A Collection Of PoemsNovember 11, 2025 A GRATITUDE LETTER TO FEAR I awoke this morning, without a thought or a care until you poked me, like you often do - sometimes with an image, sometimes with a thought, and sometimes with a subtle clench, somewhere in my body that I used to think was me. But when you nudged this morning, I smiled, and almost effortlessly rolled onto our sweet cousin - vulnerability. And there I rested, still smiling, in the truth: I am dying. No, I don't have a terminal disease, not as far as I know, but in a way I do: It's called being human. Even now, cells in my body are dying, old ideas that I thought defined me are falling away, and everything and everyone I've ever loved is changing - right before my eyes. Vulnerability lands me square in the truth, opening me to the inescapable fragility and temporary-ness of everything - which makes everything more precious, sharper, more immediate, more alive. So it strikes me that while vulnerability is true, you are just a contracted, grasping reaction to it. I'm not mad at you for being that way and for hanging around. In fact, you're becoming less like a problem and more like a friend. For where would I be without you poking me, nudging me, reminding me, Wake up! This is temporary! Wake up from your dream of imagined control. Wake up from your dream of endless seeking. This is it! This is all you know for sure. And isn't it extraordinary? November 12, 2025 THE PRODIGAL So hard to return home when you know it's gonna hurt. So easy to stay "out there" with all the distractions and things you think you can do something about. Going inside means greeting the vise-like grip at the base of your skull, or the quivery sensation in your chest, or the unnameable, uneasy sense of grasping for something solid. But returning home we must, for the deeper truth that lies beneath is the grounded, steadfast foundation on which it all appears. Every attempt to cross the threshold, every step inside, wears a clearer path between the spinning plates of searching, and the only reliable home the wandering human will ever know. November 17, 2025 DEATH When death walks beside you life becomes clearer. Shallow desires and ego-driven efforts all fall away, fading from view, while the potent immediacy of the moment becomes the vivid truth. Energized by a new yet ancient juice you see what really matters: the colors of the morning, the miracle of your body, and the interactions with others - be they tense or loving, pinched or open. Death cuts away the crap, the shitpile of stories, built upon other stories, all created year after year, through each phase of life, to keep you from seeing the terrifying void of nothingness, that walks beside you, always, and your fear of falling in. But falling eventually happens, maybe all at once or maybe a little over a lifetime, and when it does you see that death was not the enemy, but Life's illumination - the black eternal night on which stars shine their brightest. November 20, 2025 SURRENDER I awake this morning as I have most others with the great arms of the old pecan tree filling my bedroom window view. But this morning she is bare, almost black against the soft peach of a nearly risen sun. And there's a lightness in my chest - a soft and subtle joy caused by nothing in particular, although it feels hard-won. How many years and tears of letting go of bracing like a warrior against an unknown opponent - nameless, faceless, ghost-like projections of all the bad things that can happen to a person? But this morning I feel free. And I don't know how, except to say that at some point Life became less like something to pin down and conquer, and more like a benign and patient friend - a constant companion who doesn't try to fix and who doesn't have opinions. And this morning I awake with very few of my own - my arms splayed out and empty, against the rising light of the unknown. November 25, 2025 INCREASING TOLERANCE FOR THE UNKNOWN Tolerance grows from the seed of experience - how many feared things that didn't happen and how many surprising things that did, and how it all fell into place the moment I unclenched and dissolved into that invisible soup of nothing that is everything. I'm not sure how I did it because there's not a lot of me here anymore who does anything - she died a thousand deaths on the cross of trying to control. And now she is free, relieved and spent, and Life smiles her benevolent smile, meeting my soft, pliable tenderness with hers. November 27, 2025 A NEW BUT OLD HAPPY Is it fair that I should be so deliriously happy? Caution tells me otherwise - she tells me not to let down my guard because after all life is hard, life is mean. See the evidence all around you? See the pain? See the trauma? And yet she's fading now - dimmed by the brighter light of something older, less conditional. Of course I know well the unpredictability of this Life - the twists and turns and moving parts, and I've lived them, but moment by moment I've learned that happiness is not a feeling to chase, attain, or try to hang onto, it's an indwelling state that rides below the comings and goings of more transient feelings - reactions to things not going according to plan. Maybe it's gratitude, maybe it's self-love, but mostly it's a quiet joy that springs from an unknown depth -a bottom you hit when you've given up trying. November 29, 2025 IN CLOSING So grateful to live another November, with her deep long shadows and low amber light, and the soft way she settles, into winter's deeper stillness. We all resist this letting go, in whatever form that takes, but November shows us how. She is the letting go of the letting go - the peace that follows the fight, the bright dependable bridge between what was and what comes after.
