life: acoustic & amplified

poetry, quotes & thoughts about life

Archive for the category “Poetry”

10 Nov 2011

What’s Your Shadow Look Like?

Afraid of dying, we avoid living.
We sleep a sleep of fear,
dark nightmares pulled up around our chins.
Thinking we must survive now,
we wait to live later.

But the present moment is constantly being destroyed,
swept away into the past,
taken by a thief
who leaves another.
Life is transitory.
Each day, in fact, can be our last.

So wake up,
and live in the present moment.

The thief steals only what you have kept,
not what you have spent.

What calls out in your life?
What song needs singing,
what person needs loving,
what risk invites the investment
of all of yourself?

Child, awaken.
Rise to this day.
If you love someone, tell them,
before the moment to do so
is burned in a flash.
If you have a gift,
give it before the moment
vanishes like a dream.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Used with Premission

Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net

Posted in Adventure, Becoming Yourself, Beginning, Beliefs, Blessing, Choice, courage, Dancing, Death, determination, Freedom, Happiness, Hope, Imagine, Letting Go, Life, light, Love, Miracles, People, Poetry, power, Purpose, Reflection, Relationships, Smile, strength, Thoughts, Today | Leave a comment
07 Nov 2011

Practice Letting Go

Fear makes us cling rather than letting go. But clinging
only binds us to our fear. It does not set us free. Practice letting go.

Fear inhibits our willingness to be fully, lovingly
present each moment. Afraid of the responsibility and uncertainty of investing
ourselves in the present moment, we withhold ourselves. Afraid of what might be
demanded of us, we do not engage in what is before us. Wishing things were
otherwise, we bury ourselves elsewhere. But life is this, not something else.
Practice being present.

All that you are and all that you have is God’s. You have
nothing to lose. Practice giving yourself away.

__________________

Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Used with Permission
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net

Posted in Adventure, art, Becoming Yourself, Beginning, Beliefs, Blessing, Change, Choice, courage, create, Death, determination, Dreams, Encouragement, Freedom, Gratitude, Grieving, Growth, Habits, Happiness, home, Hope, Imagine, Impossible, Leadership, Letting Go, Life, Losing, Love, Miracles, People, Poetry, Purpose, Quotes, Reality, Relationships, Smile, strength, success, Tears, Today, Trust | Leave a comment
03 Nov 2011
1 Comment

It’s A Wonderful World! part 2

The Sun Walks by Steve Garnaas-Holmes

The sun walks through the autumn woods
slowly on her long yellow legs,
notices things, points them out,
reaches down between the grasses
and draws out their color,
touches leaves here and there
and makes them brilliant,
plucks a leaf and drops it,
plucks a leaf and drops it.
All through the woods her light
flutters down, swings down, dances down.

It is not winter that takes these leaves,
not frost that steals them in the night.
She gives them. It’s how she finds her way
down into the black soil,
how she gives her light
to the darkness working beneath.

It is not death
that takes us from this world,
but life that gives us, ripe and golden,
into the next.

______________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Used with Permission
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net

 

Posted in Adventure, Becoming Yourself, Beginning, Beliefs, Blessing, Choice, courage, create, Death, Dreams, Gratitude, Growth, Habits, Happiness, Hope, Imagine, Letting Go, Life, light, Love, Miracles, People, Poetry, power, quiet, Reflection, Seasons, Smile, strength, Tenderness, Thoughts
03 Nov 2011

It’s A Wonderful World! part 1

790 by Emily Dickinson

Nature — the Gentlest Mother is,
Impatient of no Child —
The feeblest — or the waywardest —
Her Admonition mild —

In Forest — and the Hill —
By Traveller — be heard —
Restraining Rampant Squirrel —
Or too impetuous Bird —

How fair Her Conversation —
A Summer Afternoon —
Her Household — Her Assembly —
And when the Sun go down —

Her Voice among the Aisles
Incite the timid prayer
Of the minutest Cricket —
The most unworthy Flower —

When all the Children sleep —
She turns as long away
As will suffice to light Her lamps —
Then bending from the Sky —

With infinite Affection —
And infiniter Care —
Her Golden finger on Her lip —
Wills Silence — Everywhere —

“790” by Emily Dickinson. Public domain

Posted in art, Becoming Yourself, Beginning, Blessing, create, Gratitude, Growth, Happiness, Imagine, Letting Go, Life, light, Love, Miracles, People, Poetry, power, quiet, Reflection, Seasons, Smile, Thoughts, Today | Leave a comment
25 Oct 2011

Charge of the Light Brigade

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Half a league half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred:
‘Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns’ he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

‘Forward, the Light Brigade!’
Was there a man dismay’d?
Not tho’ the soldier knew
Some one had blunder’d:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do & die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley’d & thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.

Flash’d all their sabres bare,
Flash’d as they turn’d in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army while
All the world wonder’d:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro’ the line they broke;
Cossack & Russian
Reel’d from the sabre-stroke,
Shatter’d & sunder’d.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley’d and thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
While horse & hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro’ the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.

When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wonder’d.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!

“The Charge of the Light Brigade” by Alfred Tennyson. Public domain.

