Imagine you’re a river… you fight through life wriggling your way

through sharp bends, but this is okay for you, until you catch a glimpse

of the upcoming ocean. It’s so vast and beautiful. You’re excited, you’re

afraid. Which is right? Both. Imagine that rapids represent your heart,

and the river’s flow represents your mind. You begin to descend down a

steep slope toward the vastness of the ocean. Your mind is excited

about the possibility of becoming something immeasurably great, but

your heart is afraid because this isn’t an ordinary bend. Your heart clings

to familiarity and beats faster, and more rapids form. Concurrently, your

mind picks up speed and the flow becomes immeasurably faster. When

your heart and mind finally agree, and the tumult of the descent finally

finds peace, you understand yourself in a new way. You’re still a river,

but now you’re connected with all other rivers, and you’re all flowing

together in one ocean. Your heart becomes content as it accepts the

change, and the rapids disappear. Then your mind, sensing that the

heart has let go, begins to spread out into a new, more profound flow.

And you come to realize that other hearts and other minds are just like

yourself. They went through different yet similar paths to reach this

boundless state. You understand this, your different parts agree, and

you reach out to agree with other parts of other rivers. And you clasp

together… and find bottomless peace… and you no longer have to

imagine you’re a river.

© Jason Walls

Published in This Enduring Gift, 2010

I stand in a languid place,          

                     My soul billowed by your remembered breath.

 I stand in an arid place,

               My nostrils bedewed by the soft bouquet of your skin and hair.  

 I stand in a barren place,

     My heart ripened with the essence of yours;
     the tender feelings which so sweetly swarmed from yours to mine
     now nested there, swelling the inner chambers with honeyed nectar.  

    I stand in a distant place,

        So close to you, so filled with you,

                    And missing you so.  

© Steven Druker

Writtten in 1984

Published in This Enduring Gift, 2010

They tunnel the long distance sea
Calling out each other,
Fathers crying for their children
Riding out the last century
        for the grand connection.
Swollen sea horses and phantom cowboys,
Giant Chinese lanterns.
        In a night sea of ghost eyes,
        they love their lost children anyway.

This is the whale’s song,
The great mammalian’s cry.
        Leviathans crying out for love.
        Swollen lost water babies of God.

Earth Mother is gone.
The sky is bitter and bound.
We need to listen.
We are bigger than them in our dreams.
They travel the seamless seas and skies.
Ghost ships calling us to conscience
        calling us back to the sea.   

They sing us lullabies
        that change our minds,
        turning the sky into sea blankets
        and rhythm riding pearl water’s familiar lunacy.
They make the unicorns visible.
They make the unicorns sing.

Their invisible belly song, found only in wild seas,   
They cry the long grey memory
        for lost fathering on earth,
        for the dead Indian nation,
        for forgotten grace,
        for all the honest crawling out of shells.     

Look at their eyes!
Ring and crab nebula combined.
Even on land they make us listen,
They do not let us forget
We are in the great uterus of the sea.
These whales call us out all to bring us home.

© Andrea Dana Stevens

(7/12/08)

