​This sense that something
went wrong.
The sense that we have fallen
and taken the world down with us.
The sense that all
might have turned out better
had she not made some
colossal mistake
in the beginning.
The sense that nature
disapproves, and every
flower is shouting about
the impending cataclysm
because a dark mother
tasted the fruit of
unbearable joy.
Dear friend, don't you know
that humans hesitate and
cower before uncertainty
age after age, inventing
this story again and again?
It's how we feel when we
don't know how to breathe,
when we don't know how to
pause between heartbeats,
to savor the delicate bouquet
of this moment.
Some say heaven will appear
when this tribulation is over.
I say heaven is an infinitesimal
grain of silence
at the tip of your exhalation,
just before you receive
the gift of another breath.
Meet me here.
We'll dance barefoot
in the garden where nothing
ever went wrong,
and there was only
one tree, whose roots
went deep into the loam,
whose branches bent down
with clusters of ripening
sweet stars,
and a sparkling serpent spiraled
up the spine of the Goddess.
The serpent was Wisdom.
The Goddess was Eve.
She marveled at the dust
in the palm of her hand,
blew upon it,
and created a Man.

​-  Alfred LaMotte

Listen.
I want to tell you something. This morning
is bright after all the steady rain, and every iris,
peony, rose, opens its mouth, rejoicing. I want to say,
wake up, open your eyes, there's a snow-covered road
ahead, a field of blankness, a sheet of paper, an empty screen.
Even the smallest insects are singing, vibrating their entire bodies,
tiny violins of longing and desire. We were made for song.
I can't tell you what prayer is, but I can take the breath
of the meadow into my mouth, and I can release it for the leaves'
green need. I want to tell you your life is a blue coal, a slice
of orange in the mouth, cut hay in the nostrils. The cardinals'
red song dances in your blood. Look, every month the moon
blossoms into a peony, then shrinks to a sliver of garlic.
And then it blooms again.

    - Barbara Crooker

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