The Blog – Page 2 – Generous Wisdom

An Open Poem to My Oldest Son: In Conversation Around How to Live in These Present Moments

Your purpose is to love – and be loved –
You are beloved –
The beloved –
Just like every –
last – one –
of –
us

Your Existence is Gift
Your Joy is Mine
Your Happiness is Everyone’s
Who stands beside you

This is how you do healing
in this world –
You keep on
BEING
YOU.

This poem was written the day after my 21-year-old and I discussed our current moments living in this world, the wide and narrow aspects of global, societal, and cultural dynamics of our fellow human beings, both far and close, the push and pull of human nature around safety and security from the beginnings of Time and the beginnings of Story and Myth. He is one of the great joys and gifts of my life and I learn from him more than I learn from any of my credentialed teachers backward and forward across time. He came to me through the portal of my own body, and I watch him in wonder as he makes his way through this human life.

This poem holds some of what I told him toward the end of our conversation, as well as some of the thoughts I experienced driving to work the next morning, listening to a song he sent me: Bottle of Advil by Julia Wolf. (Here you go: Bottle of Advil)

When the written version of this poem came pouring out of me through pencil on blue paper I thought of Rumi, and then Emily Dickinson.

I’m sharing it here because it feels salient. I didn’t know the second definition of salient as a piece of fortified land projecting outward and being exceedingly vulnerable until just this moment when I searched its meaning. I’ve noticed that so many of our words and phrases grow out of military language, and I’ve intentionally avoided as many of those as possible throughout my time as a writer. I almost changed the word salient above to something like “valuable” to avoid the warring association, but I decided to leave it in. It feels salient. And rightly vulnerable.

May you be well,

After I photoed the poem and published this post, I went outside to the morning fire. I slid the blue-lined paper with the blue-lined words into the open space between the pyramid of logs. It flashed yellow and transformed to white ash in an instant, then dissolved above the melty-orange coals, a new energy.

Love Is Nothing If Not Infinite

That’s it.

That’s all I wanted to say.

The Shape of Sound

The shape of sound – cicadas’ buzz rippling in the air

The shape of shadow – falling angles of light from the house windows

The shape of breath – cylindrical
ribcage expansive, circular, contracting ribbons of bone

The shape of flower blossoms – doubled, orange begonias in an arc of crumpled fabric

The shape of sky – between leaves and branches, inverted butterflies

The shape of trees – moving in a wind I can’t feel

The shape of the hawk – rocketing out of the pine, arcing behind the house

The shape of space between the stars of succulents – always three curved angles

The shape of me? What shape do I make in the evening sky descending its shadowy deep blue light against my skin?

The shape of love – sometimes close, sometimes spacious – always pulsing, the vibrations rippling toward infinity.

There is so much to discover when we meditate on Shape.

Find your sit-spot. Just Be.

Notice the shape of sound, of texture, of air, of breath.

What shape do you make in the gorgeous sky?

What shapes are blossoming between your fingers, the lashes of your eyes, the parting of your lips, the curving angles of your sweet and precious toes, the arc of your nose?

What space, what shape does love make and take up in your living?

How is your heart’s spaciousness rippling toward infinity?