go with it
Try to love everything that gets in your way:
The Chinese women in flowered bathing caps
murmuring together in Mandarin doing leg exercises in your lane
while you execute thirty-six furious laps,
one for every item on your to-do list.
The heavy-bellied man who goes thrashing through the water
like a horse with a harpoon stuck in its side and
whose breathless tsunamis rock you from your course.
Teachers all. Learn to be small
and swim past obstacles like a minnow,
without grudges or memory. Dart
toward your goal, sperm to egg. Thinking, Obstacle,
is another obstacle. Try to love the teenage girl
lounging against the ladder, showing off her new tattoo:
Cette vie est la mienne, This life is mine,
in thick blue-black letters on her ivory instep.
Be glad she’ll have that to look at the rest of her life, and
keep going. Swim by an uncle
in the lane next to yours who is teaching his nephew
how to hold his breath underwater,
even though kids aren’t supposed
to be in the pool at this hour. Someday,
years from now, this boy
who is kicking and flailing in the exact place
you want to touch and turn
may be a young man at a wedding on a boat,
raising his champagne glass in a toast
when a huge wave hits, washing everyone overboard.
He’ll come up coughing and spitting like he is now,
but he’ll come up like a cork,
alive. So your moment
of impatience must bow in service to the larger story,
because if something is in your way, it is
going your way, the way
of all beings: toward darkness, toward light.
🌺
From Desire Zoo by Alison Luterman
Lose your balance.
Overflow.
Spilling is never a mistake.
Again and again,
make a gracious mess
of incarnation.
How else will you learn
each step of the dance
that is never rehearsed?
Galaxies enter you to touch
this whirling in the flesh.
Stars drown in your blood
to taste prayer.
Just remember this, friend:
All creatures share
the same breath,
the one that is flowing
through your body now.
☔️
Fred LaMotte
My life is not tied up
in pretty blue bows
not many straight lines appear
on my map to this place
where I find myself today
I’ve chosen to go off grid
well maybe the truth is…
I found myself off grid
and after a while I realized it was the gift!
So I began making difficult, but purpose-filled choices,
again and again to stay off the mapped plan
I’ve skated thin ice and jumped with no net
over and over despite my own stable-craving nature
these tough years teaching me so much
in solitary silence
I’ve learned that somehow the ground always holds my weight
the universe is truly conspiring to help me
and so, I live mostly on the edges
where adventure steals
all the comforts of an easy chair existence
where there is no sinking into the clouded cover of ‘safety’
when risking it all in the danger zone of unconditional loving
takes everything you have
a complex living
of big picture purpose
of fulfilling soul desires
of loving the world enough to sacrifice pride
of working to become me
to stay small and humble
does anything I do matter?
sometimes Im not sure
But,
If anything matters –
then everything does!
and so it goes
and so it goes
🌎
Amy Lloyd
life: acoustic & amplified 