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I am afraid of dying.
I am afraid of living. I am afraid of all the terrible things that could happen - things of which I have no control - terrible things that would take away, forever, those beloved people and things that make my life bearable, worth living. There. I've said it. And not only have I said it, but I've allowed myself to quake while I've said it. I've allowed myself to feel the subtle trembling beneath the layers of competent, gathered-up, you've-got-this self-programming. The fact is, we don't got this: This scary, unpredictable life will always have its way with us, and our illusions of control only serve to add layers of gathered-up bracing to an already braced and frightened organism. But fear is not a problem to be solved. Instead, it is an energy to be lived - an energy that is as natural to the human condition as the erratic, tail-flicking scurrying of a squirrel, or the timid wariness of a deer in an open field in autumn. We are nature, with a natural dilemma: How do we thrive in a world where anything can happen? Here's how: Face your fear. Now I don't mean to buck up and look at it as if you're about to go into battle with an unknown opponent. No, I mean settle into your body and feel how it vibrates. Allow scary images, thoughts, and beliefs to arise. Breathe, and feel yourself in your body as the stories swirl and circulate and agitate, until they settle down into the one and only true terror - your own annihilation - falling apart, going crazy, or actually dying. And when you hit this bottom, or maybe even before that, you might notice a quivering sadness. It's the chin-quivering sadness of a little child - your little childness. Breathe, and wait with this vulnerable tenderness. She is a miracle. She is your salvation. She will open you to yourself and the bands of practiced protection will release from your heart and through her eyes you will see the vivid perfection of this delicate, fragile thing we call life. Colors will be brighter. Smiles will be sweeter. And you will know that you are not separate from any of it. And while all the Its that you used to be afraid of may indeed still happen, you realize that this isn't the point and that trying to prevent or outsmart them was not really living, but blocking you from the deeper truth of yourself - as openness, as compassion, so good and so tender that it can survive anything - even death.  I only want to understand her and for her to understand me, and for us to feel ourselves as one - one mind, one heart, one love. But she's not easy - my little mare Secret. She never was. She was born in the middle of the night to a struggling Mama as her first and only surviving baby. And Mama died, only eight weeks later, from intestinal impaction, leaving a confident, opinionated, red-headed child, with an easygoing "Aunt" and "Uncle" who couldn't teach her the way that Mama could: It takes a strong woman to raise one. So Secret grew up a strange combination of sensitivity and rebelliousness, sweetness and sassiness, keenly intuitive, yet ready to blow you off at a moment's notice if you don't keep up. She has taught me more than any horse I've ever known. She can't be tamed with dominance, nor can she be coaxed with kindness. "Natural" horsemanship methods almost ruined her. Like a candle she flickers from pissy to shut down, from bitchy to dejected. If you miss the worry in a barely arched brow or the tension in her soft upper lip, she will pin her ears and walk away, Clueless human. You missed it. Too late. And so I'm done with the goals like flying lead changes and bareback gallops through the neighbor's pasture. I only want her respect. And love. And her trust - one moment at a time. Because in her eyes I see my reflection - a sensitive child with shifting moods - made shiftier still because no one noticed the wrinkled brow, or the far-away eyes, or the shut-down resignation of good-girl compliance. This morning I am thinking about shame, or more accurately, shame is thinking me. For in truth, there is no thinker here, but thinking does indeed happen. And last night a friend was talking about how desperately she wanted to be seen by her father. And as she grew, she made herself into a tomboy so that she could be the "son he never had." Later, she used her body and sexual energy as a way to be seen by men. Later still, she experienced a lot of shame about sex and using it to heal this daughter-daddy wound.
