We all lean a little off plum
Swaying to the music
of a manipulating song.
Songs played on
jukeboxes for profit
Songs leading us like sheep
to green pastures to fatten us,
Drunk on the elixirs of illusion
Ready to follow the wrong God home
Sliding from off plum to crazy

It’s a struggle to keep from being
overwhelmed by the tribe.
Being yourself is harsh living
You will be lonely, frightened,
and tossed around
Yet, no price is to high for the
privilege of finding yourself.

Place is where what lies inside of us
communes with what seems outside,
A living frontier where voices come
from place and us as one
A companionship of presence
The raw coming together of us
and the natural world.
Finding our place gives birth
to a living conversation about
what is big and ultimate
Each privileged to be with the other
A holding ground to drop anchor
Our sanctuary and refuge
When turbulent winds blow.

Place is where what lies inside of us
communes with what seems outside,
A living frontier where voices come
from place and us as one
A companionship of present
The raw coming together of us
and the natural world.
Finding our places gives birth
to a living conversation about
what is big and ultimate
Each privileged to be with other,
A holding ground to drop anchor
Our sanctuary and refuge
When turbulent winds blow.

Winter eternal
Darkest night
Just before spring
Farmers know
Fallow prepare the ground
The earth wages it’s tail
Day and night

Fallow preps me too
In the midst of busy
before collapse, sit down
Have faith in spring
Stillness the batteries
in our own flashlight
A little light enough
Bush the button, look around

As covid-19 transforms
Question arise
What before and now
Sustained or deflected

If table tennis
at the senior center sustained
What is where it was?
Does it’s absence leave a hole
in the cup of my soul?
What is a cup ?
What is a sieve?
We’re all these things that
occupied my time merely deflections?
Ways of avoiding life’s sorrows, loses,
shadow side?

What happens on Sunday afternoon
if the Dallas Cowboys are out on the range
and not in the stadium?
Will millions of people drink dark beer
And stare at blank screen?
Perhaps something will call them
out of an NFL trance!
Finding themselves out on the range
with the Dallas Cowboy players
All of them sitting around a fire pit
Singing, “ Ghost Riders in the Sky”

No longer deflecting
Watching the sunset
Their  horse, bedroll, saddle,
campfire embers glow,
A lone cow ambles on the horizon
Awake, alive, sustained
Grateful the NFL season cancelled

In school, restlessly sitting in our chairs wondering why?
Do they never talk about what it’s like to be us?
I mean, on the playground at recess
Purposely tripped, we fall.
Bullied for the third day

What part of this curriculum teaches, the art of being alone
with ourselves?

With every event all these thoughts
and feelings coming at us!

All of us have this inner awkwardness
Never quite at ease
Never far from the outside story
that never matches
the inside story

Ignorance a deep not knowing
Resting on a bed of facts
Wisdom comes from tending
the interior garden
Endless inquires of our inside
seen through the eyes of a lifetime
The world gets more mysterious
as we tend to it
Solitude and questions become
a foundation for living differently
Take the words you hear lightly
You are destine never to become
the C.E.O. of even your life
Watch your mind flutter with chaos
Have the faith to doubt
Responding not reacting
to your one and only life
Empty of outcomes
Present to possibilities

In school, restlessly sitting in our chairs wondering why?
Do they never talk about what
it’s like inside of us?
The art of being alone with ourselves depends upon
Our own deeply earned truths!