Published in This Enduring Gift, 2010

As I swim
Through the streets of downtown Brooklyn
I’m surrounded by
Spiritual gypsy cabs
Who operate and capture
The light of the night,
They stop and question
The intention of my direction,
With eyes flickering
Like Argentine candles
Made from the wax of the drooling moon
Who looks on with envy
At the planetary willingness of us all
To shout out
Our block,
Our haven,
Our celebrated tendencies
Of identifying places with meaning,
And where before stood
Towering tenements in my heart
Now stand flagrant fragrances
That speak of nudist birthday parties
Celebrate at dawn
Within the confines of our fortified city streets,
The same streets that testify
To the universal structure
Of my post mortem beliefs,
The same streets
That pronounce the friction
Produced between our androgynous thighs
Every time we take a step
And circumnavigate this global wonder of a mother,
It forces me to prostrate forth
With my head bowed beneath
The intersection of my evolutionary streetlights,
And praise myself
For all the times
That I chose to doubt an idea
Just to unveil the subtleties
Of its delicacies
Within the frontier of my own beliefs,
Cuz I never thought that I could ever know
What Borges meant when he said
That philosophy isn’t
“clear and precise understanding”
but rather it’s the
“organization of the essential perplexities of man”
and I never thought that I could
ever understand Talib when he said
“I’m not a human being in some old spiritual shit
I’m a spiritual being manifested as a human, that’s it”
And so swim we must
Amongst our streets
Swim with the swirling words
Of our comrades in arms,
Words that speak of a stronger tomorrow
And arms that harness the ability to make it so,
And I promise you
That these streets,
Whether Nostrand Avenue
Or Highway 34,
Will bounce back
And televise the revolution
Of these spiritually filled human pinata’s,
That’s why we keep each other
At arms length,
To make room for the swinging sticks
Of our own consciousness,
And so swim we must
And “when all art is signed anonymous”
Mr. Sage will get his chance to
“turn that Big Bang theory
into a small pop hypothesis”
But until then I stand corner-stricken
With my back to the wind chimes of human expression,
And my genitals facing East
Accepting the heat of Ra’s chariot
With the knowledge that we must all
Let go eventually
And make do with our journey,
Regardless of our final resting ground,
You see,
I keep my life in the cargo pockets of my intellect,
Who counterbalances the winged messengers
Upon my feet,
That carry messages back and forth,
Until the goal becomes the course,
And so allow poetry
The opportunity to dance we must
But words are actions
And actions are poetry in motion
And thus any worker that chooses
To enter the confines of the Dexter factory
Deserves the acknowledgement of speaking the truth
With regards to these aquatic tendencies
Of ours
And so I come here to you tonight
To humbly apologize for any wrong doing
That I have committed upon you and your stars,
And I come here to you tonight
To sincerely ask for your forgiveness
For all the times that I was unwilling
To mount up the will power
To change those things that I could have but didn’t
And I come here to you tonight
To thank you for not murdering my dreams in their sleep.

© Jordy Yager

Published in This Enduring Gift, 2010

Snow falls softly
and the last rosy cloud greys,
abandoning the mind’s horizon.
The shoulders of hills
hunch against the cold, the field
a flat belly, punctuated by the navel
of a frozen pond. Skirting dark
clumps left by a plow,
two dogs trot a hedgerow
as the veil of night pours
over eyes that turn within.  
Remembering the fire
of the invisible
I feel the body of the earth
becoming my body, my body filled
with quiet stars and snow.

© Susie Niedermeyer

Published in Under a Prairie Moon, by Susie Niedermeyer.

Published in This Enduring Gift, 2010

‘cause God isn’t done with us,
it’s not a one or seven-
night stand.

It’s a dance.
Take a step
see what happens,

see if you can take a hint,
follow a lead,
regroup.

The heart opens
closes like an anemone
or a house that’s shut.

We’re cautious even when
we don’t need to be.
The music’s playing.

It’s always a good time
to grow up.

© Meredith Briggs Skeath

Published in This Enduring Gift, 2010

I was born near a forest of rags
where gum leaves droop in blistering sun;
and crackling dryness
starves whistling kites, flying foxes,
and frill-necked lizards.

Learning to love like a lyrebird,
I mimicked wattlebirds, lorikeets,
and empty-headed cockatoos.
Tea-time laughter came in white china cups,
familiar antidote to life’s sudden venom.

But the day my mother died,
my tongue floated in blood.
Blind words became rumbling rocks,
thrown at darkened windows.

A barrage of bellbirds splintered
the silver spittle of siblings
at her grave.
And when we planted a single boronia
in the orange ground,
a lyrebird sang the rain.

© Janet Thomas

Published in Leaves by Night, Flowers by Day.

Published in This Enduring Gift, 2010

A vague feeling
More foreign than India.
The spectral sound of the tambourine
The beautiful laugh,
The butterflies —
They intertwine anonymously.
Trying to remember to breathe
With a serenade of dangerous emotions.
Trying to maintain the order
And yet…continue to imagine.

© Phoebe Bay Carter

Published in This Enduring Gift, 2010

Rise to meet me
as I rise
to meet You.
Hold these tired wings;
still these trembling hands
until they come together
finally
to Silence.

(Love is acrophobic bliss.)
We hold each other as we free-fall
through time
in fear of possible pain
in the probable end
and in hope that the power of our gain
in embrace
will cause a suspension
in time and space
for us to love
right there.

Out of habit
we are so upside down
that when we feel love
we feel falling
when it is obvious we are rising
and spinning
to hold and point each other
head and heart first
to meet our shining God.

© Andrew Josephs

Published in This Enduring Gift, 2010

        1.

Leaves
silhouetted on my windows
by a crescent moon

          2.

A single birdcall
in the forest
like a flute in the silent air

            3.

Rain
striking the pebbles
in a waterfall of song

            4.

A breath of wind
in the tulip poplar
rippling through my dreams

© Para Steinmann

Published in This Enduring Gift, 2010