Of course, like many little girls, I resonate with the invisible-girl-child syndrome - never feeling like I was doing enough, or doing something good enough. It created a louder, more expressive, performance-oriented version of Shelly. As a young girl, I took on the character of confidence and bravado. It got me lots of smiles and chuckles of approval from my Dad; I guess because he was a bit of a narcissist, he liked it when I acted like him. And perhaps it was a character, an energy, that he adopted as a way to overcome profound insecurity. I cannot know. From this, his daughter's perspective, it still seems that he was simply kind of a jerk. In any case, being more like him or adopting this character strategy, felt better than being frowned upon or ignored. As I grew into adulthood, like my friend, I began to feel ashamed of this bolstered character, this trying-to-get-Daddy's-approval strategy. Personal-Growth-Shelly was embarrassed that I was ever inauthentic and had succumbed to adopting such a gross and almost cartoon-like character. Spiritual-Seeking-Shelly was mortified that I ever "put on airs." Wasn't humility a necessary ingredient to being or becoming enlightened? And here's where it hit me this morning. I was feeling the urge to write or speak - to share. And I dove deeper into the wanting-to-share energy, suspicious, as I typically am, of what was driving it. Was I wanting to get my ego stroked? Was I wanting to bolster my sense of self by taking on the role of "teacher?" Was I simply bored and needed to fill a hole? Was I trying to use "sharing" as a way to feel connected to other people? Was I wanting to contribute something as a way to establish my worth? Was I being egotistical, as my partner once suggested? And somewhere, in the background, shame was tucked carefully within the character of Good-Person-Shelly, who thought, This is healthy - this questioning, this examining. This way I don't hurt anybody. This way I'm not using other people to get my needs met. And then I caught it, this sneaky shame energy: Wait a minute. Can shame actually be good? And once I got a glimpse of this layer, a deeper, less-acknowledged shame layer arose that said, It's good to always question myself because that way I'm less likely to behave in such a way that other people won't like me. And then I remembered an eleven-year-old girls' slumber party. One of the girls had organized a kangaroo court. Each of us was brought up on "charges," except her of course: She was the judge. (This friend-group tyrant grew up to be a therapist, which I think is kinda fun). We were given two choices as to how to atone for our crimes. I was accused of "bragging" about my mini-bike. I had gotten a mini-bike when I was ten and absolutely loved it. I rode all over the neighborhood on that thing and I guess, like horses, it gave me a sense of freedom. It could take me places faster and farther than I could go on my own two feet and its power became my power, which also felt great. I was absolutely blind-sided by this accusation. Had I really been bragging? I was so confused. Still, to this day, I can't remember bragging, but at some point I decided that it must be true and that there was something wrong with my enthusiasm, something wrong with how I "shared" my joy, something maybe about the intensity of it that was perceived as bragging. And of course I was somehow wrong or less-than for not being able to see it. Maybe I was stupid, maybe I was selfish. I wasn't sure. But clearly there was something screwed up about me or this wouldn't have happened. With shame, it seems, there's no way out. You're fucked if you do and you're fucked if you don't. If you don't express yourself, then you don't get seen or heard. If you do, you run the risk of being seen as egotistical or bad. This morning I'm aware of how shame checks me: Why am I doing this? What's driving my desire to share? To write? And underneath it, I don't want to be being bad and somehow not know that I'm being bad because that would be bad. I'll have to say that sharing in hopes to be seen or heard, never satisfies - not for long anyway. And this I've learned the hard way. But did I need shame to teach me that? Actually, I simply needed awareness - awareness of energy and how it feels in my body. When the impulse to share arises, it feels free and light - natural - kinda like riding my mini-bike, like something bigger than me is powering me, carrying me. But then what happens? Does my bodymind contract with doubt before I even get started? Sit on your hands and say, 'I hate my mini-bike' ten times, was my punishment for the crime of sharing my joy, my full-tilt exuberance. And so still, I sit on my hands, not hating my mini-bike, but hating myself or parts of myself - hating or at least being suspicious of energies we might call excitement, pride, expressiveness, celebration, intensity, and even joy and happiness. Shame tells us that these energies are bad or might be. But how can they be bad? Like my friend who realized that sexual energy wasn't any more "bad" than hunger energy or tired energy, I'm reminded that none of the energies that make us human, including shame, are bad. They are simply energy forms, whose quality of contraction is the only thing that distinguishes one from the other. Shame energy is getting special attention today, because I'm realizing more clearly that it's an energy that follows most of the others - like an obedient dog it says, Whatever feeling you feel, I'm gonna follow, adding another layer of contracted energy to the contracted energies you're already feeling, so that you feel so weighed down that you can't ride that mini-bike or write this piece or share it anywhere - in case you're seen, in case you're not. So sweet shame, it seems you are with me. But I see you more clearly: You are not me, just what's happening. I write today with much less bodily tension than I would have a year ago. I write today with much less second guessing than I would have last week. And this we call growth and say that it's good. But maybe what happened before wasn't bad: It was just different, different energies happening - in the form of memories, in the form of bodily tension, in the form of emotions - and how fun it is to notice, to ride these energies freely, to be ridden by them freely, and to share the joy of mini-bike-freedom, with you. They'd been married for 36 years. They each had successful careers and had raised and launched two children. But she came to see me in tears. She'd tried and tried to get him to understand, tried and tried to say things the right way, with the right tone of voice, at the right time, so that it wouldn't turn into an argument - the same one they'd had over and over again for years. The specifics might be different, the context might vary, but the pattern was the same. He would comment about something she was doing or the way she was doing it, she would get defensive, he would resist her defensiveness by getting defensive himself, she would get angry, he would get angrier, and then she would shut down and become very small.
