Saturday 14 September 2024

I came home at lunch

I came home at lunch I put my table in the sun Poured some wine Ate some lunch Thought of you. I came home at lunch and put my hands upon my face The Sun beat warm upon my skin The Sun upon my skin Is warm like you. Just like you The Sun smiled And I tilted my face To receive The Sun’s kiss It’s like your kiss That first kiss Crazy kiss In your sister’s hallway. Maybe shouldn’t have But Couldn’t wait. Too soon but Not soon enough. I came home at lunch And put my hands upon my face And felt the Sun And thought of you.

Thursday 23 November 2023

How do you measure your achievements?

 A productivity guru on LinkedIn just asked how we plan to measure our achievements in 2024.

Hm. I thought about it. I don't need an app for that. I'll do this:
How about you? Do you have measuring and goal-making plans for 2024? I feel I've just lost that plot, never to return.


I will measure the joy I can wring out of every day
Every sunbeam I can gather.

I will measure the gratitude I remember to have
And the friends I remember to thank
I will count the people I love,
The people I like
The people who choose to help me, to write me, to love me.

The unexamined life is not worth living, but maybe the measurement most important
Is the light we choose to shine
The light we produce with our choices
The praises we sing with our voices.

The measure of joy is not in the actual achievements
But in the counting up of every healthy step.

Every step on the path I take that helps another, is worth it.
Every word I speak that lifts a heart, is worth it.
Every time I rejoice in the health and good feelings of my body, my activity, my meditations, is worth it.

Those "wasted" little words of praise for each individual, 
the hours I spend writing that I'll never publish... they cast light. 
They enable the receiver.
They lift hearts.

Those little words I write are doing their tiny butterfly-wing part to make the world a better place, because each person who receives that seed passes it to another.

We are a relay of light, or we are a relay of dark.
How shall I measure my accomplishments? 
By the light cast 
along the path 
where I have passed.
What else is even worth counting?

Tuesday 29 August 2023

The Fool



Fools wear bright colours
and dance erratically
Serious folk
Think Fools don't know where we're going.

In Tarot, they're card zero.
Unlike the grown-up cards
The Fool can not be contained or defined
by a number.

Zero, like Infinity
Is impossible to grasp.
We love it
We're fascinated
We hate it.

In a playing deck, the Joker
Is anything.
Often left out
But when needed, all-powerful.

By being nothing
Indefinable
Hard to Catch
The Fool is Greater than the rest.

Fools are temporarily popular
When the mood is good.
They're the first to burn
When the crowd needs to blame. 

Different.
Indefinable.
Scary.

Do you dare to be the Fool?
If not, if you're afraid –
Take a number. Be anything else.
Be easier to tame.
Be safe.

Do not go out naked, naive, innocent
on a mal-informed adventure.
wise men say that
fools rush in
where angels fear to tread

But indecision is more foolish!
Do Something, 
And if you hate that,
Do Something Else.

That is wisdom
The wisdom of innocence. 
Of rushing in
And carrying on

Go with a pure clear heart
See, adapt
Climb, continue
Believe. Try.
And keep trying.

Don't listen to the numbered folks.
The rules folks
The "you can't" folks.
You can. If you will.

The Fool will.
The Fool always will.
Because the Fool has not heard 
that she can't.

So she will.
Ignorance is bliss is possibility.

Sunday 18 June 2023

The Garden Hose of Love

 


I am a cat

I follow the sunbeams around the house all day. 
I'll follow them outside rather than be in a shadow.
People think I appear and disappear like the mist.
I'm made for adventure.
I am intolerant of noisy people and likely to leave the room when noise starts.
I love to be petted... by the right hand, but don't tolerate the wrong one.
I love to stretch luxuriously and just sit there gazing at people I love.
I love to snuggle and be cozy and warm.
I don't need you for food... I can hunt my own. 
... But I'll gladly share a meal and company if the meal and company are good.
I'm loyal to people who are worthy of it.
I don't follow rules that don't make sense to me.
I can't be caged.
But I'm symbiotically beneficial when the conditions are right.


 

Wednesday 27 October 2021

A drop to drink

Old OneFish

Rests his too-long fins 
Looks so peaceful and cozy
Hovering above the ledge of a bowl
Or lightly in his hollow log

Just that little thing.
So nice.
I sit on the stairs so I can hang with him
Pull up the coffee table
Rest my laptop
Like his fins

He eats lightly these days
Like any well-aged person
Impassive, disdainful, as extra food drifts past

Young TwoFish darts for every morsel
She vacuums the extra from the bottom.

Do they hear the storm battering the hatches?
The house felt like a submarine last night.
Me, under the water, but cozy inside.

I'm going to have to brave the storm
To go for drinking water
I should have put some buckets outside last night
So much water came down!

The waves are frothing
Whiter than cream
Everything around here is called white this or blanche that
I wonder if it's named for the waves and not the sand?

It's the kind of weather to name a place for
For sure.

But OneFish is peaceful as ever.
And Kokopelmana Twofish doesn't seem to know 
There's a storm either.

Beauty without
Beauty within
Water without
Water within

Must plan better
To get a drop to drink!





I think of this as one of those CBC poems -- those things people come up with when they live alone in the country with quiet time to think and then CBC people put them on the radio for other people who live alone in the country. :)

Friday 22 October 2021

Russ Everett

 I knew this man named Russ.

We met online and I think we were maybe friends right away.

We didn't date, precisely. No kisses, none of that.

But connection, yes. Wasn't that what we were all looking for online? 

Well, 

I think of him a lot, anyway, more than a dozen years later.

So I guess we're connected.

I remember lying under a tree by Glenmore Reservoir

Staring up at the sky.

Was that the first time we met?

I think I remember him saying that I taught him something that day. 

Something about staring up at the sky. I don't remember what, but maybe, simply, that it was important to take time to do that, lie under yellow-leaved trees and marvel at the blue blue sky.

He taught me.

He taught me something important, but at the time he said it, I was surrounded by less wise friends, silly little folk who believed in making others fit expectations (an impossible task, really, a foolish goal). 

Russ said, "If you want him, you gotta accept."

And I think I said "but..." and "what about..." and all kinds of other silly, small, foolish things.

And Russ was a mountain. Russ knew.

If you want him, you can only take him as he is. That's how it works, said Russ.

Russ was not silly, and Russ was not small.

And Russ died way too young, but his lessons live on.


I came home at lunch

I came home at lunch I put my table in the sun Poured some wine Ate some lunch Thought of you. I came home at lunch and put my hands upon m...