And what of butterflies in formation?

"The flutter of the moth's wing can trigger the hurricane. This is not a poetic statement. This is the fact of the matter within this kind of description of nature. In other words, very small changes create cascades into where whole states shift and are perturbed."--Terence McKenna

Be, Do, Have

I offer you a paraphrase of a thought recalled by Wayne Dyer, from the book tour "talk" I attended April 23, 2004 in Seattle and I love it so...:

Contemplate yourself as surrounded by the conditons you want to produce.

Be (Compassionate for example) and you will

Do (Compassionate things for yourself and others) and you will

Have (Compassion in your life in abundance)

Fill in the example of your choice and watch how the Universe will step up to support you

Imagine yourself as you wish to Be…
Be this in your heart and mind
You’ll then do what needs to be done
And you will have it before you realize it.

Then begin again and again.

Aren’t I just so smart??? Not really, I just repeat the good stuff I hear that resonates with me.

Lather, Rinse, Repeat...

Namaste

The Sweet Spot.

It's the peace that follows
each conversation with you
that is the sweetest proof
of this newly known reality

This place where fear of the unknown has no welcome

And much like the taste of a strawberry
Impossible to describe completely

The sensation akin to that moment
between waking and sleeping
I surrender and step into the gap
A field of infinite possibility

The Sweet Spot.

full moon haikus

The experience
of fresh air and grey light, soft
the gloaming begins

I pour the contents
of my mind over brown-red soil
tomorrow's mushrooms

I walk the forest
feet kissing earth many times
not wanting to leave

Bird twitters softly
just go home now lady love
your work this day done

Robin what say you?
How is it you are still here?
Your nest grows cold

One last worm is pulled
from beneath green grass
bird hops-laughs- flees

The full moon blooming
will tease and brightly spotlight
that I miss that kiss

*******************

Will I sleep at all?
Can I tire myself in time?
Will I sing till dawn?

afternoon meditation

I am watching her
all afternoon watch me
She gifts me patience

So lush the fresh green
of newborn leaves stretching forth
and capture day's light

I am watching her
give birth yet again to love
such fine offspring

Uncurling slowly
in concert with unseen wind
some shadow dancing

I am watching her
while her bare branches bloom with
joyful potential

Bud clusters hold hope
white flowers seduce the bees
red berries feed dreams

I am watching her
all seasons for the wisdom
that is always there

She is my tree and I am hers.
For I am she and she is me.

chorus of birds

i now understand that about the best thing i can do first thing of a morning is to get outside, lift the door of my studio, and listen to the birds. they are a marvelous chorus. they are used to my spreading seeds now. they appear, magically. some are coming closer. they expect me. i know that they come whether i spread seeds or not.

and what comes to me is this form of "faithfulness" and "willingness" that signals a sense of interconnectedness that trusts what is not visible, what is hoped for.

seems to me our ultimate faithfulness and willingness is that of trusting the interconnectedness of the whole and the holiness that is larger than the accidents of birth or the imminence of death.

this is the awareness that surpasses being born, and is sometimes called the second birth: awareness that is greater than Time, loss, death. awareness that is sometimes called grace.

coming to me this morning with the chorus of these birds. several species thereof.

John Calvin Dotson

courtesy of John Calvin Dotson

Angels unseen hide
green in the forest amid
Wind's silent laughter

Haiku +1

Daffodils announce

Spring’s officially running

the neighborhood again

To Erika

Kindred spirits in our ways
What bliss so close to hear you play
Simple and sublime, open-hearted and committed to it
Having to choose between watching your fingers pluck strings with fierce tenderness or look down to capture your essence,

I did a bit of both. Enjoy the next bit of journey you take.

The light this day
Sung in soprano tones
Golden till the gloaming arrived
Blue now and tequila pink somewhere on a horizon line
Circling the globe to light a path for the troubadouress

Love and Light.

Haiku

new love crystallized
the moment it was thought of
happens everyday

new love crystallized
the moment it was dreamt of
happens all the time

new love crystallized
the moment it was spoke of
happening, right now!

Haiku at 10 a.m.

The Truth is Simple
Love is Ever-Present, So
Breathe Deep and Often

Start a huge, foolish, project

Start a huge, foolish, project
Like Noah.

