a good question to ask.

are you more interested in protecting yourself or are you more interested in expressing your heart?

wave.

o gentle, gentle

the dive and fall, the whole sea

churned up to fill your lungs,

to make you gasp and long

for breath.

the waves they roil and rip

your heart,

your heart beats fast and furious.

the dark night claws and drowns the stars,

the moon is lost to

clouds.

wing and color.

The metaphor I visit is the common story of the caterpillar and it's transformation into a butterfly. We all know that one, but there is a chapter to it that I find particularly fascinating. Sometime after the caterpillar has entered the cocoon and settled into it's surrender it undergoes an almost entire state of dissolution. It does not just morph from a fatbodied, squishy, furry worm into a colorful, winged, full skyed marvel by way of absorbing legs and sprouting wing buds or by reassembling parts and adding and subtracting bits and pieces. no. It actually dissolves into something of a soup. Caterpillar soup. There is no thing about it that resembles either caterpillar or butterfly. It is the liquid and amorphous in-between worlds. The sea of absolute surrender. After some time, and in the perfect time.... that soup, by some miracle, grows it's legs and wings and color and capacity for flight. And it is that same soup that someday flutters across the blue, and pauses people in their busyness and focus filled lives and begs them to witness, with their sight, something so beautiful and delicate and original that they may feel some small thing sing within their chests. And they do. Most of the time they do.

And we are that too. That caterpillar, in all its efforts of infancy, folding and unfolding towards one thing or another, moving along in a kind of random blindness. Our potential to fly is, if anything, a vague tug that comes from somewhere but loses itself when we turn to see it. Then the time is ripe and we are taken to our knees (to our trees), where we collapse down into the spin and twist of shutting out the light. Enveloped by an infinite night, we close our eyes and open our eyes and still, we only see the darkness. And we cry and howl and if we are scared enough, we pray. And if we are lucky to know it, we surrender to the inevitable dissolve. Everything we were is given over to the grander scheme, while everything we are remains. We return to the Ocean and drift, inseparably, from wave to wave.

there's a couple ways to see it.

Deep rest.

winter storm.

i.

musing on the miracle of a soul lifted from the mire,

how little moments reflect the something altogether new and the absence of all that used to ride the rails.

buried in a foot deep drift of snow is the fear, the anger, the panic.

instead, now, a running and colliding into banks of powder with a song of laughter and a

roar of delight.

I can stand in the center of the white weighted branches, in the echo of a shimmering silence, and hear my own voice speak back to me. I can listen.

ii.

as the wind reaches like a hand inside my coat,

my breath catches and I notice my wondering now shift it's weight.

here I hover on the fence of a greater vessel, and peer headlong down the slope of the last trail.

I could fall and return to the ice, under cold water.

"...silver heels, spitting snow.

something someone help them. it's me...."

there trembles a familiar as the sun slides away and I sit by a solid fire, facing the night again.

iii.

the bough bears the weight of hope.

this time the rain threads through my fingers and, at last, I touch the edge of a sea

that has been stirring under a near winter.

it is nothing sudden that carries me into a deeper water,

but I grieve all the same with a pocketful of joy.

what questions circle me and bend my heart at angles I can't imagine to unwind.

why seasons spin around our senses, then surprise us with their constancy.

and, why, a bird, freed from the cage, might hesitate to know the sky.

iv.

o winter wisdom,

carry me in all your sacred silence to that brightest dance in the shimmer of a single snowflake.

may all the old and deep sleep revive the dream of my own heart

and wake me to the reception of love.

epilogue.

time to come back around,

trace the stream of thread to the center of the spool and,

maybe touch the water to remember rain comes. rain will come.

it makes things bloom.

I still hold a hope to be held.

there is no deluge, no flood.

the storm, and all its mighty hail, has traveled across the continent,

thinning ,as it runs, into a single stream of weather.

something more like a raindrop meandering down the windowpane;

fatigued by all the fuss.

it is a strange land I wander.

a heart, unfolded and multi-petaled ,serenades the stepping

and this body dreams into the horizons of possibilities.

still, in a small locket, this waiting waits.

to be caught from the freefall; softened.

to live the landing like a feather sawing down, slowly.

to fully undress and still know the certainty of love.

delicate.

II.

stars spin after us and we throw our heads back under

heaven's wink. there is a pause, and then another and then, an echo

already uttered. An adagio kiss that has us breathing hard on the climb

right up into the sky. I am a handful of flower petals gathered on the

inside of your heart. I shiver with questions. Like a scent, you answer:

trust.

dazzle.