Then one day, in the heat of one of these arguments, he asked her, Why do you get so upset? You act like I'm doing something horrible to you? . . . "It's because my father beat me," she said, simply and softly. Thump. Stunned silence. And then, What? and he stepped to her and held her, I'm sorry. I didn't know. What is it about the raw, unfiltered, non-blaming, organic truth, when it comes from the deep dark recesses of forgetting, that cuts through the layers of defensiveness, and opens us to compassion? The thing is, on some level, he felt it, knew all along there was something there. We are feeling, sensing beings, and even the most unaware of us, can sense energies we don't understand or don't necessarily stop and take the time to pay any attention to: There's so much busyness, so much mind-clutter that gets our front-and-center attention. But in the space of feeling, when talking and feeling go hand in hand, when the what's-happening-now is all that's here, something beyond our mind-made preconceived notions and perceptions can arise. And I think of Rumi's poem, Ali In Battle. Just before he's about to fatally slay his opponent, Ali's opponent spits in his face, and Ali, the great wise warrior, steps back and withdraws his sword. His opponent is shocked and asks why he has spared him. Ali explains it this way: "Your impudence was better than any reverence, because in this moment I am you and you are me." Rumi suggests that like Ali, we learn how to fight without our egos participating. As "God's lion" Ali "did nothing that did not originate from his deep center." We are all One energy. One Life. When the unarguable, fully-embodied truth is spoken, it resonates with the listener and the listener recognizes it as truth. It's not the mind-fabricated truth of opinion. It's not the truth of projection. It's the truth of life as energy, expressing through one, and felt, as energy, by the other. But how can an energy really belong to one, if it can also be intuitively felt by another? Doesn't the other carry the same energy? Wouldn't he have to in order to recognize it? It is this we-are-one-energy recognition that heals and transforms - not as a spiritual concept, but as a felt experience. When we meet each other naked, on the open clear battlefield of energies, and bring those energies forth as divine expression, we level the playing field: Neither of us is better than the other, we are the same - both feeling energy beings, recognizing ourselves in the other. First it came from my gallbladder - a bitter resentment and anger, a sour taste from the past that left me queasy and worried enough to call the doctor. Then blood tests revealed glucose gone crazy - levels off the charts. Glucose, gleukos, the "sweet delightful wine," the sweet fuel of life was running rampant in my body with no place to go. The systems designed to receive it, to take it in for fuel and nourishment, wanted no part of it. They were rejecting it in stubborn defiance. Conversations with my partner (using the couples dialogue, designed to allow hurt feelings to flow without shredding the other), revealed, I'm so angry. And the not voiced, less responsible version: You say you're there for me but you're really not. It's always been this way. And a 20-years-behind-us, Why didn't you marry me like you said you would and now here I am, alone, with little or no support when something like this happens? And feeling a hurt and an anger that I had not allowed myself to feel, turning away instead in stubborn I-don't-need-you independence. And I remember the first time it happened - the prized pinto pony delivered to our house on my ninth birthday and a little girl's resistance to hugging her father. The details are foggy but the felt-sense is clear: I don't want to hug you because I'm mad. I'm mad at you. I don't like you. This doesn't fix everything. You're mean. I don't like you and I'll never, ever forgive you. Leave me alone. So the shell of defiant protection was already in place and I shunted my hurt and my love to my pony and all the other horses who came after. They were my safe place - a safe place to put my longing - for connection, for merger, for love and mutual respect. I know, I know, classic horsegirl story - horses good, men bad. Why didn't I see it before now, you might ask. Lots of reasons really. But the more insidious one is that lovely phenomenon we call spiritual bypassing. Post awakening experience(s), I still tend to reject, unconsciously, usually so quickly that I don't even notice, anything that smells like needing anything or anyone to make me feel happy and fulfilled. So when the surface level energy of I need love arises, I probably, still, tend to retract back into myself, without taking the time to listen and feel it. Old patterns die hard, like the grooves on an old record album entrenched with wear - even after you've "seen the light." So the longing for love remains, encased in an encrusted shell of denial and protection. But I awoke this morning remembering a dream: My partner was in bed behind me, spooning me. He literally had my back. And in my less defended, still-dreamy state, I let myself feel it, let myself surrender to it, and let it soak in. And then my heart opened. The crusty encasement of hurt was gone and the power and beauty of my longing flowed through my body and my limbs and tissues