GUIDE FOR CONSCIOUS HEALING
  • Home
  • Services
    • The Emotion Code & The Body Code
    • Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy
    • Quantum Touch
    • Reconnective Healing
    • Death Midwifery & Home Funeral Guide
    • Animal Healing
  • Wild Words Poetry Blog
  • IGNITION: Exploring Sacred Sensuality
  • Ecos de la Marea Cave Ceremonies
  • About
    • About Xochitl
    • Spiritual Midwifery
    • Client Experiences
  • Events
    • Workshops
    • Ceremonies
  • Hours & Fees
  • Contact
Picture

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!

Sign up to receive poems weekly

When I Met My Muse

12/25/2022

 
Picture
Painting by Cindy Wood. Used with permission.

I glanced at her and took my glasses
off--they were still singing. They buzzed
like a locust on the coffee table and then
ceased. Her voice belled forth, and the
sunlight bent. I felt the ceiling arch, and
knew that nails up there took a new grip
on whatever they touched. "I am your own
way of looking at things," she said. "When
you allow me to live with you, every
glance at the world around you will be
a sort of salvation." And I took her hand.

    - William Stafford

Ablution

11/6/2022

 
Picture
Photo by Amisha Nakhawa. Used with permission.

​Because one must be naked to get clean,
my dad shrugs out of his pajama shirt,
steps from his boxers and into the tub
as I brace him, whose long illness
has made him shed modesty too.
Seated on the plastic bench, he holds
the soap like a caught fish in his lap,
waiting for me to test the water’s heat
on my wrist before turning the nozzle
toward his pale skin. He leans over
to be doused, then hands me the soap
so I might scrub his shoulders and neck,
suds sluicing from spine to buttock cleft.
Like a child he wants a washcloth
to cover his eyes while I lather
a palmful of pearlescent shampoo
into his craniotomy-scarred scalp
and then rinse clear whatever soft hair
is left. Our voices echo in the spray
and steam of this room where once,
long ago, he knelt at the tub’s edge
to pour cups of bathwater over my head.
He reminds me to wash behind his ears,
and when he judges himself to be clean,
I turn off the tap. He grips the safety bar,
steadies himself, and stands. Turning to me,
his body is dripping and frail and pink.
And although I am nearly forty,
he has this one last thing to teach me.
I hold open the towel to receive him.

​    - Amy Fleury

October

10/16/2022

 
Picture

​I used to think the land
had something to say to us,
back when wildflowers
would come right up to your hand
as if they were tame.

Sooner or later, I thought,
the wind would begin to make sense
if I listened hard
and took notes religiously.
That was spring.

Now I’m not so sure:
the cloudless sky has a flat affect
and the fields plowed down after harvest
seem so expressionless,
keeping their own counsel.

This afternoon, nut tree leaves
blow across them
as if autumn had written us a long letter,
changed its mind,
and tore it into little scraps.

​    - Don Thompson


A Glint

9/4/2022

 
Picture
Photo by Eva Seidenfaden

I watched a glint of morning sunlight
climbing a thread of spider's silk
in a gentle breeze. It shinnied up
from the tip of a dewy stalk of grass
to an overhanging branch, then
disappeared into the leaves. But soon
another followed, and then another,
glint after glint, and though they made
no sound, what I could see was music,
not melody but one clear, shining note
plucked over and over, as if the sun
were tuning the day, then handing it
to me so I could be the one to play it.

​    - Ted Kooser

How to Cut a Pomegranate

8/7/2022

 
Picture

"Never," said my father,
"Never cut a pomegranate
through the heart.  It will weep blood.
Treat it delicately, with respect.

Just slit the upper skin across four quarters.
This is a magic fruit,
so when you split it open, be prepared
for the jewels of the world to tumble out,
more precious than garnets,
more lustrous than rubies,
lit as if from inside.
Each jewel contains a living seed.
Separate one crystal.
Hold it up to catch the light.
Inside is a whole universe.
No common jewel can give you this."

Afterwards, I tried to make necklaces
of pomegranate seeds.
The juice spurted out, bright crimson,
and stained my fingers, then my mouth.
I didn't mind.  The juice tasted of gardens
I had never seen, voluptuous
with myrtle, lemon, jasmine
and alive with parrots' wings.

The pomegranate reminded me
that somewhere I had another home.

    - Imtiaz Dharker

Self-Compassion

6/5/2022

 
Picture
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


Green, Green is My Sister's House

5/1/2022

 
Picture

Don’t you dare climb that tree
or even try, they said, or you will be
sent way to the hospital of the
very foolish, if not the other one.
And I suppose, considering my age,
it was fair advice.

But the tree is a sister to me, she
lives alone in a green cottage
high in the air and I know what
would happen, she’d clap her green hands,
she’d shake her green hair, she’d
welcome me.  Truly.