Posted in courage, Death, determination, Freedom, Grieving, Leadership, Life, Love, Peace, People, Poetry, power, Reflection, Relationships, strength, Tears, Thoughts, time, Trust | Leave a comment
19 Oct 2011

Roadside Grave

A garden and a fence,
I know we all want it,
but sometimes the Promise
is not the abundance and security we crave
but an abiding presence
that walks with us
even as we lead others home,
and if we’ve walked with them
as we ourselves have been accompanied
then we’ve known heaven,
and if our steps were hope for someone tired
and wandering, even if we were, too,
then we’ve been in the right place,
and if we’ve pointed someone,
even with unsure hands, toward their wholeness,
then we have made a great journey,
and if on our way we’ve loved someone on theirs
then we’ve rested in peace,
and if we’ve fond belonging
not in a place but a way of going,
and lived on pure, uncultivated gift,
and trusted the unseen companion,
and if we’ve found holiness on the way,
and wonder, even on a road that was
mostly mystery and never finished,
even if we never really arrived,
but never gave up,
then even an unmarked grave
out behind a gas station
at the edge of a desert
with names in our pocket
is good enough.

 

__________________   

Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net

 

 

 

Posted in Death, Dreams, Happiness, home, People, Poetry | Leave a comment
18 Oct 2011

If

If the seas were yellow.
If the sun was green.
What would the major
difference be?

If coffee was blue,
And so was a tree.
Would I look at life
any differently?

If people were orange.
Aliens red.
We we still hate each other?
Would we still be scared?

If dogs and cats all
looked the same
What would happen
when you called their name?

If life is not all
black and white.
What would happen if
we walked by faith?

If we let go,
live love alone.
Will our hearts change
as we make our way home?

AL
8/25/11

Posted in Imagine, Letting Go, Life, Love, Poetry, Thoughts | Leave a comment
16 Oct 2011

Have a great Football Day!

If Life Were Like Touch Football

by Julie Cadwallader-Staub

Driving north on Route 2A
from Vermont to Maine
listening to the news:
—the New England Patriots coach was caught
trying to videotape the handsignals of the New York
Giants—

I remember how we six sisters
would recruit a few boys from the neighborhood
for a pick-up game of touch football in the street,
how we’d break into teams,
huddle around whomever was chosen to be qb,
how the qb would extend her left palm, flat,
into the middle of the huddle,
plant the index finger of her right hand in the center of her
palm, and then
with finger motions and whispers,
she would diagram who was to go where and when,
in order to so confuse and fool the other team
that one of us could break free
and go long.

Oh that feeling
of running as fast as I could
extending my arms, my hands, my fingers
as far as I could
watching that spiraling bullet of a football,
reminding myself:
if you can touch it,
you can catch it.
If you can touch it,
you can catch it.

“If Life Were Like Touch Football” by Julie Cadwallader-Staub (www.juliecspoetry.com) from Face to Face; A Poetry Collection, Cascadia Publishing House, 2010, used by permission, all rights reserved.

 

Posted in Becoming Yourself, Beginning, Beliefs, Blessing, Change, Choice, courage, determination, Happiness, Hope, Imagine, Impossible, Letting Go, Life, Losing, Love, Miracles, People, Poetry, power, Seasons, Smile, strength, success, Today | Leave a comment
13 Oct 2011

Pie

By Julie Cadwallader-Staub
http://www.juliecspoetry.com/

Skin, like piecrust, was invented
to keep our insides in
and the outside out.

Skin, like piecrust, is surprisingly tough;
stretches beyond imagining;
and can be patched with pieces of its own self,
leaving it strong in the broken places.

Thirty years ago this month, I prepared for my wedding;
Twenty years ago, I was raising three children under the age of five;
Ten years ago, my husband was diagnosed with terminal cancer
and we lost him.

Tell me, to whom do we belong if not to one another?
Doesn’t a longing for belonging
mark us as human beings?

The One who mixed flour and water
who fashioned us to be functional, resilient, beautiful–
that same Spirit pierces us
again and again
to let the inside out
and the outside in
that we might pray,
and change
and recognize our need for one another
and for the One who made us

that we might embody the same gravitational force
exerted by a pie, just out of the oven:
the way it pulls people out of every dark corner,
with its fragrant promise of communion and joy.

Featured in The Mennonite, January 2011. Used with permission

Posted in Imagine, Life, light, Love, People, Poetry | Leave a comment
11 Oct 2011

Why Do You Write?

It’s funny how time lengthens when you don’t like what you’re doing.

It’s funny how time goes by so quickly when you’re living your dream.

Monday, I worked a year at a restaurant.

Tuesday, I got a job for a few years at a law firm. Twenty dollars an hour to make copies and coffee.

On Wednesday, I did accounting. A dozen years stacking numbers and dollar signs into neat piles.

Thursday was twenty years making widgets at the factory. It was the longest day of my life.

What am I doing here? When will this week end?

On Friday, someone gave me a typewriter. I typed my dreams in black and pasted them to the walls until they were spackled with ink.

Friday turned to May. I typed. May turned and my hair grew grey.

I was born, I found, to type.

When the end came, I gave the typewriter away.

So someone else could live, as I did, their life in a day.

http://thewritepractice.com/new-video-why-do-you-write/

The Write Practice – Joe Bunting and Liz Bureman

 

 

Posted in Becoming Yourself, Beginning, Blessing, Life, Love, People, Poetry, time, words, Writing | Leave a comment

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