sail your boat girl...

i sat spellbound at her feet,
listening to tales she wove
as only a storyteller could...
her hair was silver white,
her eyes wise and brimming
with a love real and profound...
as old as old could be...and then,
older...
she looked at the little girl in me
and smiled a knowing smile...
"sail your boat, girl",
she whispered, for only my ears to hear...
"live your story...sing your songs and never,
never hide yourself behind your pain...
your pain and your fears are tools,
yours to be used, never let them use you...
you have a voyage before you and this voyage
will be smooth and graceful as well as hard
and perilous...
but sail you must and sail you will
for your Spirit would have it no other way..."
i gathered myself then, breathed deep and for a moment...
just a moment that seemed, a lifetime...
i smelled the salty air and felt a freedom beyond reason...
and then...
i sailed...

carried by the wind

the wind, she speaks to us...
within her breezes and on her currents,
she carries the voices of lives lived faraway...
and closeby...
stop for a moment,
still the chatter in your mind...
Listen.
look to the treetops and then close your eyes...
open your Spirit...
do you hear that?
there's the sweet lullaby sung by a mother to her little one in Africa...
and that? ah...that is a father teaching his son to be a man in the hills of Cambodia...
there is the sister in Albania scolding her baby brother for his clumsiness...
and a girl from a small village in Honduras begging her lover not to go north...
oh, do you hear him?
a grandfather in Afghanistan weeps as the grandson he raised is buried...
just as a mother in the U.S. mourns for her daughter dead from duty served in Iraq...
the wind makes her way through this world...
past all our prejudices and perceived differences...
she carries what is common in the common man
and she speaks to us...
one day, maybe...just maybe,
we will stop to listen...
we will decide then to pick up the pieces
of a world torn apart...
a world filled with stories...
carried by the wind...

a woman's heart

Her heart was home to love...
love for her children,
love for her man,
love for her friends,
but most of all...
love for herself...
after all...
this love was where love began,
love for her Spirit God sent...
love for the God within...

moreover...

oh...i can delve in self pity for only so long!
i don't like this dark place! i seek the light!
to hear my daughter's laughter from thousands of miles away,
to see her smile through the distance...
this all by it's lonesome would be enough...
yet, there is more...
to know that i am gifted and sought for, for my views...
to know that i can make a difference in this crazy, crazy world...
i feel a power and a sense of responsibility...
for if i let this moment pass without so much as a peek into what is possible...
i will not only lose out on an opportunity for self growth...
i will have lost out on a chance to make a worthwhile impression on an already
deeply depressed world...
yes...i am that important...moreover...yes...
so are YOU...

moonshine

i climbed to the top of the mountain and gazed
at a brilliantly bright moon...
i challenged her to dare look back upon me,
to bear witness to my own brilliance...
for while her light was no more than a reflection cast...
my light is innate and shines from within...

north star

"up north,
down south,
out west,
back east..."

he'd shown her how to find her way...
where to look when looking for that
north star...
she would not forget...
this seemed important to him...
she would remember how to find her way...
even as she ached for him to find his way...
to her.

anymore...

my fragile heart tires of the search...
and chooses to search no more...
wherever you are, i need you to come find me...
i've hurt enough, i've cried enough...
enough...
i can't do this anymore...
i thought i found you, once, twice...
three times...
but, i was just given a taste...
i can't do this anymore...