It makes absolutely no
Difference what people
Think of you.
   -Rumi

Le printemps

leaf buds abundant as mushrooms, trapped
within velvet covered bark eggshells
yearn to break through
harbingers silently singing
of gentle light and fresh ginger root warmth that stirs
potent juices sleeping in the vines and trunks and roots
salmonberry, maple, pines, ferns and blackberry

newborns hatching
fighting for the lighting
beyond a porous opaque
womb within the cocoon
they tap tap tap till a crack
occurs

time lapse: denouement
green edges and bright white
perfumes escape as Winter Daphne blooms earlier than Daffodils

Botanical rebels and frontrunners
set the stage for the divas with tender constitutions
that dare not take the stage before the proper cue of hotter spotlight
lest they experience stagefright and freeze o'ernight

it will not do,
it was not due,
it best not dew

to frost this scene

(three days later)

Spring's approach, swiftly
Scented with crisp potential
Crocus burst today

when I was not looking

Sliding Backwards

5:27pm

winds been blowing all day long
disrupting little outside
distracting me endlessly
imagined what it might feel like to be
rooted to a place
subject to being blown upon all day long
whether it was wanted or not?

do trees mind they are at the mercy of a strong wind or too much rain that might erode the stability of the soil they root within?

lightening has yet to strike any of these trees I call siblings

or do they simply live in the flow
even though they aren't water or air
at peace with forces that destroy and nurture
reminded each spring: without water and air they'd not exist

the view from this window of mine
static and ever changing
a picture of duality, chaos, harmony, life beginning, and decay
that feeds life by recycling, transmuting and transforming infinitely

green, green, green, and mottled brown-grey bark, and silver on the youthful limbs where light hits just right the slender bare maple
a piliated woodpecker enters stage left in search of grubs
a robin scopes the grounds for worms in the spotty patch of grass
earth brown and peppered speckled sparrows streak the red brown earth darting for the cover of exposed roots between frenzied ongoing searches for what we all need

Chi. Energy. Love. Food. Source. And always in need of another meal of it.

I'm not feeling very buddha-like today as the gloaming approaches
I'm not experiencing myself as very original as I regurgitate questions asked by the legacies before me and consider confusions that will remain so.

Oh I know the questions and the best answers and most days I believe them to be universal truths. And then there are the days

I'm sliding backwards toward my human-ness after a night with God.

excerpt of a letter to a friend

(Am I?)

Too much alike
Too much of a good thing
Too good to be true

Not at all.
Not at all.
Not at all.

Speaking of you. Speaking of me. No matter. Same thing.

One coin. two sides. What's on the edge between them. That's the gap I wish to explore.

(I Am? I Am. Yes, definitely I Am.)

The invisible postscript: Directions to this heart--Pick any star and gaze on till morning

"Whatever I am imparting to you, please don't do the same as has been done down the ages by millions of people, misunderstanding or trying to manipulate things according to their own vested interest.

I am telling you about these sutras [spiritual insights] just to remind you that if other people, simple and ordinary, were capable of becoming buddhas, it will be a shame if you die before you become a buddha. Let us make a deep commitment -- not to anybody, but to yourself -- that you are going to invest every breath for the ultimate purpose of being an eternal light, a lotus in full bloom. Without being a buddha you don't have any meaning in your life." Osho (No Mind: The Flowers of Eternity)

Happy Birthday To Me

Dear Universe,

Thank you for the acknowledgement and for the record, this is truly the very first year I have "advertised" it is my birthday to any and all who'd listen. Whatever could that mean? That I am more glad than ever to be alive.

So much time to LOVE....

*************************

Thursday, February 23, 2006

TO: Deborah Drake

FR: The Universe

Happy Birrrrthday to Youuuu,

Happy Birrrrthday to Youuuu,

Happy Birrrrthday Dear Deborah,

Happy Birrrrthday to Youuuu!

A few years back… not so long ago, heaven and earth erupted into a major celebration with the news of your impending adventure into this very time and space. You see, someone like Deborah Drake doesn’t come along all that often… in fact, there’s never been a single one like you, nor is there ever ANY possibility that another will come again. You’re an Angel among us. Someone, whose eyes see what no others will EVER see, whose ears hear what no others will EVER hear, and whose perspective and feelings will NEVER, ever be duplicated. Without YOU, the Universe, and ALL THAT IS, would be sadly less than it is.

