Vantage Point

From ‘one’ perspective
a single view
upon which all thoughts,
ideas, values, beliefs
are born

Then one day
a stirring
as a single gaze into the stars
reveals a perspective unexplored

If only to touch one single
star
and so I climbed
and climbed
and climbed…
the darkness penetrated by
the Milky Way, Orion, and the Big Dipper

I stumbled a few times
my head down so as
to watch each tempered
step

I stopped to catch my breath
only to realize the stars
began giving way to dawn

An orange sky
segued with red and yellow
the sun still a distance away
from the Earth rotating to welcome her brilliance

As I looked ‘down’ into the valley
Splashed as if immersed
in a Holy Baptism
My perspective,
my one single point
shattered

Amazed at the endless
nothingness
linking together
everything

I discovered in the lost
nowhere that yes
I was now
Here

Opened by wonder
mystery and awe…
Everything I’ve come to
know, believe, trust in
vanished as if
forgotten~~~
yet discovered

The Sun rose its head
I was blinded
and yet for the
first time
I saw a point
and then beyond

A Heart in the Woods

See it?
It is always there
even when darkness
tries to hide its image

See it?
In dawn’s early rising
light seeps into its open
crevices

See it?
A heart
In its center a
towering tree rises from
an earth which holds tenderly
the roots spread like a bed of
laughing dandelions

See it?
Yes, that tree…
It divides one half from another

Oh, but wait
See it?
It does everything BUT divide

See
the bridge?
It is a passage
a journey
looking back at
all the places,
discoveries,
adventures

rolling over
into
a ‘new’ place

where the only thing that
matters is
‘everything’

Everything and yet
nothing

Mind stretched
a self
unraveling from all
it has been told it is
and recognizing
as it slides over this
bridge
who it really ‘is’
for the first time.

The Preacher

Her pulpit
a rock
She perched on a delicate green
blanket of seaweed.

The ocean’s bounty trickles
upon her feet~~~

Her sermon, only
SILENCE
and she prepares for communion.
She waits, and waits, and waits.

Her eyes wide open~~~
her pupils scan for any motion…

Suddenly,
after all the waiting,
waiting,
waiting,
right there ‘bread.’

Her beak pummels through the water
‘broken’
a fish caught in her paired scissors
and blood flows onto her feathers.

Yes, death
A small fish sustains life.
The preacher digests only what is necessary
to ‘fill’ her belly.

As the sun rises,
she seems to bow her head in thanks~~~
In silence she no longer waits, and waits, and waits~~~

She is ‘full’