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Come with me into the expansive gift of poetry to experience a disruption of habitual ways of thinking and perceiving. The magic of poetry happens when it is spoken, heard and felt as vibrations in your body.

In this blog I offer you heartfelt, homemade recordings of some of my favorite poems. I invite you also to spend time with their pulsing vibrations and pregnant pauses, to savor the luscious sensual syllables on your tongue, and to feel the subtle changes in your being as you play with the poems.

Listen, read and then slowly speak them out loud. The medicine of poetry will endlessly surprise and delight you as a portal into your own wild multidimensionality!

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Astonishment, for Equinox

9/22/2024

 
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​There is a silence in the beginning.
The life within us grows quiet.
There is little fear. No matter
how all this comes out, from now on
it cannot not exist ever again.
*
The present pushes back the life of regret.
It draws forward the life of desire. Soon memory
will have started sticking itself all over us.
We were fashioned from clay in a hurry,
poor throwing may mean it didn’t matter
to the makers if their pots cracked.
*
On the mountain tonight the full moon
faces the full sun. Now could be the moment
when we fall apart or we become whole.
Our time seems to be up—I think I even hear it stopping.
Then why have we kept up the singing for so long?
Because that’s the sort of determined creature we are.
Before us, our first task is to astonish,
and then, harder by far, to be astonished.

We come to be astonished. To be reminded that the world—this life—is still full
of astonishing things: unexplainable acts of goodness, stunning beauty,
impossible hope.

We come because we need—every one of us—to fall to our knees from time to
time, in wonder. In awe. 

​    - Galway Kinnell

To Learn From Animal Being

7/28/2024

 
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​Nearer to the earth’s heart,
Deeper within its silence:
Animals know this world
In a way we never will.

We who are ever
Distanced and distracted
By the parade of bright
Windows thought opens:
Their seamless presence
Is not fractured thus.

Stranded between time
Gone and time emerging,
We manage seldom
To be where we are:
Whereas they are always
Looking out from
The here and now.

May we learn to return
And rest in the beauty
Of animal being,
Learn to lean low,
Leave our locked minds,
And with freed senses
Feel the earth
Breathing with us.

May we enter
Into lightness of spirit,
And slip frequently into
The feel of the wild.
Let the clear silence
Of our animal being
Cleanse our hearts
Of corrosive words.
​
May we learn to walk
Upon the earth
With all their confidence
And clear-eyed stillness
So that our minds
Might be baptized
In the name of the wind
And the light and the rain.

    - John O'Donohue

Take heart, you are becoming real

6/9/2024

 
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Owl Shaman Jaguar Medicine
by Katherine Skaggs

There will come a time when you know
you cannot be understood.
And you will open your hands,
curled fingers sliding into grace,
and you will let the wind blow away every seed
that wanted to be good.

You will know that to speak up,
to own your preferences, silliness, brilliance and delight,
it will cost you everything
you've known so far.

This is sure.

Take heart,
you are becoming real.

The goal is no longer to make certain the boat doesn't take on water
because you've rocked it a bit too much.
You are the ocean, for god's sake.

There will come a time when you know
the vines grown around your throat must be cut,
when you must unbind your pelvis and thighs
and unleash your wild no.

You will know that your hair cannot be 
compliant and well behaved,
a feral mane moving in waves,
straight lines denying the holy ruckus inside.

Nice no longer works.

What have you said yes to in this lifetime?
What is yours to be?

Great Mother holds your warm, round face in her hands
and says, "Free."
And you know it has always been true.

There will come a time when fear will be a too-small shoe
and being misunderstood
right-sized.
All your gold-plated judgments will fly away,
birds that fathom nothing of bad or wrong.

You will know that slow, deep and in
is the unsung path, the only way left after all the
trying to be shiny.

This will turn everything to tears or fire. Mostly both.

The womb of the oak is down.
Roots and soil, blood and bone.
There is no mountain, no method, no modality.

This is the slow gestation of Love.

    - Jessica Browning

A Blessing

5/5/2024

 
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​Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness   
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.   
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.   
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me   
And nuzzled my left hand.   
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.

