Remains, sifting through

Everything that has brought

Us here, to this moment,

Holding ourselves captive

With the walls of everything

We have always believed.

And what if we choose

To believe nothing but this:

The fact of our breath

Climbing and descending

The temple, our body,

Feeding the places that hurt,

Without needing to know

Why we are hurting so,

Loving all of us, anyway.

The work of our hands,

As they reach for the heart,

To hear the sound

Of it beating, to know

That this is also the sound

Of the world’s oceans

Ebbing and flowing,

And that nothing is more

Powerful than her roars,

Her swells, her motions.

To stand under the moon

And on a bed of earth,

And find that they meet,

From above, from below,

Right where you are,

And find their source

In the very center of you,

Not as you’ve been,

Not as you will be,

But as you are now.