Poetry has the capacity to enter the heart, to touch you on a deep and enduring level because it invites you into the world of your making. The Latin root of poet means “maker,” or “creator.” True poetry is co-created between the writer and the reader! Who is co-writing your life with you?
Read MorePerhaps the greatest challenge in the state of our union, especially given how our political dialogue has degraded into demonizing the other side, is to find some way to rise above or get beyond divisiveness in our rhetoric and to hold a space in our hearts that invites genuine and respectful dialogue. This poem asks the Twilight: “Why do we cast the world in light and dark?”
Read MoreOur dreams and goals may give us direction, but, even more important, they teach us what life has in store for us as we walk toward it. Think of a moment when the path to your goal revealed something unexpected to you about life, about the world, about others, or about yourself?
Read MoreSometimes, as a poet, I like to personify an idea, like Truth or Love or Freedom, and then write about the idea as if it is a living presence. This is a great way to get at my relationship with the idea and to give myself permission to perceive or change that relationship by changing the story I attach to it. That is the essential idea of this poem, which invites the question: What is your relationship to Truth? How would you personify or characterize Truth? Would it help if you changed the storyline?
Read MoreDetermining purpose is one of the most challenging areas of life. But we can look to other life forms and quickly make up a kind of purpose: all rivers flow to the sea because that s where they belong; plants “drink” the sun because they are lovers of the light. To me, metaphor opens a channel to our wisdom, a way of finding and giving guidance about how to live. If water belongs to the sea, then humans belong to humanity. Who do you hold onto in your heart? How might you express the place those dear ones have in your heart before disappearing?
Read MoreI wrote this prose-poem after reading a Rumi poem. I realized I was working at it, striving to understand what he really meant, and truly “get it.” Then, I had a little epiphany: I haven’t really worked that muscle in a while and was struck by the effort of making connections and threading together a deeper meaning from the words on the page. When I realized that the form of my writing matched the message of the content, I thought I would post it as a little challenge to see who might “get it.” .
Read MoreOn the 4th of July, we celebrate our independence, as the land of the free. In the poem, the narrator has a kind love-fear relationship with freedom, which is characterized as a wildness where nothing is barred and all things may come and go. What is freedom to you? What is the relationship between personal freedom and social responsibility ?
Read MoreI have a strange mix of deep trust in life and general skepticism. I am overly trusting with business assuming that we will work together with positive intention and keep each other’s best interests in mind. I have been burned a few times by this approach. Still, I keep trust as a travel companion and this poem explains why. What is your relationship, in general, to trust? Do you consider yourself a trusting person or not?
Read MoreI wrote this song for her around 1983 and it was scored to music by a friend of mine. I believed I had given it to her at the time. But I wonder now if I did so because I found the original score in my mementos during the KonMarie process, not in the mementos my mother kept that I had given her.
Read MoreThis poem arrived as I listened to birds sing outside my window in the morning and wondered what it would be like to be a crooner among them. It is also part of an ongoing theme: what happens if I strip away my old story (for whatever is up in my life)? What if I I could “give up the quest for another world and simply say, ‘I am here'.’” I listened to the birds sing and wondered: What if I did one thing as if it was everything?
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