​A giant wave, a rising fist
curling to throw a hard
anticipated sucker punch.
But look how it breaks
into humble foam, a tender
kiss embracing your feet
as you entrust yourself
to the unknown.

When the world keeps knocking on your door
making demands, insisting that 
you owe it something special,
look for the jewels inside.
Let the body become a primordial womb
nourishing all your desires as a tiny fetus
inside grows plump with that longing.
It does not need to answer to anyone
until it is ripe for passage 
through a canal of wonder 
so ready to meet the world outside
perceived, conceived in love.

I have this love/hate relationship with you. Loving the possibility of you
​always near to punctuate the run on sentence of my life, and pause
the ongoing narrative. Hating you for making me feel guilty and unproductive
while binge watching a series on streaming platforms or reading for pleasure,
when I should be clearing out the garage, cooking something savory
instead of ordering takeout. Maybe this writing is also an attempt
to escape you, needing deep insight or a clever poem to save me.
Sometimes I forget your other names - rest, patience, ripening -
a harbinger of brilliance that could not be anticipated watching
the Buddha or Sir Isaac Newton lounging under apple trees.

Tight tank tops to accentuate a small bust, long skirts to hide thick legs,
fasting from time to time to look like those models, those movie stars,
never knowing what they were starving inside. Oh, to be comfortable
in my body back then, learning to listen as I do now, as if a wise and holy
ancestor is sending her poem forward in time, so I don’t make the same
mistakes that she did. I’m listening, Dear One, I’m listening. There is
no one right diet, exercise, sleep pattern, stress reduction, social
connection, or spiritual practice that will fix you. Let lifestyle
changes be motivated by kindness and not shoulds.
It’s your care that most satiates the need.

Image by David Aler

She was a lover of the blank page. In 7th grade Mrs. B unlocked the door
to her swooning heart with a story of apartheid, and her first poem marched
forth in a brave cry for beloved justice and care. Sometimes words would trip
over each other pouring out of a thought cloud pregnant with emotion.
At other times, the landscape of poetic prose was dry, an arid dessert
where every last drop of creativity was squeezed from any life remaining.
She loved the way swirls of cursive ink would decorate the white space
like paintings hanging in an art gallery. The danger was always in judging
the words, revising them multiple times till they were journal worthy
of belonging. What if this is not the final draft, she thought, 
the blank page an open door to something more.

​In my next encounter with you, you are a dancing skeleton dressed in a salmon and cobalt sari the color of a transitioning sky, with patches of black and white hair matted to your skull. There is a pink flower near your right temporal bone behind where your ear would have been, a blue nose ring suspended from the triangle where the cartilage of your nose once was.

Are you real?

Something about your presence echoes and mirrors the three characteristics of existence, that suffering is caused by clinging or resistance to change and taking it personally. It also has resonances with Jennifer Welwood’s poem “The Dakini Speaks”.

What if you are also not real?

Something about your theater, cartoon-like Dios De Los Muertos quality makes your presence soft and elastic. Your dancing brings a light touch of joy making suffering, impermanence, even death more bearable.

You are a partial answer to the question “Why do I feel like a part of my life force is being diminished by the death or the suffering of another?” You are also unfathomable, irreducible. I will never get to the bottom of you, because my ways of looking will change based on my participation with you over time.

Who am I in the twoness between us?

Am I real?

I literalize the personal idea of empath, the one who gets overwhelmed, the one whose body is breaking down, etc.

What if I am also not real?

You imbue me with a light touch of joy, your theater, cartoon like quality, making me dance, laugh, and not take myself so seriously. I am closer to an appreciative understanding of emptiness than ever before. Causes and conditions have molded me, and malleable perception can melt the mold.

What is the space between us? Is it real?

It’s easy to fill up the space with props, a blank page with ideas.

What if the space is also not real?

The props could be interchangeable, the ideas not static, but changing based on the need moment to moment.

Mostly what shows up in my day are a set of lackluster characters trapped
in the pages of black and white words the mind has already written about them,
books shelved and gathering dust. But look, how a poem by Maya Stein
can accompany one into meditative silence like a wave that clears
what’s carved in sand. In praise of on the inbreath, on incoming gifts
from the sea chronicling our brokenness and stubborn resilience.
I don’t know on the outbreath, like salt dissolving in trust and returning
to a great ocean of mystery to repeat the holy cycle again.

​There is an image of a magnolia tree. I can feel its trunk as my trunk, its branches as my limbs, its roots as my roots deeply connected to the earth.
 
I’m struck how it is committed to loving me, and letting itself be loved by me. I’m also struck by its commitment to blossoming for only a short time, regardless of weather or circumstance, its dedication to beauty and ethics. 
 
There is also something about a duty I have to rest, stay still, be open and sometimes dormant to nurture meaningful growth. 
 
This image is a gift, a grace I could not have imagined on my own. Is it real or not real? What I trust most is what blossoms in my heart, dies, blooms again, eternally repeating itself for a purpose it does not fully understand, but knows is unfathomably sacred. 
 
*****
 
Revisiting the image of the magnolia tree this morning, sensing it somatically and through the lens of the Brahmaviharas:
 
May I be so well.
May my suffering be soothed,
 
I realize how much I still live life in binaries, all or none thinking. Things are good if (fill in the blank), and bad when (fill in the blank).
 
May I meet this with a light touch,
Not pushing or pulling on anything.
 
The magnolia blossom imbues each circumstance (good, bad, and everything in between) with a light touch. It tries not to push or pull on things, because it understands causes and conditions needed to align in a special way for it to even be here.

Practicing with the Five S’s

Space/Splendor - Zoming out of the difficulty to notice space around it and anything pleasant to help balance the difficulty and not go into all-or-none, catastrophic thinking.

Sensations- Rather than trying to doctor the pain into a diagnosis (hard to abstain since it’s my profession), noting the sensations as ‘throbbing’ or ‘burning’ rather than ‘pain’.  It makes it less personal.

Self-compassion - Placing a hand on the hurt place and recognizing that others experience this, too. If I cannot feel the self-compassion, then inviting a figure of love to inspire it.

Not-self - Reflecting  on past inner and outer causes and conditions, present inner and outer causes and conditions contributing to the pain. Empty of a single cause or condition, and full of love.


There is a benevolence 
That softens a tangled mind
Agitated heart and tense body
Till they are all aligned 
To inhabit the moment 
With such intimacy and tenderness 
That a bright yellow center
Attracts bees to make honey
Make sweetness, make love
With all the hurt places-
Blood orange petals radiating
Metta in all directions
​Wishing for all to be free