    - James Wright

Sweep the Threshold

3/31/2024

 
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Riverbed Comforter
Painting by Duy Huynh

Sweep the threshold,
unlock the door,
put the busyness away--
what comes is far
too important.
Build a fire,
quiet the house,
all your sensing is required.
Hear the hoof beats?
The full horse breaths?
Mice may scratch in the walls,
spiders rattle the roof,
you've nothing to do
but be home.
Movements beneath your skin,
flashes of thought,
quickening heart,
allow them.
This is a welcoming.
You don't know who approaches
only that they must.
Freedom blooms
as we set
a place for everything.
What you carry in your blood
has voice--
Let her sing.

​    - Willow Annan Rose

The Bull

3/3/2024

 
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​He stood alone in the backyard, so dark
the night purpled around him.

I had no choice. I opened the door
& stepped out. Wind
in the branches. He watched me with kerosene
-blue eyes. What do you want? I asked, forgetting I had
no language. He kept breathing,

to stay alive. I was a boy–
which meant I was a murderer
of my childhood. & like all murderers, my god
was stillness. My god, he was still
there. Like something prayed for
by a man with no mouth. The green-blue lamp
swirled in its socket. I didn’t

want him. I didn’t want him to
be beautiful – but needing beauty
to be more than hurt gentle
enough to want, I
reached for him. I reached – not the bull –

but the depths. Not an answer but
an entrance the shape of
an animal. Like me.

​    - Ocean Vuong


Quiet Place

2/18/2024

 
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Are you looking for a quiet place?
But friend, you are already here.
The repose of your blood between pulsations.
A secret chamber in your chest where
you have no enemies,
no one is to blame,
and the endless journey
has never begun.
Here even prayers for peace need no speaking.
You can disperse into
the finer element you are before you breathe.
You can be the sparkling sky
in the lungs of a hummingbird,
smoke of sage in desert air, aureole in emptiness
where the flame just blew out.

Here you can burn away
because you remember your body
is made of vanished stars.
You can stumble and fall
into your own rhythm, which feels
like you are not moving at all
because your mind is at rest in flesh
that needs no discipline of stillness.
You are a nest inside the egg,
a mother's womb that carries
her own savior, the seed
of what you have always been seeking.

Now flower
on a Winter night.

- Alfred K. LaMotte

Day Dream

1/21/2024

 
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​One day people will touch and talk perhaps
easily,
And loving be natural as breathing and warm as
sunlight,
And people will untie themselves, as string is unknotted,
Unfold and yawn and stretch and spread their fingers,
Unfurl, uncurl like seaweed returned to the sea,
And work will be simple and swift
as a seagull flying,
And play will be casual and quiet
as a seagull settling,
And the clocks will stop, and no one will wonder
or care or notice,
And people will smile without reason,
Even in winter, even in the rain.

​    - A.S. J. Tessimond

MCGA

1/14/2024

 
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Photo by John Noonan

Sometimes I get it in my head
to turn over a new leaf
and try to be a better man​--
more kind or humane,
more patient or giving.

It works for a while
and for a while after that
I white-knuckle the backslide
into comfort and habits
of self-involvement.

All along
there's a crowd in me--
who go to rallies, wear
Make Chuck Great Again hats
and watch only Chuck News--

I'm embarrassed
to admit that I love—yes
love what's in the way
of love in me, though I see,
precisely and often,

who I could be, and how
I fail—even as my death
comes closer—feeling it
turn me like it turns
the leaves.


​    - Chuck Madansky

Hold Out Your Hand

12/24/2023

 
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"el sol y la selva siempre estan contando sus historias"
the sun and the jungle are always telling their stories
Art by Troy Farrell, [email protected]

​Let’s forget the world for a while
fall back and back
into the hush and holy
of now

are you listening? This breath
invites you
to write the first word
of your new story

your new story begins with this:
You matter

you are needed—empty
and naked
willing to say yes
and yes and yes

Do you see
the sun shines, day after day
whether you have faith
or not
the sparrows continue
to sing their song
even when you forget to sing
yours

stop asking: Am I good enough?
Ask only
Am I showing up
with love?
​
Life is not a straight line
it’s a downpour of gifts, please--
hold out your hand
​
    - Julia Fehrenbacher

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  • Home
  • Services
    • Mentor, Muse, Consultant
    • The Emotion Code & The Body Code
    • Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy
    • Breathwork Intensive
  • About
    • About Xochitl
    • Spiritual Midwifery
  • Cost & Connecting
  • Wild Words Poetry Blog
  • Ecos de la Marea Cave Ceremonies