I.

shake off those things that tear

at your heart and promise to bring you to

your knees. Time to untangle the web.

you have always asked the question: what is this the

end of, instead of asking: what, of your

sweetest desires, might start

to ignite here. In the afterglow

of love is a

longing for that home inside your own soul.

outside, the lights shine back

vast reflections of the

effortless love that is yours to recover.

awake my soul.

oh little bloom, little light,

now is not the time to go belly up.

every moment of your

life is yours to keep and yours to surrender.

I am afraid I will be found out before I am discovered.

what is this art of vulnerable truth weighted against, or with, the careful tending of an unfolding new seed?

something has been awakened that had been dormant.

joy.

intimacy.

embraced and skipping with the old dark friends.

the question may be:

how to go lightly and openly into the dark night?

new.

remember when I was propped up on matchsticks, breathing through a straw.the

only love offered was wrapped in flypaper and sticky tape. I waited in the

breakdown lane for hours, hearing the sirens wail, touching the bottom of an

endless bucket just to feel it's cold and slimy skin before I could swim back up and

resurface under a different sky, a different breath of air. It's astonishing

the places we go, the people we see, the things that we do to grow.

wait long enough, walk with courage, keep your heart open

and trust. yes, trust. That after all the wars and bloodshed,

love will indeed persist & be the last song sung. Now is the undoing of brick,

kept tight to harbor that precious light you might be tempted to sell on a lark.

every stone that has surrounded you loves you. Topple the tower and

return to your royalty. Dance now in the shimmer of your ruby soul.

the grinch who gave back christmas.

a bluster of snow,

a handful of frozen fingers.

singing...

a shiver of wind,

a heart full of solid, hot fire

singing....

yes yes yes yes yes

to all of this.

..................

it is the first season that I am certain of joy.

a deep,interior happiness.

alone all day,

barricaded by snow and sidelong winds,

stirring with restlessness

and,

rest.

so, when the night unfolds to a christmas caroling,

lights hanging,

dress up, goof off, laughing

and giggling,

creative cookery,

delight shouts gratitudes from my skin.

it feels like christmas eve.

bing and bells and listening for the footfalls of hooves on the rooftop.

i don't remember ever liking these songs.

and I do.

tonight,

I do.

something has changed.

dropping into dreams only because it's late, it's late, it's late,

I wake before the sun and

think,

christmas!,

with the wonderment of a child.

something magical is here today.

all these gifts are for me to give.

all these gifts for me to receive.

it's christmas, today.

magic is everywhere.

tricksy.

don't know why it took me so long to hear what I needed to hear, but I hear what I need to hear.

to be fair, some of the messages were mixey, tricksy,

saying several things at once,

all hanging on a hope

and a hopeless romantic.

albatross.

here, little broken wing,

try to fly with this.

oomph, ummph

kerplow,

kliberf....

fwap fwap fwap.

oh, the sky seemed so simple

from down there, here.

all blue and full clouded,

fresh and uninterrupted.

it seemed like I could just soar....

I run.

I run.

I run.

...to launch myself into the elegant dive I dreamed of for so long.

the effortless, eloquent curl of air and me, gliding like a cursive S,

so full with swoop and sweetness that

the treetops might swoon at the poetry.

then, paw after paw,

foot after foot, hammering into the planked wooden deck, I roar

towards a blistering leap of trust.

Here, I establish the awkward game of transparency and my tangle of wing burrows me into an unexpected and graceless descent into this here, this me, this stumbling,

bumbling, fumbling,

perched on toes, swaggering and shapeless, silly bird.

I am closer to earth than sky,

belly nearly embracing the shifts of fine dirt and sand.

still, I urge my heavy limbs to discover their rhythm, to beat with purpose, to soar.

on and on, I call to myself with the serenade of will.

you will fly, you will fly, you will fly.

You are a bird belonging to this dream.

you will fly, you will fly, you will fly.

perseverance and patience.

trust and trust.

I am carried at once by an unswept breath into flight.

the sea, a teardrop.

the earth, a handful of green stones.

by design, I am surrendered into the soliloquy of space;

home, again,

in the language of risk and the embrace of love. Held

in the intimacy of mystery.

even this bird, filled with chaos and the motion of storms,

lives amongst a story that rests in

open hands, warm breath

and a true, wild and generous heart.

you are a bird belonging to this sky.

you will fly, you will fly, you will fly.

in some knee ah.

hello dog out there, barking barking barking.

do you know it's 12:38 am on a Tuesday night?

what do you have to say for yourself? are you memorizing a sonnet? are you telling us about the day you were born? are you reciting the canine alphabet of desire...out, food, squirrel, stick, pet me, stay away, come play...?

why am I still up..barking, barking, barking?

it's 12:40 am on a Tuesday night.

