​I’m listening
But I don’t know
If what I hear is silence
Or God.

I’m listening
But I can’t tell
If I hear the plane of emptiness echoing
Or a keen consciousness
That at the ends of the universe
Deciphers and watches me.

I only know that I walk like someone
Who is beheld,
Beloved,
And known.

And because of this
I put into my every moment

Solemnity and risk.

    - Sophia de Mello-Breyner

Let it be known—I worship the Goddess of Reality

The one with tangled hair where insects nest, 
the one with blood soaked thighs,
The one who crushes my concepts with her razor teeth
and spits my mind into the wind

​She shakes her belly to the beat of primordial passion 
and feasts on the meat of ignorance 

She wanders in the garden with a basket woven with the chaos of stars
She is savoring every petal and thorn
while casting the seeds of manifestation
without rhyme or reason

She is innocent and free
and her eyes are the sound of laughter
She can not be contained or rationalized 
and she will not conform to my ideas
of how reality should be 

She stomps to the beat and throws her hips 
She is the prowl of the panther
and the leaping deer of supreme delight
She is pure in heart and the darkness of thunder

Her ruthlessness is the compassion
that severs my arrogance
and undoes my separation
so that I may know her deeply
and drink in her wild radiance.

With all that I am 
I devote myself to her insane beauty.

​When I am humble and true
She comes to me: “Dance! Why aren’t you dancing?!”

She will not be tamed 
yet she is the Grace that opens up 
the blessed wound of living

Let it be known—I love Her
this feral beast Woman
the one who is drenched in the Nectar of Love.

​I dance with her
because there is  
nothing left 
to do.

    - Maya Luna

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

...Want only what is true.
This will lead you to the well of your deepest sorrows.
Follow that passageway, all the way down;
Become the dark emptiness of your absent core.
Be still. Don't measure the waiting.
Be still. Let the waiting become a fire.
Be still. Let the fire show you its secret heart;
a strand of clear light running through you.
Gather yourself there, and the luminous universe opens.
In the vast expanse, fathomless, infinite ocean of light,
Lose yourself, and find yourself, and become what you already are.

    - Jennifer Welwood

1. I once made a mix tape that was sixty minutes of "Jessie's Girl."  2. God, I
miss cassette tapes. I miss the hiss of unrequited love.  3. I miss being
fourteen and in love with, yes, my best friend's girlfriend.  4. I was in love
with her at fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen, as well. I was
in love with her for years after she broke up with my best friend.  5. When I
was twenty, and drinking my way into blackouts, I called her house. I was
too scared to talk to my beloved, who was away at college, but I needed to
confess to her mother.  6. But her father answered. It was four in the
morning.  7. "I'm in love with your daughter," I said.  8. "We know," he said.
He was amazingly polite despite the fact that I'd woken him at dawn-
thirty. He said, "You got lucky. She's here for the weekend. You want to talk
to her?"  9. I'm an indigenous American who has been in romantic love
with half a dozen white women.  10. And only one Indian woman.  11. And
yet, I think of my Indian wife and I as loving like Romeo and Juliet.
Because I grew up on one reservation as a tribal boy and she lived on a
dozen reservations as the daughter of a Bureau of Indian Affairs
superintendent.  12. If you don't understand that conflict, then you just
need to know that the BIA was originally located in the War Department.
13. I was one year sober when I met my wife. I've been sober ever since.  14.
Drunk for the white girls; sober for the Indian woman. Somebody needs to
write a song about that.

    - Sherman Alexie

​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

​I like the lady horses best,
how they make it all look easy,
like running 40 miles per hour
is as fun as taking a nap, or grass.
I like their lady horse swagger,
after winning. Ears up, girls, ears up!
But mainly, let’s be honest, I like
that they’re ladies. As if this big
dangerous animal is also a part of me,
that somewhere inside the delicate
skin of my body, there pumps
an 8-pound female horse heart,
giant with power, heavy with blood.
Don’t you want to believe it?
Don’t you want to lift my shirt and see
the huge beating genius machine
that thinks, no, it knows,
it’s going to come in first.

     - Ada Limon

Lean in loved one
To the center of the circle
To the metronome
That beats all hearts together

Allow your breath to ease
As you watch
Each inhale
Sweet with life
Bowing to this moment
Each exhale
Loosening the grip of form

Begin the listening
From deep within
Clarity, slowly emerging
As pause makes room
For the light of wisdom
To rise from fog's damp obscurity

Recall through your bones
The collective knowing
That's been a part of us
For a million years

You are the vessel through which
The yet undisclosed is spoken
The soil upon which
Love blossoms
And life remembers herself again and again

    - Lynn Robinson

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