Category: self transformation
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Greening clover
Today is the anniversary of my birth; a day when I was innocent and my parents were not yet disappointed. I put on old shoes and a rain suit, grab the umbrella from its place on the porch and walk in the park. Beside the pond I recite the name of God and ask for…
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Sip the morning dry
Like a ship coming to harbor, bullfrog calls out from weeds, I’m here, I’m here, I’m here. Before heat chases dawn away, I watch day shadows shorten, ask the Creator to refine my character, inhale the last fragrance of warm tea from the bottom of my cup and sip the morning dry. 5-11-23
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Pressure
Two kinds of pressure Within and without Both will kill you If you don’t watch out One will make it rise The other make it seethe You can change the outcome Just relax and breathe Push your ass from the table Do not lick the pan Take a baby aspirin And your Losartan 5-9-23 from…
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self-hate
My great grandmother was orphaned at three, only child of a widowed Irish immigrant and widowed native American woman. She was baptized in St Anne’s Catholic Church and raised by half-siblings on her father’s side. When she married a Quaker, she was not allowed communion, but still attended mass; sat quietly in the back pew,…
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haiku of a fiery tongue
practice kindliness it doesn’t take a flame to burn set a world on fire 4-25-23
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For lack of empathy
I don’t know why, but fifty years on I thought of you, tall lanky friend of my youth, we used to sometimes talk walking home from high school; me bombastic and loud, all full of myself; you quiet, deferential and shy. We never became close; you a confirmed loner me a loner, hidden beneath layers…
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Two lifetimes ago
two lifetimes ago, returning from a lonely hike In mushroom mountains sat under a bush, light rain falling in the yard of a church I did not attend Johnny Cash sang about Sunday morning coming down on the radio of an idling car I left my body unburied, never returned and found a new one…
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Run-on sentence memory of Dad
My father dropped me off my first year of college, notebooks, pens, a dictionary and Bible in a cardboard box and a dress shirt I never wore on a hanger my mother packed for church and a suitcase of clothes, I was not an easy child to raise and he was nervous about me going…
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The day before
Today is the day before The first day of revelation’s festival, The day before the flood, The day before roses found their purpose, The day nightingales gathered to Sing of Ancient Beauty in the moonlight. The day before paradise’s garden reappeared. Tomorrow, I will not go to the gym. And will focus on the purpose…
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Sunrise walking meditation
When light peeks over my neighbor’s roof, I walk in the park, recite the name of God on fingertips, say prayers for the living and the dead. In greening woods, a bird intones, high low, high low, high. From untrimmed shrubs of an empty house a reply comes, high low, high low, high. 4-19-23