I have to get up early and I won't see sleep until late late tomorrow, so why am I prolonging my bedtime?

I've a restlessness, I guess.

My heart is tender. somewhere between oh so vulnerably brand new and bruised and fooled.

I am just watching it for now.

and, it is fascinating enough to keep me awake.

reminding myself that everything is different now.

I forget.

when I remember, that space in my chest expands and warms and feels, really, truly, like a strong, soft, velvety petaled flower arching into its dance.

and, I accept this exquisite life is mine.

and, sometimes it is so painful to let go.

and,

sometimes, it is so painful to open.

if a tree falls...

i wonder who reads any of this that i'm writing; or why it would matter, for that matter?

but,

there is something to be said about having witness.

in the practice of authentic movement,

you move, listening to the impulses of the present moment,

blind to all but everything emergent.

you could do this all day long, every day....moving, listening....honoring the present urge to spiral or stretch or collapse or shiver. all day long.

and,

something about it would hover, lost, and unreachable, indecipherable.

a secret language, buried,

if no one were there to witness it.

it is only by being seen that we can see ourselves.

when your eyes shift open again, returning to the textures of wood floor, daylight and painted walls,

it is that warm animal sitting quietly across from you, breathing, seeing, listening,

that welcomes you home.

and,

until you are welcomed,

you are not home.

some of us know this truth.

this is why authentic movement is a sacred practice.

why writing.

why singing.

why dancing.

why sharing a joke.

why telling my story.

why I offer these small gifts.

because, they are the thing my soul comes to say.

and,

if you are here,

if you have heard or seen,

please,

tell me.

there is no request for praise or critique,

simply,

that you've been here,

breathing, seeing, hearing.

and, then, of course,

I get to see you.

and that's where all the magic is.

oh joy!

there are only about 7 minutes before I have to rally and go to a yoga class because its what I set as an intention today. I'll happily tread through the snow and spin backwards to shield my face from the blustery wind.

I am here, now, because I want to say "I am HAPPY"

inside of me is a shout of joy.

I just feel HERE and ALIVE and LOVED and that is enough for me, quite frankly.

It's a slow morning, a slow day...and I am grateful.

the ground is covered in snow and ice. I spent the morning throwing frosty sticks for a seriously delighted snow moustached black dog, who happens to be one of the most dazzling loves of my lifetime. Right now she is snuggled in at my feet, on my bed, breathing deep in her dog dreams.

and my other dazzling and humbling love of my life, has curled her warm tortoiseshell self under my arm as I type this and she is purring away, mightily. Joy is abundant. Love is limitless.

All is well.

pause.

in this waiting, I can feel the threads gather and ungather,

the wave swell and subside.

in this liminal pause,

I will sit close enough to the dark things

so that I may feel their breath.

and, by their unloved parts,

I will know love.

by their most shameful secrets, I will know

truth.

all along it has been this simple stone inside of me,

burning to shine,

just waiting for the weight to lean in far enough to find it's sacred shape.

there is an end, now, to the chase.

there is a beginning, now, to the dance.

love has come.

love is here.

star.

out here

there is no star i could reach

that wouldn't spin its tail and smolder at me,

smiling.

this sky is a big, fat risk.

and something about the weightlessness

worries me.

and something about the weightlessness

wisens me

with wonder.

what if nothing ever landed, but fell

in infinite upwardness,

instead?

what if everytime I unspool a word from my heart,

the gods might gallop with applause?

maybe every bit of this crumpled mess of rough drafts and star maps is

the exactness of love.

and

we just have to unfold our hands

to

know

it.

go, heart, go!

before this day,

night came and danced

a cornered and smallish step that left my feet

puzzled and sore.

this day suggests there is a whole room to run in.

listen,

there really is nothing to lose.

so, why doubt yourself so much?

who cares if how you see it

is how you see it because you

are standing on your head

and squinting your eyes, singing lalala.

lalala.

now you know that this blink

is your only blink.

the only one that you can call yours.

yours as you and only and ever, you.

so jump high,

dance like an albatross,

fall flat into your laugh as you go down swinging.

let your heart lead the way through this

joyful and excrutiating

one time shot.

it's only life, after all.