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What will
our children do in the morning?
Will they wake with their hearts wanting to fly,
the way wings
should?

Will they have dreamed the needed flights and gathered
the strength from the planets that all men and women need
to balance the wonderful charms of
the earth

so that her power and beauty does not make us forget our own?

I know all about the ways of the heart-- how it wants to be alive.

Love so needs to love
that it will endure almost anything, even abuse,
just to flicker for a moment.  But the sky's mouth is kind,
its song will never hurt you, for I
sing those words.

What will our children do in the morning
if they do not see us
fly?
This poem was written by Rumi, a Sufi mystic. This translation is from
"Love Poems from God," edited by Daniel Ladinsky, a Penguin Compass book.  I hope God doesn't sue me!
i keep winter out
of my heart, remembering
your cherry bud kiss.

spring is coming soon--
manzanita buds aglow,
like little pink hearts.

climbing Mt. Fuji,
i saw only my two feet.
coming down-- the world!

the old Buddhist monk:
gentle as a flower, yet
stronger than thunder.
Copyright 2011, by Michael S. Simpson. All rights reserved by the author.
Since we fired God,
who's minding the store?
I mean
really?
No, please
stop and listen
to yourself:
glib, intellectual
answers spinning
out of
your mind.

Tonight,
this warm
summer night,
spread a blanket
on the grass
in your backyard.

Relax

lie back

look up

feel

listen

then come

-- sing it to me.
All rights reserved by the author.
Floating

away

from this

tiny world,

we let go

of

everything--

and rise,

newborn constellations

in each others

skies.
"Since We Fired God" morphed into this poem-- we were lying there on a summer night in the grass, looking at the stars, and then--
All rights reserved by the author.
Reflections of moonlight
on ******
white snowfields
tonight--
new snow
asks the world
to re-imagine
everything!
All rights reserved by the author.
Changes have
reasons,
as
the year
has its
seasons.

Change can be
deplored,
Change can be
decried.
But
change
will happen
anyway,
even if
denied.
All rights reserved by the author
Today I felt my death
stalking me,
breathing its genderless
ice breath
down my neck--
giving me visions
of my semi-truck and trailer
sliding off the edge of this
icy cliff,
or that one,
with me inside,
the close-up showing me
with that concentrated look
of someone who is
unsuccessfully
trying to avoid
coming to terms
with their imminent
demise.

Needing to change the
doomed channel,
I stopped
flirting with death
long enough to
park my rig in
the big gravel lot
of Dot's Cafe,
and
eat lunch.

Compared to cold death,
wrinkled
baby tomatoes
and wilted
lettuce
were good--
real good.
The gray cucumber guts
disemboweled
all around my
salad plate
looked better than
mine would have,
at the bottom
of that cliff,
I'm sure.
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