Now

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Sitting here
Inviting
A poem
To visit
This page
That offers
Ten thousand
 Possibilities
  Each one
Is unique
Each moment 
Is colored
By the past
Each moment
Is present
In the now
Each moment
Is expecting
To move the future
One way or another
‘Now’ is always twinkling
Its bright string of lights
  Extending endlessly
Through the miracle
Of this special place

Garden Growing

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The garden is growing
Without regard at all
Rising full and sweet
Flowers clothed in color
Conferences and timelines
All set by sun and clouds
As life’s season awakens
With no time for me now
Only for insects that visit
It is time for me to sit
And enjoy the bright music
Of the flowers growing

Promised

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Among the things I promised
Under words and walking sticks
Were garden hoses, chesterfields
Beds and sheets and stuff
I sent a cotton comforter
And thoughts to bless your soul
All things real and true and kind
But in truth I longed for more

As love sank under view
The memories I knew
The good there was in you
And some that left me blue
All faded in the sun

Some things I never knew
Like how I loved to laugh
Were seeded in the grass
Instead I felt my heart break
As I itched to scratch the rash

Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye again
There is nothing left to say
I never chose to find these things
Or end with you this way

Dogs

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I don’t know that much about dogs
But they often seem like their owners
Happily living in the boxes they’re given
Food, exercise and freedom all prescribed
By others – masters or handlers who read
Details from paperwork in front of them
Reading is not for dogs
Dog's find joy rutting deeply into ritual
The sameness that soothes their minds
A dog's love, is full with no conditions
While our loneliness seldom softens
Dog's love is full with easy forgiveness
A gift we hope to learn from them
So alive in all the dogs that see us
And invite us into their lives
In exchange for gentle touching
In places far from fear and stress

Sometimes dogs wag masters
Making them precious children
Soft words and pats on heads
Prizes we never understand
Are cherished forever by pets
Even if we are dispassionate
Dogs always stand our friend
Unlike some others we know

Moon behind Cloud

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If I were a tree, birds would visit my branches

Walking through sunlight streamers today with my dog nearby
I looked up at the sky and sat down on a bench beside the big river
An unaimed gaze owned time and penetrated the air with ease above the trees
My eyes took me as far as they could go - far beyond the summer song of hidden birds
Nothing flew way up high across the sky to steal the freedom of my eye
My gaze wandered until it was swallowed by the infinite miracle of blue sky
It was a blue beyond blue that balloon wrapped the summer's daytime world
In front of that blue - not obscuring the view was a faint-frayed-pulled-apart cloud
Its ancient fabric of moisture changed like a wrinkled shirt in the sky-blue-breeze
Then I noticed the moon hiding but still clearly in view through a cloud’s moist breath
Shaved thin and white and pale the moon watched silent and unnoticed from its blue pond
I was taken away in that moment as my outward vision somehow gifted an inward knowing
As the sky and the moon and the clouds sang through me to summer birds in trees

Hot

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Tuesday is hot
Yesterday was
And tomorrow
Is expected to be
But hot is outside
While life is inside
A thickened shell
It seems to me

Friends are all
Outside of me
Even though
I long to feel
In my bones
In my blood
Our being is
Meant to be

One everyone
One everything
Knowing me
By life in others
Knowing others
By life in me
All emptiness
Now set free

A World

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A world loves to be noticed
It might live to notice itself
In a way that is hard to explain
I don't blame it for loving itself
We seek ways to notice ourselves
The world’s love lives in knowing
All living things that walk upon it
And great things far beyond view

But human dreams are everywhere
And they pass through so quickly
Sprite white clouds across blue sky
Fading from weightless memory
As their infinite shapes change
And fantasy plays with thought
Beneath each warmed breath
And inside our darkest worry
Or beyond any beliefs we hold
To feel worthy in this place