Yes, hooray for poetry readings!

A comment to my last post suggests I put some poetry up. I am so fed by your comments posted to this blog and hope you are all appreciating each other as well. Wish I had more time to celebrate last night's reading as an event -- the setting, the kind-hearted and lovelyworded folks I met -- but there are so many other beautiful pursuits begging for my attention just now. I am writing with the kids, preparing for 2 classes I am leading today (NVC), cooking dinner, lunch, and always and forever the dishes... I am awash in wonder. So here are a couple of poems from this year:

Birthing Love Song


This is just
the journey of birth,
the labor that brings life
into light.
It is a natural process
unfolding.
Stay with it.
Breathe.
Do not be afraid.
There are mothers and
lovers here before
you.
There are those who
will come after, each
to hunker down into her own
labor,
spilling her blood,
the sheer sensation of stretching open wide
and open wide
to let life through.
This is the sacred center of
love unwinding.
Breathe through it.
The contraction expands,
tightening to release.
And this I know:
you will have enough strength
in you to do this work.
Enough courage.
You will have just enough.
You will forget everything you ever
knew about birthing,
about love.
You will forget your
nakedness.
In the heart of all sensation, you
will forget even
yourself
and your breath will be carried
forward from your ancestors
through you
to the next generation.
You will know nothing and
it will be more in that moment
than you have ever
known.
Breathe into it.
And remember:
there is no promise that you
will ever birth or love
again.
Let that inform your attention.
Labor in love,
not fear.
Trust in the pain to
guide you.
It takes time.
Savor it and hold
it gently, this work,
even when it screams.
And it will change you.

************

Flash Flood


this pale dream is laid open a thousand
miles wide, all
sagebrush and sand stretched
thin under
blue.

if i could sniff a storm coming, i’d
hightail for tall places,
wrap my coat around me twice,
thank my inner weather
vane.

i wonder how they’d clock me if i
could run so fast as
that – pushing wind to
gravity, two breaths before
the flood,
cracking sky to
let me in.

***********

And thanks for the request!