Quite simply:

You’re the kind of person

Who’s hard to forget,

A one-in-a-million

To the people you’ve met.

Your friends are as varied

As the places you go,

And they all want to tell you

In case you don’t know:

That you make a big difference

In the lives that you touch,

By taking so little

And giving so much!

Deborah, you are so AWESOME! For your birthday, friends and angels from every corner of the Universe, including buddies you didn’t know you had, will be with you to wish you the HAPPIEST of Birthdays and an exciting new year in time and space. You won’t be alone!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Deborah!

Mike

Orlando, Florida, USA

cold morning after a cold night

a light white frosting
was airbrushed o'er now crispy grass
Jack Frost's graffiti art

brrrh..

Three Crows and Falcon

two crows and falcon
perched in tall bare hard wood
watching cold grey sky

crows harrassed falcon
falcon stayed its branch calmly
crows hopped about

crows wouldn't give up
falcon followed suit silent
what pointless effort

one gave up and then
another took to the sky
leaving one falcon

falcon looked left
and right and around; then chose
left with the gloaming

As did I.

imagine a hat

imagine a hat full of adjectives or nouns or verbs or adverbs...hundreds or thousands of options and the mission being...

compose now
extemporaneously
and see what fruit is born

Evidence of Angels

A waterfall of pure and milky white light
poured down the side of the tree edged hill
and onto the slate grey ribbon
called the road I travelled

A sun eclipsed by cold morning mist
made Brigadoon of half the rising peak
A pure silver orb did it appear
pushing light rays by the millions
through prickly pointed evergreens
appearing as deeply serated knives
protruding from the mound of earth

So white, so light, so bright the soft edges
overlaid upon the blue-black backlit slope
like a downy quilt cast aside
and the sun did rise and shine and reach and breach the
permeable screen of trees as light popped through
and took the form of an angel with wings
as I rounded to curve and began my ascent to heaven and earth

Where is a pin hole camera when you need it?

It's a grand thing

In eight days time I pass again a landmark

feeling no older but a little wiser

realizing with my new found wisdom through living and loving

I have so much I do not know

Non-Haikus

I take the long way

Ribbons of road before me
Morning mist rising off frosty fields
The smallest birds flitting from one slender branch to another
Silken strands of spider's art; are they they supporting the crooked branches?
Things are not always what they seem to be
Or are they?

***
This morning again
I gathered all the silver threads
Left behind on my pillow
By my dreams colored with desire and red, red, red
That woke me at 4:19am
Then commenced again once I fell again into slumber
Gently I gathered them all up and cast them to the wind

Some harbinger of spring building a nest for young ones to come
May find themselves with particularly passionate songbirdlings

But what is a dreamer to do with dreams that are not to be realized the next day?

Release and let them be re-cycled in useful ways
No worries, this I do.
Fearlessly I surrender them
They'll return tonight as the moon grows riper still
Silver orb it is in close consort with Orion these days

I'll pay homage again under a cold clear sky
And pray for that same dream again
with an extra prayer request
more color
more texture

more, more, more

That I might wake breathless in wonder another day even before I look out a window

***

Sarah Vaughn my friend
has kept me company well
Black coffee and love

(oh how could I not post a haiku?)

Beloved

Privately I write so much more than I ever would publically declare
What a strategy I believe myself to be executing with perfection
What a fallacy to hide feelings from the other side of the coin
That is simply another facet of me.

Extemporaneously

God, make me a bird to fly far far away
God, make me a bird to fly home today

I'll pick a good tree to call home for the hour
I'll carry from one field to another
the seeds that will burst to become the next flower

I'll surrender the desire to create an original
I'd rather be once again with all that I am

Come from nowhere
Part of everything
Divesting myself of this cloak calling itself Ego that will protect me at all costs. Even when it costs me myself.

Yes, the meadows support both grasses, weeds and flowers
but how do we tell one from the other? Are they not all part of the master plan intelligently designed?

God, give me wings this day
I'll put them to good use.