let it go – the
smashed word broken
open vow or
the oath cracked length
wise – let it go it
was sworn to
go

let them go – the
truthful liars and
the false fair friends
and the boths and
neithers – you must let them go they
were born
to go

let all go – the
big small middling
tall bigger really
the biggest and all
things – let all go
dear

so comes love

    - e.e. cummings

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

Because after the snow and the rain
the redwing blackbird trills in the cattails
and the song of the inner life is born again.
And from out of our dark caves
we stumble and call to each other
wondering what has been transformed
in the winter months and who will now emerge.
We are like bears bounding
out of the mountain, slightly bewildered
blinking in the bright new light,
ravenous for the world.

​This is eros unleashed​--
the seduction of apple blossoms--
petals raining on wet fertile earth,
hummingbirds unzipping the cerulean sky,
the glint of streamflow and bare skin.
How the full moon pours Maylight
upon our upturned faces,
and the breezes carry the scent of longing
and melancholy, lilac and the spice
of all that is greening.

We have died a thousand times
and been reborn for this.
To lie back, even for a moment,
into the arms of the world--
to meet eros in every turn--
to be courted by you who stirs
the inner waters and tears apart
the old husks. Yes, you
who makes us want to eat fire
and lay down in every meadow.

We have been waiting for your arrival
and now you are here,
no longer a Stranger, but a Storm--
you, who strikes the bell of awakening,
so the whole body rings out
with Delight.

​    - Laura Weaver

​Winter. Time to eat fat
and watch hockey. In the pewter mornings, the cat,
a black fur sausage with yellow
Houdini eyes, jumps up on the bed and tries
to get onto my head. It’s his
way of telling whether or not I’m dead.
If I’m not, he wants to be scratched; if I am
He’ll think of something. He settles
on my chest, breathing his breath
of burped-up meat and musty sofas,
purring like a washboard. Some other tomcat,
not yet a capon, has been spraying our front door,
declaring war. It’s all about sex and territory,
which are what will finish us off
in the long run. Some cat owners around here
should snip a few testicles. If we wise
hominids were sensible, we’d do that too,
or eat our young, like sharks.
But it’s love that does us in. Over and over
again, He shoots, he scores! and famine
crouches in the bedsheets, ambushing the pulsing
eiderdown, and the windchill factor hits
thirty below, and pollution pours
out of our chimneys to keep us warm.
February, month of despair,
with a skewered heart in the centre.
I think dire thoughts, and lust for French fries
with a splash of vinegar.
Cat, enough of your greedy whining
and your small pink bumhole.
Off my face! You’re the life principle,
more or less, so get going
on a little optimism around here.
Get rid of death. Celebrate increase. Make it be spring.

​    - Margaret Atwood

​Up ahead it’s white. Snow animal,
I’m running at your back. I’ve failed to tell you
I’ve been hungry all this time, to tell you
I’ve been searching for you, like meat,
like water. All my life, I’ve distanced
myself. As if to know you was to drown.
As if to find you I’d usher myself further
from what is real. I’ve been adrift along
the threads of time leading me out
beyond an imagined frame. I’ve untied myself,
uncuffed the arms and neck. I didn’t know
I was hurt like that. I didn’t know
there was a force pulling me downward
toward a bedrock, lulling me to sleep.
You are the one escaping, you are the one
breaking free. I understand your astonishing
dash to freedom, done with the estranged wind,
done with frost and storm, orchids curling
outward beyond grief. The road widens
to glory. The road disappears.

​    - Tina Chang

​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