prayer for the restless

You startled me by the path this morning,

Unfurling to greet the sun.

It seems much too early for this brand of leafy, Spring-green optimism

where red wine leaves dropped just yesterday.

I sip my coffee.

I walk on.

I worry for you.

The cold will bite back, I warn you from over my shoulder as I go.

I hope against my own soul’s joy that soft, cool, gray clouds might tuck you in to sleep just a little longer.

Your sisters nearby are bursting into poofs of soft white and ever-so-subtle pink.

They didn’t think to wake you.

So you strive, ready or not, to get going.

Spring waits for no one.

Are there enough stores, I wonder, in that long cream-colored root of yours,

that underground, mirror image of yourself stretched deep into the earth – to get you through?

Could you even soak it all up in that brief, wet winter when rain puddled like lakes in the dips and ditches around you?

Was your dreaming phase long enough to revisit the wisdom and relearn the stories embedded in all your cells—both young and old?

Did you jot it all down and send it streaming through those inner highways that stretch up and out to even your littlest green shoot to keep her safe along her journey?

When the chatter of Spring becomes the hot roar of summer, and the only way out will be through,

Will your stores of water yield tips like sugar to restore you and remind you of the ways you’ve made before?

Or will you dare, sweet green thing, to brave it all with the arrogance of youth whose time has simply come?

Dog Walk Poems

On our first visit to the farmhouse we both felt something stir in our souls.

For Cain, the pecan trees in our wide-open side yard reminded him of his childhood home.

For me, the tiny outbuildings behind the barn felt like an invitation from my Pa-Pa urging me to answer the call and step into my lifelong desire to live a happy homesteader’s life like the one he and Ma-Ma modeled for me.

Months later, I find myself living in this amazing place and working hard behind the scenes to set up an LLC, a new bank account, all new social media handles, etc. to bring this healing arts/heritage skills/retreat center dream to life.

Surely I didn’t uproot our family so I could bury myself under a mountain of emails and zoom calls with lawyers and accountants.

This morning, I walked down to our pond with Clyde. When we got back I could feel the inkling of a poem swirling between my heart and my mind. It felt like it was in the room asking me to write it.

I tried to brush it off, because, well… I’m not a poet. I don’t come by it naturally. I didn’t want to invite it in and squeeze the life out of it with my perfectionist drive. Plus, I had a workout to squeeze in before getting back to my laptop for another long day of phone calls and research.

For the past six months, I’ve been part of a writing salon that meets weekly. It’s a powerfully simple format that has really shaken up my writing practice by allowing me to approach my writing from a place of curiosity versus mastery.

I don’t think I could have sat down today and allowed this poem in if it weren’t for the openness these writing salons have given me.

So I did it. I sat down and played and wondered, “what if I could write some sort of poem about what I’m feeling?”

I came here to live more creatively in alignment with what I want out of life. For me, that’s more time in nature, more time to write, and the opportunity to share these gifts with the world.

I’m so grateful to be on this journey of curiosity, discovery and creativity.

I was pretty pleased with the imperfection of what now feels like a very healthy and fulfilling way of more deeply absorbing the beauty of my journey…

Dog Walk Poem #1

We tromp slowly through golden grass

Mindful of those wine-colored brambles creeping closer and closer to the path we keep

They snag us anyway and stop us in our tracks, calling us back

Back to the rain-soaked grass where our feet plant our bodies

Back beneath these full wet clouds rolling like a blanket above our secret pillow fort

They break the spell of my phone and call bullshit on my “nature walk” until I put it my technology away

They break the spell of his nose where it kisses the ground like an earthbound magnet, reminding him that the edges of this place belong to them.

I wish I could see and know the way he does

I trust his olfactory obsession and wonder what we might be tracking

Rabbits? Deer? Foxes?

Or just the neighbor’s dogs come back to romp in the muddy wild that their manicured lawns do not offer

He will never tell

Together in this mystery I look for clues like scat and hoof prints or the peekaboo fluff of bushy gray tail slinking under the barbed wire

Perhaps we are simply tracking the joy of wonder 

We walk on