Light of the World for Maria Popova and all the lights

she speaks of Rilke and Rodin

and the letters to a young poet

that is in one of my most beloved

books passed on to me by Silvana

Cenci, my amazing sculptor friend

who used explosives to make her art

the concept of empathy she finds originated only

a century ago lies at the heart of my teaching

in the sixties from a great man and my beloved

professor J.Whitney Shea and even her

text on Freud makes me remember my

years of the study of Psychology before i

decided it was an industry of ¨thera-pee and

thera-pists¨ her name is Maria Popova introduced

to me by a beloved artist, poet and friend

that is how these magical connections settle

into my being spurring me on when the poet´s

road gets too lonely and the night seems dark

and hard i remember all my foremothers and fathers

how they persevered through broken dreams and

though they sometimes cut off their own body parts

they left a legacy like a great neon sign to point us to the

Light of the World

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LIGHT

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i woke early
the darkness still
deep though we have
passed the longest night

what place is this where
light comes but only after
so much absence i touch
the lips of dawn a lover here

the plants indoors hard put
to bloom with so little sun
they grow tall and green without
fruit but the trash plants grow boldly

i cut carrots and beets and celery
plant their leftovers after we eat
their core and voila! new growth
arises to feed us in the darkness of winter

our present of 9500 seeds arrived
yesterday on the eve of this new year
survival seeds it says making me wonder
about life on this planet how our thoughts compel us

will this year bring a new way of seeing a light so
bright we won’t need fosil fuels to fund our sight or
will we hide in caves and hope that the seeds of what
we knew long ago will grow without the sun our thoughts

dark and weary the sound of destruction filling our news
blindness so pervasive we don’t notice lack of eyes we lick
our wounds and hide from terror i say screw the illusion we
are living the dawning of the age of spirit and truth
let the love light begin

Try This at Home

In these short days of winter, it’s easy to think,

oh, so this is what they mean when they say

that no matter how dark it gets, the sun always rises,

as it did today, despite chill, despite grief, despite

tears.  And the cheekbones again are sun-drawn and

tawnier, the lips poise themselves for praise.

Of course we try to divert the dark flood, find

another bank where the pitch might eddy or skip

our lives entirely. But it doesn’t. It finds us and

slips its cold shadows into our breath so that every now

is laced with some lack of luminousness. And now is also twined

with slow strands of light. Why long for this or that when it is always

the two of them together, the old and new, repulsion and lust,

barrenness and fecundity. The sunrise is no miracle. It’s a fact,

though if we choose to thank it, it shines more brightly.