Hello, my name is fear,
Can you hear me?
Hello, I am despair,
I have a message...
I am rage,
I wish to tell you something...
Are you listening?
If you listen carefully
I will whisper a secret to you
Which no one on this world knows.
But you must listen.
To do this, find stillness in yourself
Find the eye of the storm
Find the courage not to run
To distraction or pleasure
But to sit
Or stand
Or walk
Into the raging inferno of your being
With your eyes open,
Your heart open,
Full of curiosity!
And wonder...
"Who made this?"

My life changed on a whim.
For no particular reason I watched a squirrel scurry up a tree.
He, or she (but not an it), stared at me.
They went branch to branch, stopping here and there to observe their new observer.

And how many times has this moment passed by, going unnoticed.
How many times had this animal instinct been drowned out by the clutter of daily life.

It wasn’t as though I had disregarded life before, but this was a fundamental awakening.
Before I could wrap my head around the simplicity of this divine happenstance,
I saw a cardinal swoop down on a fence-post a few feet away.
Again, I was enveloped in the novelty of this life.
I was in a state of dull wonder, looking at the vibrant red, the low swoop of the crown, the small of the body.

The trance broke, another squirrel scurried past me and up a tree.

I noticed this one bore a scar.
The hind leg was stripped of fur.
The skin wore the discoloration of freshly healed flesh.
They too, stared at me, perhaps perplexed that it was being watched.

I walked on.
Then finishing my morning walk, I noticed many things.
It was not just life that was intriguing me, it was the way the mundane began to scream at me.
I walked through abandoned lots, noting the way their roads would crack and crumble.
I noticed broken security cameras from long departed offices and buildings.
I noticed the broken marlin in the trash heap behind some house, no longer sporting its beak.
I noticed an old ford with a rubber rifle shell for an antenna and a load of wood planks in its bed.
I noticed a graffiti stick figure on the short bridge, some dystopian cave painting.

All of that to say, a hidden world became revealed.
A world that existed underneath my own, blurred by its previously perceived unimportance.
So now, I wonder what to do with this knowledge.
I think I’ll borrow its magic.
I think I’ll write down the bizarre normalcy that I see.
A running list of averages.
It is the beginning of something.

A door has opened.

At my dear friend's kitchen table,
I am making an origami box
with beautiful floral paper.

Pressing down my thumb
to get that sweet crease—
part of this process is how I
am intending to practice mindfulness,
mostly to get my mind off
the heavy pit in my chest.

I keep looking out the sunny window
at evergreen trees and open blue skies,
trying to find a way
to take my focus off the origami box.

But I keep coming back
to the satisfaction
of the perfectly aligned crease,
and return, and return,

Until I have just made
three beautiful origami boxes—
each fold a breath,
each crease a moment of peace.

I shift
And lean
And pitch
Ahead to
Balance
These tips
To toes
And breathe,
In flight
For one,
Two,
Three,
Before
Looking
Back
And settling
Spread
From
Behind
To ahead,
Arriving
In all that
Could be.
And I breathe.

I push
These swords
From
And through
Tired
Confusion
To clarity,
Before
Binding
Blades
Behind
To lead
With heart.
And,
Open,
We see
Past
What we know,
And bow
To what
We co-create
Hearts
Cracked open,
And sharp edges
Bound.

I reach
And feel
My mind
Reach
For a you
And an us
We used
To be
Or want
To recall
To create
With tiny
Bits of
Being
And big
Bits of
Doing,
And I
Remind
Myself
To listen.

I get up in the morning
and my first duty is to our cats
to ensure they have food and water
to satisfy their simple needs.
They have no urgency to gather in
the myriad strands and filaments
of my mind to focus on them.
Unlike me, they are without ego
or neurosis or compulsions
or impulse to chew and devour
startling new currents of thought
or to dissect and parse tradition
to produce some new light of intellect.
Their feline genius of simplicity
is my present focus of admiration
and desire.
But of course I could never dissolve
the accumulated humanity
focused in my solitary mind
and achieve the elegant ease
with which our cats occupy
their meager patch of earth.

I set
My parts
In rows
To strengthen
And grow
As the parts
I forget
Are mine
Shudder
Around us,
Shaking
Loose
The seams
That holds
It all
Apart.

I lay
At the end,
And as I feel
This body
Still
Her face
Slips in
Before mind,
A smile,
Then a plea,
Then a loss,
Before hers
Becomes his
And his
Becomes theirs,
And I yearn
To join,
To make ours,
But I wait,
As this pain
Deserves a
Witness.

As I leave
My mat
And flesh
Behind,
I recognize
The plain
Made battleground,
The twisted
Bodies,
Faces
Gone slack,
The urge
To gaze,
To curate
Curiosity
For
Each
And every
Fallen,
Around
How
And where
They stood.
I stand
On healthy
Feet,
On solid
Ground,
And hesitate
In the tension
Between
As today
All paths
Seem fraught.