POET
Poetry is my pilgrimage into the heart of Life,
where secrets are whispered that can only souls hear.
As a poet, I seek to sustain receptivity towards the subtlest realms of my inner nature in order to have flashes of illumination and to write with heartfullness. Even when inspiration flows haltingly, the poet in me aspires to glimpse the hidden wholeness contained in ordinary experiences and to describe the feeling-tones of engagement with life’s mystery. As a poet I feel that I must lean into the subtle truths that can only be disclosed through the struggle for self-awareness. I am called to explore the inner journey as readily as the outer, through the marriage of the poem’s form and content. I feel that poets must dare to witness reality through the lens of unknowing by keeping their aesthetic mirror free of distortions. On poetry’s pilgrimage to the shrines of meaning and purpose, I expect to get life’s dirt under my nails and to reek of its sweat. When I linger on that edge in abject humility, the poem has a chance to acquire its integrity and beauty. Hopefully, when I come back to it a few weeks later, I will have forgotten who wrote it and why, and read it in the same way that any other reader would––with the sense of surprise that comes from unwrapping an unexpected gift.
INTO THE UNKNOWN SEA
For David Whyte
I have heard Mermaids signing
on the shore of dreams.
Remember you are not alone
when your soul casts off her moorings.
Even after a lifetime spent preparing
you will be frightened and at first
plagued with doubt, as you cross
this last isthmus into the unknown sea.
The portmanteau of your many selves
with their many-errand lives
provisioned now for all your needs, except
the ones your mind craves most, the very ones
your wise soul rejects—the maps
to which you have always clung
the plans that always kept you safe
the cages that can no longer contain
who you need to become.
Remember you are not alone
whatever might arise, your vessel
has been crafted to explore Originality
so fierce its mission, even gods
in their celestial estates would rouse
to cheer you on had they the human heart
to hold our common feelings. Your courage
has been a covenant since the birth of time
guiding you to this verge of becoming
where the scales could tip either way
the pivot of everything you hold most dear.
Remember you are not alone
as the doors close behind you
sealing all hope of exit or reprieve.
Then, patiently waiting as the water deepens
you will feel your heart stretched
wider than ever before
to hold your soul’s vast pregnancy.
Breathe deeply the first foreign scents
rising in the morning mist, as if
all this time the native genius
you long sought elsewhere
lay hidden in your body.
Remember you are not alone
as the waters rise one level to the next.
Your soul has forever yearned
for this one gift—
that your mind un-selve its enormity
awakening the full-blooded Earthling
made of living soil
hills, meadows, surging rivers and clouds
that rub their bodies into lightening.