Aging

The Years of Passing

The years of Passing
are a Conversation between my Whisper & Your Silence
Can you Hear me Now, dancing this silent Dance, in between the shadows of Things Gone and things Yet to Come?

This Silent Dance that we both know.

in our Cellular Metabolism.  Our DNA. Our Chronic Gelatinous Lovely Cytoplasm.    The Dance that Breathes. Air. Sweet Soul. Softness. Light.

Completion.

Seasons Change their clothes like tired Strippers in a Dance Club of Laughing Gods.

And the leaves fall to the eloquent jazz of Wind & Fire.

Mothers say goodbye to children who say goodbye to mothers and fly with all their colors into the Deep.

The years of Passing
are a Conversation between my Whisper & Your Silence.  It’s a prayer we keep; a lesson, a promise… to one day be Born Again.

I Was Alone

I Was Alone
I counted Three
Minutes Before You Ran
Away with Part of Me

Warriors, They Joined Me
I have this Heart of Gold
Before me, Between me, Inside me
They said it would all Unfold

I Discovered my Flower
My god, my virgin, my light
Tucked into my belly-button cupboard
Glowing like a Raven in the Night

Now I Dance the Tribute to a Million Swans.

My life is over, my time is up
My garden blooms only once
in this Heirloom Silver Cup

the Stars are Singing
inside my Wounded Knees
I’ve already Eaten the Leftovers
Leave this Ancient Haunted House

will You Please …

The Art of Eternal Childhood

An email from an old friend. He’s in the throes of raising an 11-year old daughter – amazed by the pure and vital energy of childhood – and asks, “why have we lost this as adults…?”

My answer would be, we haven’t lost this, but we’ve left this. We’ve left this for a set of distractions, protections & consequences that effectively annihilate our chances of returning to the place of innocence, possibility and magic that we knew as children.

As a child, I always knew there was something suspicious, inauthentic and dangerous about the adult character in general. We all know a lot as children, and have access to an amazing range of “emotional intelligence” – intuitive, perceptive and creative capabilities. We sense and live in the spontaneous and ongoing beauty of childhood; we don’t understand or comprehend the “hardening” that has masked and throttled the authority figures around us.

As we grow older, we silently, agreeably adopt and adapt – internalizing all the subtle toxicities and poisons that are handed to us on silver platters: ego, emotional suppression, material obsession, power acquisition & manipulation, playing the proper game and saying the proper words at the proper time – in the proper tone of voice. We learn to obey the Kings of the Adult Architecture: bosses, families, spouses, preachers, pundits and obligations … all at the cost of our own soul.

My own personal journey into Adulthood was interrupted by a “side-trip” into the Land of Self-Knowledge. A side-trip which became the Journey of Life Itself. All the other “main trips” eventually panned out as distractions and misadventures; the subtle and frail voice that pulled me into the heart of Knowing Self, became the most powerful, beautiful, joyful and insightful voice in my being.

Part of the process of Knowing Self seemed to be the reconnection and resurrection of the lost inner child, that – it turns out – is really “me”, after all. The “sweet part” of us, it turns out, is still very much alive, and simply waits like a long lost seed, in the deepest cavern of our hearts, for springtime to return.

But, yes, life presents the challenge of feeling somewhat unique and alone in your “child-craft”; your innocence, beauty and magic seek others to play with – others to share the innate beauty of life with – but, alas, such companions are few and far-between. Most so-called “adults” are busy with the concern of the “adult world” – politics, money, relationship frustrations, sarcasm, jadedness and various mixes of toxic distraction and approved anesthetics.

It does make you value what you do have: access to your own inner song. It makes you value the few companions in life who can indeed share your hearts’ journeys. It makes those moments of play, delight, rainbow-watching, flower-sniffing …. all that much more precious, fragile, fragrant and delicious. And, last but not least: it makes you savor your True Companion, the inner friend you’ve known all along, the one who has been and will be with you every step of the way.

So, the celebration of Eternal Childhood seems to be where it’s at for me.

Sorry, other stuff bores me.

I just don’t have the time be be “grown up” anymore.

The field of life awaits, and it’s brilliant with a million colored flowers.