I try to be good but sometimes
a person just has to break out and
act like the wild and springy thing
one used to be.  It’s impossible not
to remember wild and not want to go back.  So
​
if someday you can’t find me you might
look into that tree or—of course
it’s possible—under it.

​    - Mary Oliver

Betwixt and Between

4/10/2022

 
Picture
Vienna street art

Betwixt and between.
Not confused.
Conjuring a poem.
Sitting between 
dawn and day,
health and illness,
the mundane and 
the sacred.
But wait!
The mundane is also 
the sacred,
is it not?

How do you 
station yourself 
in the middle 
of the same thing?
The left hand and the right
are not separate entities
(though they are).
Betwixt and between them
are the body, the head, the legs.
We are positioned very securely
in the center of things,
and it is all of a piece.

Where am I going with this?
I suppose I am trying
to get comfortable with
living (and dying) all of it.
In the midst of being
betwixt and between
is exactly the place to be.
Don’t let it confound you.
Betwixt and between
is the practice ground.
Be welcome here.

        - Maya Spector

Today

3/27/2022

 
Picture
Frozen Soap Bubbles
Photo by Angela Kelly

​If ever there were a spring day so perfect,
so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze

that it made you want to throw
open all the windows in the house

and unlatch the door to the canary's cage,
indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,

a day when the cool brick paths
and the garden bursting with peonies

seemed so etched in sunlight
that you felt like taking

a hammer to the glass paperweight
on the living room end table,

releasing the inhabitants
from their snow-covered cottage

so they could walk out,
holding hands and squinting

into this larger dome of blue and white,
well, today is just that kind of day.

    - Billy Collins

My Secret is Silence, for Winter Solstice

12/19/2021

 
Picture
Photo by i.am_nah.

The waves of mind
demand so much of Silence.
But She does not talk back
does not give answers nor arguments.
She is the hidden author of every thought
every feeling
every moment.

Silence.

She speaks only one word.
And that word is this very existence.
No name you give Her
touches Her
captures Her.
No understanding
can embrace Her.

Mind throws itself at Silence
demanding to be let in.
But no mind can enter into
Her radiant darkness
Her pure and smiling
nothingness.

The mind hurls itself
into sacred questions.
But Silence remains
unmoved by the tantrums.
She asks only for nothing.

Nothing.

But you won't give it to Her
because it is the last coin
in your pocket.
And you would rather
give her your demands than
your sacred and empty hands.

​    - Adyashanti

<<Previous
    Picture
    Xochi Trout in Bodega Bay
    Sign up for weekly poems here
    ALL POETRY BLOG POSTS

    Archives

    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020

    Categories

    All
    Adrift
    Aging
    Angel
    Anger
    Animal
    Arm
    Beach
    Beauty
    Being
    Belly
    Bird
    Birth
    Blossoming
    Blossoms
    Body
    Breathe
    Circle
    Consciousness
    Dance
    Darkness
    Death
    Dream
    Earth
    Eggs
    Energy
    Eyes
    Fear
    Feet
    Feminine
    Fire
    Flow
    Flower
    Forest
    Forgiveness
    Fruit
    Gentleness
    God
    Goddess
    Grace
    Gratitude
    Grief
    Hand
    Healing
    Heart
    Holiness
    Holy
    Home
    Humility
    Hungry
    Infinity
    Innocence
    Journey
    Joy
    Jungle
    Kindness
    Knowing
    Leaf
    Life
    Light
    Liminal Space
    Listening
    Loneliness
    Longing
    Love
    Mind
    Moon
    Mother
    Mountains
    Music
    Mystery
    Naked
    Nature
    Night
    Nothing
    Ocean
    Plant Medicine
    Poetry
    Portal
    Pray
    Prayer
    Presence
    Purpose
    Rain
    Reality
    Rebirth
    Remember
    River
    Rocks
    Rose
    Sacred
    Serpent
    Shadow
    Silence
    Sky
    Snow
    Song
    Soul
    Spirit
    Spring
    Stars
    Stillness
    Storm
    Story
    Suffering
    Summer
    Sun
    Surrender
    Thirst
    Tree
    Trust
    Truth
    Turtle
    Water
    Wild
    Wilderness
    Wind
    Wings
    Winter
    Wonder
    World
    Yes

    RSS Feed

Sign up below to receive my newsletter and updates on events and workshops.

* indicates required
  • Home
  • Services
    • The Emotion Code & The Body Code
    • Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy
    • Quantum Touch
    • Reconnective Healing
    • Death Midwifery & Home Funeral Guide
    • Animal Healing
  • Wild Words Poetry Blog
  • IGNITION: Exploring Sacred Sensuality
  • Ecos de la Marea Cave Ceremonies
  • About
    • About Xochitl
    • Spiritual Midwifery
    • Client Experiences
  • Events
    • Workshops
    • Ceremonies
  • Hours & Fees
  • Contact