Transformational Reflections
A poetry collection from 2009 through to the present
Monday, October 14, 2024
Friday, October 11, 2024
Thursday, October 10, 2024
Merciful Milton
Paradise Lost kept rumbling through my head
As we watched Hurricane Milton storming toward
Our shaky shores
Is this how human beings pass on like the
Dinosaurs did, a climate change too difficult
For us to manage or handle?
No, Marjorie Taylor Green, no human or
Political party controls the weather
But, we do participate, all of us and our ancestors
Before us, not just in judgment or shame but truthfully
This is how human beings have lived on this earth
For however many (controversial?) years we have
Been here, living and dying in 3/4 time
Did Merciful Milton spare thousands and millions of
People and pets this go round?
How many more will still die?
How shall we be decent human beings in the meantime?
Wondering and speculating has some purpose but so does
Feeling and acting loving toward one another all of the time
And not just during a climate disaster or storm
May we be blessed to live in this chaotic time as we
Bring peace and calm to ourselves and to the world
While we assist those who are suffering and in pain
Monday, October 7, 2024
Sunday, October 6, 2024
Meet Me at the Water's Edge
I live at the Water’s Edge
I live between and among
Land and Sea
Amphibian in form
Ethereal in Spirit
My sleek fish body and long tail in the water
My human torso and upper body
Lying on the sand, gritty and tough
My pores open to Water and Air
Earth and Body
Tangling and mixing together
Tendrils wrapping around and
Through me
Bringing delicate light and warmth
Darkness and Desire
Into Oneness
I am devoted to the dark feminine Kali
Along with Black Madonna
Those shadowy but omnipresent
Powerful, magical mysteries
Permeating throughout our culture
And time
The New Earth approaches and
I balance between tides and the moon
Between sun and the winds
I become a bridge to the new world
A connector touching each
Imagining umbilical cords and
Bonds so tight that sometimes
I cannot breathe
In order not to be imprisoned
We move into the water and
Swim away like whales and dolphins
Coming up for air
While diving and jumping
Gracefully floating and resting
We run on the sand, breathing heavily
Grit between our toes
Searching for sharks feeding close to the beach
We see them as they scare others
Who are frightened and alone
While we gaze, amazed at the beauty of
All sea life, as weird and strange as it can be
I am not ready to disconnect, to let go of
One or the other, land or sea
I hold fast to them both partly
Wanting to let go of one, and surrender
To the other, letting the water or air
Drown me with Love and let go of
Some of my receding roles
I play on the earth
Resting in the arms of blissful awakening
Either here between
Or absorbed into one or the other
Meet me at the Water’s Edge
And we will enter the wild deep
And wild peace of both the
Light and the dark
Each world becoming
Divine experiences
Holding us up and
Thrashing us about
Until we no longer notice
Fear, once submersed
Friday, September 27, 2024
The Shekinah of Hurricane Helene
The Divine Feminine, the Shekinah of
Hurricane Helene dives down into the depths of
Her seas while also spiraling up into the skies
Stirring up the water from her deep dark spaces
Plunging out wiggling and wobbling winds
With her orgasmic strength, spinning slowly at first
Creating a wide vibrating vortex all over the lands
Having stored up energy for so long before
Releasing and spewing like a volcano
Helene erupts into the air and activates
Surging waves and tides crashing into each other
The elements, fire, air, water, earth, and Spirit
Categorized a catastrophe by humans
A turbulent and violent cleansing
What if, like any release or surrender
Sneezes and orgasms
A tensing up, a constriction occurs
Friction generates and cramps
The body and heart, seeking release
Letting go of all that holding in and
Holding on for so long until there is
No alternative but to shake and snarl
Blowing out all the traumas and tribulations
All the stresses, insecurities, fears and horror
Casting out from the center source all the ways
In which we hide and hold back
Shielding ourselves from misery, or so we think
In turn, keeping us from living fully, modulating
Even our words, much less our feelings, our desires
Our actions, we have been told to, “Calm down
Keep it to yourself, don’t be too excited, or
Too animated and surely don’t be too
Loud or disgusting to others
Keep it down, shut up, and close it down, please!”
They wail, begging us to cut out our hearts
Live as if we were stone, rock, no feelings
No life lived, no sharing or making messes
Devoted to the Divine Shekinah
Helene becomes a symbol for our world
Our women, our people, our planet, our climate
Mother Earth and Mother Nature being
Fed up with the passing patriarchy
The cultures that have become
So corrupt that
What seems true is
No longer true
What seems right is now wrong
What seems up is down
Darkness is Light
Reality gets tangled in the mouths of those
Men and women who speak garishly
Seeking only power, fame and fortune
For themselves
Dictating to the rest of us what we can eat
How we sleep, love, what we do with our bodies
Along with how we look to them
No room for differentness or otherness
Too frightening and uncomfortable to
These white nationalist men and women
Who are so frightened themselves
Trying to put all the rest of us
Into cages, like animals, for them to possess
Direct, torture, and kill at their will
While their cages are so tightly constructed
That they bloat inside their bars with their
Blustering hatred
Their fears and their desires
Coughing up words of crazy
And torment, trying to pull others
Down into their dark, dangerous dens
To keep them from being
Oh so alone and tortured
Themselves
Shekinah cleans out clearly, and offers
Rebirth, transformation and deep
Abiding Grace to everyone who
Opens their eyes, hearts and bodies
To wake up
To allow for activation
Becoming initiated and marked
By Love
Wednesday, September 25, 2024
Grief Talks
Grief, another word for Love
Grief as energy, at times
Floundering, at times
Flowing like water
Rushing through our blood
Seeking a finish line
When there is no end
Good Grief
How did this happen-to-me grief
Weeping, wailing, sobbing
Confusing and fluctuating feelings
Abound, streaming
Through every cell of our beings
Crushing Grief
Taking us to our knees
Withering our limbs
Dissipating our strengths
We collapse within grief
Searching for answers
When there are none
Coloring grief from
Wide deep purples of desire
To long whispers of red
A rose that died on the vine
Only to be pinched off so
Another rose bud can bloom
Grief about a dead sparrow
A cute chipmunk stiff on the asphalt
Ranging from small, brief griefs
To all-absorbing, I cannot-live
Without-this-person any longer
Grief
Imagining a limb cut off
From our once healthy bodies
A piece of me lost with the loss
Of you
Without knowing or realizing
That we have kept our loved ones
Deep inside our bodies
Minds and hearts
Even in our bones
Where they reside
One by one
Until we contain them all
Overflowing with memories
Mournful and sad
Heart-rending and gashed
Keening with great grief that
Washes over us like a steep
Waterfall, plunging down
Toward our heads
Bending us as we bow
Before such huge human grief
Grief talks to us earnestly
Sometimes quietly
So intimate and true
So personal and strange
Our unique responses to
Grief collect inside us
And all around us
Overriding our functional
Operating systems
As we just let go
And feel all the things
We hear you, Grief
Leaving the womb
Grief precedes new life