The Burning Leaves of Autumn

Yesterday was a gentle walk in the woods.  September days are quiet, soft in their own right, messengers of times to come, days of change.

Sunny days in September are a double blessing: light and warmth without the intensity of August, yet the amazing colors of a turning seasons included, free of charge.

I carry a camera with me on many walks, watching and aware of those moments that hold a portrait, those moments where light, texture and form tell a short story worth acknowledging.  On this particular day, the woods were quiet and deep, shadowy and thoughtful.   Little photogenic content; merely a day for feeling the sweet earth and breathing in that mysterious oxygen.

But one leaf caught my attention.   It was a single Maple leaf, bathed in a solitary beam of sunlight, against the shadowy background of evergreens.

Something about this leaf, the change of seasons, made me think about my own life and the changing of my own seasons.   It has occurred to me before, that what we see ‘outside’ in Nature, is often a reflection of our own self, our own life: our beauties, our strife, the wideness of our compassion, the blossoming of our own soul.

When you get past 50 – and you see your own body changing – these things take on new meaning.  We’ve all heard this, and we all know this.  Aging.  No one wants to be reminded of this inconvenient little clause built into the contract of human life.

And it’s struck me before: why do we see such beauty in the aging of Nature, yet we see ugliness in the aging of humans?  We see the Cycles Of Everything – coming and going: seasons, jobs, relationships, homes, children, cars, friends, lovers.  And somewhere inside of us, we cling to our fabricated immortality of these things, and we suffer, we cry, we hurt … when these things change and move on.

There’s something in Nature that Gives.  And, relentlessly, IS.  We, anchored in all our “holdings”, our small-town religions we’ve fabricated, look through our tiny portals – from our unnatural world, into the natural world – and we breath a sigh of relief.  There’s something real out there.  There’s something out there that speaks of Life and Giving and the true Divine Plan of things.

Somehow, we’re all a part of that plan.  No one is exempt.

Why is it, that only later in life you see the inevitability of things?  There’s some measure of sobriety that’s gained from sensing deeply your own mortality – the mortality of life itself – and also the mortality of persons and things that you love, that you surround yourself with.

In the folly of my youth, I was surrounded by the folly of other youth.  I was not mentored by wisdom, by those steeped in self-knowledge, by ones who had seen deeper than the facade of life.  Perhaps this is a thing of the world, and world itself is coming of age.  The world itself is mortal, and this fragility and mortality is being spelled out graphically in front of all our eyes.  It will all go, and it will all change, even if this is enacted over eons of time.

But … our tiny little time?  Our sweet and short encounter with breath on this planet?  Our transparent skin, our falling hair, our disappearing resources, our ticking clock.

One day, our children may be taught to appreciate this – at an early age – from those who “get it”.  From those who see.   Until then, it’s up to us: our own thirst, our own knowing, our own seeing.  Our own understanding.

Old Radio — Endless Static

I am listening to Van Morrison
on an old radio.

I am an Old Person.

I am remembering a Long Life;
a life that no longer exists.

I am entering this moment called “Now”,
and I can take nothing with me.

Van Morrison fades, and the Radio is gone –
gone into something Younger,
a voice I hardly know.

A Younger Voice is singing about Love & Sweetness;
these Guitar Chords have been used before.
the Minor makes the Major all-the-more worthwhile.

It’s an Old Guitar and a Young Voice,
and the Afternoon aches for recognition
as Time slips by.

Van Morrison is gone, and I can’t recall his name.
Young Voices have taken over the radio
and I’m dissolving in a Purple Flame.

The Magic of Love is massaging my Heart,
and I just don’t know What To Do.

Perhaps I’ll just be quiet,
And let the Triumphant Armies of Love
Come Marching right on through.

Text Messages

I can receive Text Messages
while lying in the Sun
They say, “When your Journey’s Over,
Where will you Run?”

People & Dogs in this park
they run in Circles,
the Children they Bark

Nobody’s new on this Friday afternoon;
this has been done for Millions of Years:
Children & Dogs, they run in the park.
They Look.  They Laugh.  They Bark.

They come Here, they Go Home.
They grow Older, they die Alone.

I can receive Text Messages
while lying in the Sun.
They say, “When you Grow Older,
Where will you Run?”