Wild Words: Ferociously Nourishing Poetry

From Out the Cave

10/2/2022

Sacred Cave at Doran Beach, Bodega Bay, CA
Information on monthly full moon cave ceremonies:
www.guideforconscioushealing.com/ecos-de-la-marea

When you have been
at war with yourself
for so many years that
you have forgotten why,
when you have been driving
for hours and only
gradually begin to realize
that you have lost the way,
when you have cut
hastily into the fabric,
when you have signed
papers in distraction,
when it has been centuries
since you watched the sun set
or the rain fall, and the clouds,
drifting overhead, pass as flat
as anything on a postcard;
when, in the midst of these
everyday nightmares, you
understand that you could
wake up,
you could turn
and go back
to the last thing you
remember doing
with your whole heart:
that passionate kiss,
the brilliant drop of love
rolling along the tongue of a green leaf,
then you wake,
you stumble from your cave,
blinking in the sun,
naming every shadow
as it slips.

- Joyce Sutphen

Plato's allegory of the cave

Come join the wild wind and waves
in a full moon ceremony on Sunday, October 9th
in the sacred cave at Doran Beach, Sonoma County, CA.
Meet in the Pinnacle Gulch parking lot at 2:00pm.
www.guideforconscioushealing.com/ecos-de-la-marea

The Bell and the Blackbird, for Fall Equinox

9/18/2022

The sound of a bell
Still reverberating,
or a blackbird calling
from a corner of the field,
asking you to wake
into this life,
or inviting you deeper
into the one that waits.

Either way
takes courage,
either way wants you
to be nothing
but that self that
is no self at all,
wants you to walk
to the place
where you find
you already know
how to give
every last thing
away.

The approach
that is also
the meeting
itself,
without any
meeting
at all.

That radiance
you have always
carried with you
as you walk
both alone
and completely
accompanied
in friendship
by every corner
of the world
crying
Allelujah.

- David Whyte

Light Hoofed

8/21/2022

What if we enter each day
so silently, so seamlessly
the birds don't sound alarms and dart away,
our minds so well released from fits of thought
we are kin to all that breathes,
like grazing deer
hidden in dapples of green

O how we would walk then
light hoofed and elfin eyed, even on crowded days,
each trembling leaf a welcome
Silky beating wings
would cool our errant fevers of mind
would keep us filled with awe
and kind

- Cynthia Poten

At the Window

7/24/2022

I was at the window
when a fly near the latch
was on its back spinning--
legs furious, going nowhere.

I thought to swat it
but something in its struggle
was too much my own.

It kept spinning and began to tire.
Without moving closer, I exhaled
steadily, my breath a sudden wind
and the fly found its legs,
rubbed its face
and flew away.

I continued to stare at the latch
hoping that someday, the breath
of something incomprehensible
would right me and
enable me to fly.

- Mark Nepo

First Lesson

7/17/2022

Lie back, daughter, let your head
be tipped back in the cup of my hand.
Gently, and I will hold you. Spread
your arms wide, lie out on the stream
and look high at the gulls. A dead-
man's-float is face down. You will dive
and swim soon enough where this tidewater
ebbs to the sea. Daughter, believe
me, when you tire on the long thrash
to your island, lie up, and survive.
As you float now, where I held you
and let go, remember when fear
cramps your heart what I told you:
lie gently and wide to the light-year
stars, lie back, and the sea will hold you.

- Philip Booth

What a Jar Can Hold

7/3/2022

Art by Cindy Wood
www.cindywoodart.com

I've been seeing beetles lately.
Big and small--scary ones that only
emerge from their underground roost
to lay their eggs on my stairway;
junebugs, loitered into July,
who don't like letting go, even in death.

The little ones, metallic, remind me
of grabbing handfuls when I was ten
from the roses they loved to snuffle and chew.
Mr. Ingber would pay us a dime
for a pint jar full of their copper
and opaline green. Packed
and freighted for death, them smelled
the way that people smell when they begin to cry--
rain on hot pavement--ozone, rot.