and organs who said, Yes. Welcome home. Whiney, resisting-the-way-it-is, heart-detoured, head longing, is a trap. Full-bodied love longing is your true inheritance. You, we, long for love because love is who we are. And once the longing is set free, it doesn't need the right conditions or someone special to love, because it transcends personal love. And when it flows as Itself, It blesses everyone in Its path. But mostly It blesses the lover, who knows herself as the One love - lover and beloved. I am not symptom free. There are more tests scheduled and the bitter taste of anger and hate still hangs in the background, somewhat relieved but still twinging. But this morning I am open, open as love, open as longing, while writing the poem below. Thank you gallbladder, thank you insulin resistance, for the wake-up call, for the much-needed nudge. Thank you Life, for trying to heal me. Longing recognized, is sweet. Whole-body longing for love and connection aligns you with your inescapable humanness. No matter where you go, no matter what you do, this longing follows you like an obedient dog. If you ignore it, if, in your hurt you turn away its shadow will drag you into itself until you become a calcified shell dragging resentment around as your only friend. But if you can claim your longing, allowing the pain of encasement to break, your body will open your heart, pouring its Light, as a blessing, releasing the Love that you are to fulfill Its Self. You were made to feel. I can't say this enough. I say it to you. I say it to myself. Because it seems that no matter how much stuff I clear from my bodymind and how much freer I've become, there remains an energy, a tendency, to judge certain feelings, to think "I'm not doing it right," because of the feelings I'm feeling.
It's not my fault - this judgment. I came by it honestly. Because it seems that embedded in the human psyche is the story that emotionality is bad. At one time in our evolution we probably acted on our feelings impulsively, resulting in "bad" consequences. When we were mad at somebody, we probably just clubbed them over the head. At some point, in order to become civilized, in order to achieve social order, it became important to control our emotional impulses, to have mastery over them. This evolved into an increasing bias towards rationality, valuing our intellects, and using them to try to master those less "evolved" emotions. This ability, we have believed, is what makes us superior to the animals. The popularity of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is a reflection of this bias. CBT suggests that if we just control what we think, we can control how we feel. This is a load of crap. Feelings happen. Feelings are energy. The nature of energy is movement. Energy moves and we feel stuff. Emotional energy is biological, chemical, and electrical, just like the other physiological processes that happen in a human body. For example, feelings happen when you smell certain smells. You don't have to think, "my grandmother's house," to feel warm, happy feelings of your grandmother's house when you smell apple pie. It just happens - automatically. Our friends the animals do not have the capacity for rational thought, but if you've spent any time training or living with horses, you know damn well that they feel. I have one little mare who probably feels and expresses five different feelings in under a minute - depending on what we're doing and what I'm teaching her. (She is, by the way, one of the happiest little horses you'll ever meet. I'm assuming it's because she doesn't feel guilty for the nasty faces she makes at me, nor does she try to justify them. She doesn't reflect on her fear of the plastic bag and try to think through it rationally. She doesn't make her feelings into a problem to be analyzed or fixed. Feelings happen, she feels them, and then they're gone - no problem). Do the stories in our heads create feelings? Yes. Do the stories we create in response to our feelings exacerbate those feelings? Absolutely. But I'm tired of people, often women people, and especially therapist-women people, coming to see me and feeling bad about themselves, feeling inadequate somehow, not good enough or healed enough, just because they're feeling strong feelings. Feelings are what it means to be human. If you don't believe me, ask Barbie. After watching the movie for the fourth time, (yes, I had to watch it four times. It took me three times to notice and get why Weird Barbie was always in a split), one of the final scenes still haunts me. Barbie is standing with her creator saying that she wants to be human and her creator says, “I can’t in good conscience let you take this leap without you knowing what it means. Take my hands. . . Now, close your eyes. . . Now feel.” And while Billie Eilish's plaintive What Was I Made For? plays in the background, we see image after image of young girls and women feeling - feeling all kinds of feelings that humans feel - sadness, anguish, fear, rapture, love. Then the camera turns back to Barbie, who after seeing and feeling what it means to be human, says softly and unflappably, Yes. Even now, tears well behind my eyes and there's a slight constriction in my throat as I remember the power and quiet simplicity of this scene: "So being human is not something I need to ask for . . . It's something