Poetry – Page 3 – unabashedly female

September 11, 2012

Grief knows this. It will lead you home.

No words can know how a broken-open heart feels.

When my heart first broke, it felt as if something reached into my chest and tore my heart apart. Then, when I realized my heart was not broken, but breaking-open, I could feel a bit of light peeking in. Just a bit. Slowly, very slowly, the light began to grow around and through the scarred tissue that had wrapped its way around my heart. And as the light grew, the scars softened and the tissue that is my heart began to return to a pinkness I once knew, but only vaguely remembered in the cells.

The Heart knows.

It remembers.

It longs to break open.

Grief knows this.

It is intelligent.

It will lead you home.

I don’t say this lightly, or flippantly. I know grief, well. I know joy, well. They are close cousins.

February 22, 2012February 22, 2012

Silence Thickens

I sit in silence, open, waiting, still

I whisper, Yes.

Love comes.

Love reveals itself,

Offers itself, over and over.

Waves of love

Crashing onto the shoreline of my heart.

The world is not as I think it is.

This ocean of love,

infinitely vast and deep

calls me to its shoreline

and asks me to enter in.

I donâ€™t know what to do with this much love,

Except be still and receive.

Tears fall.

Body fills.

Silence thickens and stills.

I tremble as love finds its way into me.

It makes its way along the edges Iâ€™ve used to define myself,

And in its wake the edges fray and soften.

Lines blur.

Definition grows watery.

All dissolves.

ImageÂ byÂ Rudy AÂ on FlickrÂ Some rights reserved

January 9, 2012January 9, 2012

Until I Inhale

Until I Inhale

The tip of my finger quivers

As it moves along the ridge of your heart.

This line between you and me

is utterly fine.

You are just a breath away,

Until I inhale.

Photo byÂ white ribbons on Flickr -Â Some rights reserved

October 26, 2011

An Unutterable Tenderness

A softness that defies language.
An unutterable tenderness.
To touch it requires complete and generous receptivity,
an awareness that is feather-light.

I’m beginning to know this place within,
this place that opens with the
touch of Grace and my
willingness to be loved.

Completely undressed I sit,
In silence I wait with
open heart and a willingness
to let my longing be known.

In this subtlest of subtle places,
I hear the whispers of this woman’s heart.
To do so requires me to leave everything I know
at the threshold into this world.

I am nobody special here,
in fact quite the opposite.
I am ordinary, undressed, and open
simply waiting to return home.

July 17, 2011

A Thousand Ears

â€œThereâ€™s a moon inside every human being.
Learn to be companions with it. Give

more of your life to this listening. As
brightness is to time, so you are to

the one who talks to the deep ear in
your chest. I should sell my tongue

and buy a thousand ears when that
one steps near and begins to speak.â€

â€” Jalal al-Din Rumi

Image: Moon Some rights reserved by WiderAngle on Flickr

July 13, 2011

Tendermost Places

The Tendermost Places

You are here.
Softly,
Joyously,
Persistently,
Reminding.

A one-way conversation
Until I choose to let go
Into the rhythm
Of your pulse.

Much fear has been tossed around
About the inherent weakness of
The tendermost layers
Of your expression.

Yet, I find these places
To be filled with the
Sweetest longings
I can know.

Tendermost places
Lend themselves
To melting into,
To letting go,
To receiving and giving,
To going home.

June 12, 2011

Where No One Sees You

Found Art in Big Sur, CA (artist unknown)

~~~~

In your light I learn how to love.
In your beauty, how to make poems.
You dance inside my chest, where no one sees you,
But sometimes I do, and that sight becomes this art.
~Rumi

June 7, 2011June 7, 2011

Always Enough

There is nothing to ‘get’, yet so much to receive.
Life gives willingly when we open our arms
rather than grasping with our hands.

Simple abundance is present in each breath.
Allow it to enfold you and trust it is enough,
For all is given from a dark well of Knowing.

Dine on its splendor and savor its radiance.
Soak up its succulence and open your Heart to its nourishment.
Quench your thirst knowing there is always more to fill your bones.

It may not be what you think you want
And it is exactly what you are thirsting for…
Always enough. Always enough.

May 12, 2011

In This Unshaped Place

i’ve come home
a new home, an old home
home where body lives
body where soul lives

i’ve moved into a new life
a life that has beckoned for years
a life that has yet to be shaped and hardened
with my need to feel in control

life has its own course
and I meet it willingly,
with an open heart,
or not, because that happens, too

right now, in this unshaped place,
i know that I don’t know
and I know that shapes and lines and the falling away of newness
can create the illusion of knowing

get settled
feel your self in this new place
of solitude and coming
know yourself anew

you will know when you know
until then, just breathe
and go about your day
meeting life as it comes

April 16, 2011

Wild Iris

Just imagine the beauty still veiled by these delicate petals.

Deep inside the heart of this wild iris is the most tender essence of life.

Perhaps we are like this.

Perhaps we save our innermost places of the heart for one beloved.