I was old enough to know
what Mr. Ingber would do with that jar.
I should have let them go.
And now I open that jar, in me,
gasoline evaporated, beetle bodies dust,
my small repentance, late.

Maybe love is never lost.
If so, it might collect somewhere:
Mr. Ingber's love of roses,
my love for the beetles here,
all packed inside an empty jar,
waiting to be opened.

- Chuck Madansky

Self-Compassion

6/5/2022

My friend and I snickered the first time
we heard the meditation teacher, a grown man,
call himself honey, with a hand placed
over his heart to illustrate how we too
might become more gentle with ourselves
and our runaway minds. It’s been years
since we sat with legs twisted on cushions,
holding back our laughter, but today
I found myself crouched on the floor again,
not meditating exactly, just agreeing
to be still, saying honey to myself each time
I thought about my husband splayed
on the couch with aching joints and fever
from a tick bite—what if he never gets better?--
or considered the threat of more wildfires,
the possible collapse of the Gulf Stream,
then remembered that in a few more minutes,
I’d have to climb down to the cellar and empty
the bucket I placed beneath a leaky pipe
that can’t be fixed until next week. How long
do any of us really have before the body
begins to break down and empty its mysteries
into the air? Oh honey, I said—for once
without a trace of irony or blush of shame--
the touch of my own hand on my chest
like that of a stranger, oddly comforting
in spite of the facts.

- James Crews

Glimpse

2/13/2022

Glimpse by Cindy Wood
www.cindywoodart.com

It was as if a window suddenly blew open
and the sky outside the mind came flooding in.
My childhood shriveled to a close,
just like that, thread of smoke
that rose and touched a cloud - or the cloud’s
replica adrift on the slow river of thinking -
and disappeared inside it. In that dark water,
a new lily was opening, sky-white out of the muck.
It was only a glimpse, quick,
like a bird ruffling,
but I saw the flower’s
beautiful stark shape, an artichoke
brightened from within by the moon.
A path lay shadowy under my feet,
and I followed it.

- Chase Twichell

We Live to be Near Her

2/6/2022

Painting by Cindy Wood
www.cindywoodart.com

When beauty walks into the room and sits
down close to you and is willing to let you
gaze at her as much as you want,

no one has to tell you all is alright now, no
one has to parrot again . . . someday your pain
won't exist.

For we live to be near her. She oozes grace.
Part of her benediction is that all the hormones
you want to come alive do.

Passion in full throttle says to the past, says to
worries--go fuck yourself, and the past will
crouch down or run . . . like a pup in the
presence of a fierce dog.

When God makes itself more known and all
our attention rivets on some aspect of Splendor,

all our internal dialogue--what can it do, but
cease to deplete one,

then something lifts our heart toward the Sky.

- Hafiz, trans. by Daniel Ladinsky

The Scripture of Circle

1/30/2022

Female Strength by Helena Arturaleza Schotman

There is no refuge
No destination
No resolution
Only This

Blessed are the fruit of my womb
Blessed are the cycles that have no end
Blessed is the Wound
Blessed is the Hole

Blessed is the space that holds you always
Blessed is this unfinished life
Blessed is the eternal and unchanging
Blessed are we who bear the unbearable
who carry our cross from first to last breath

Blessed are we who know the relentless mercy of the
Mysterious Other
known only when we sacrifice our reaching

There is no refuge
No destination
No resolution
Only This

To you who are the Birther of Samsara
and the doorway to Nirvana
To you whose Love
is the bridge that flows between them
To you who holds the mirror of perfection
inside the crack of imperfection
whose Road leads nowhere and is everywhere

To you whose breast is the refuge of no refuge
To you whose passion dissolves all ignorance
and whose innocence reveals unstained beauty

Enveloped by your Grace
With nowhere to go
Around and around
Heart to the Ground

Here
I
am

-Maya Luna

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