that I just become?" That's right Barbie. Now feel. And as I sit with the tightening throat, a pressure in my chest wants to build and spread with something that's almost too big for me, something greater than my human self can put into words or contain. It's the bright white light of big love that swells in compassion for all of us: What courage it takes to become human! What courage it takes to show up, to say yes, and feel. I love you, Shelly There is only this moment, burning bright and empty as a night full of stars, and a beaming awareness of This. Only This. Nothing else matters. Nothing else is real. Everything you ever were or are, everything you ever wanted, is here, right now. This is the peace I wish for you, dear friend, for this year, this day, and this moment. It is our only real security in an ever-changing world. It is a glowing constant on which everything else appears - our feelings, our thoughts, and all that happens. Many ask, "How do I get there? How do I achieve this state of lasting peace?" In truth, there is no "there" to get to because it's already here. Arriving home happens, not with a movement toward something, but as a falling away of everything not It. This falling away is a death, an unclenching of a contracted sense of me and mine - my feelings, my beliefs, my life. My intention in the coming year, is to make this "death" easier for you. This death, this awakening, whether we're talking many little ego deaths, or actual death, is inevitable. As an expression of the one Life, your return to and collapse back into It, will happen sooner or later. And as long as you're here, in physical form, Life will continue to do what Life does - tickle, prod, and poke at your contracted-ness, inviting you to let go, to come home. My "job," my secret joy, is to help you make this homecoming, this letting go, easier for yourself. Surrender is not hard, but our resistance to it hurts like hell. But please don't add resistance as another problem to be fixed: that's just more resistance. Resistance is just an energy like any other energy. And like any other energy, it will only transform in the light of your non-judging awareness. So I say, bring it! Bring your resistance. Let's make a safe space for it. Let's acknowledge it as a fundamental aspect of our humanness, because let's face it, without it we would all be free, we'd all be "enlightened," we'd all be walking on water. So today I'm wishing you ease in the coming year - not a get-everything-just-right-so-nothing-hurts kind of ease, but the kind of ease that comes with a growing capacity to make a space for all of your feelings, including your resistance, so they can all be transformed in the Light of your compassionate awareness, the awareness that's always here, the awareness that you already are. May you know yourself as That.  I dedicate this Christmas to you Mom and Dad. You didn't love me perfectly in many ways you fell short - years of therapy speak to that. But you knew how to love us at Christmas. It seemed that everything you were and everything you did, the rest of the year, was cultivated and held tight until it burst forth at Christmas - Mom's talent for cooking and making things beautiful, Dad's for making and managing money, and as you got older you seemed to get younger with a mischievous delight in conjuring and conspiring to cast a magical spell on all of us at Christmas. I suppose the truth of you, the most essential Is-ness of you expressed Itself best at Christmas, and that energy, that magic, lives in me: It would have to. Sixty-three years of the heady stuff, seeping into me, sponge that I was (and still am). And now I'm home alone on Christmas Day, full of your love, full of your magic, bursting open with something that cannot be named only felt - a joy, a right-ness, a light that lives and is always here, yet seems especially bright at Christmas, because you were here, because you loved, because you simply be'd you, and allowed, for whatever reason, the light of Christmas to break you open and bless us all. And now it lives in me, as me, just as it lived as you. So you see? You never died. The house is sold and you're both buried, but you're here, in me. And the magic you made lives through my hands and my heart and my words, blessing others . . . forever. See what you did? I love you. Merry Christmas. I'll never forget my sister's green dress, soft as moss, and softer still her embrace, made delicate by tear after tear of letting go - finally and my long lost cousin, tall as a mountain, his quiet strength and eyes, oh the eyes, and when they met mine we knew, we just knew and my brother-in-law's speech full of confidence and bravado, as is his way, whose voice broke humbly when he mentioned his daughter, who died years ago and the brightly lit luncheon, where everyone noticed the patchwork quilts decorating the walls, intricately, carefully stitched, popping with color and texture here and there, like the pop of energy, the pop of Life, like flowers bursting, or popcorn popping, all along the long white table a quivering chin, a contorted face, a smile or a laugh, and eyes meeting eyes with a touch or a glance, and gazes drifting to unknown places. Life being Life made brighter by my Father's death. Thank you Dad - for everything. July 17, 2023 |
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