Category Archives: Poetry

Attunement

My full “Yes!”
Bellows from my Soul.
Attune my Astral Body.
Raise my vibration so that
I may live life
More Fully,
More Authentically,
More Powerfully,
Myself.

Sing in me a new Song,
So beautiful and true,
That the old, slow tune
Of my past existence,
No longer resonates in
This new place of myself.

Breathe into me the
Story of my life path
With such force that it
Takes my breath away
And I gulp…
I gulp in this new reality
Of ME,
Fully Lived.

Grief

DSC_2750Grief… What do you want of me?
We want your tears
Bottled deep inside
Poured out
And released.
You may not hold them hostage any longer.
They are the expression
of love poured out,
an expression of loss so deep
it cannot be dealt with
in a day
or week
or month.

We demand your full bodied release
Of all your pain and suffering.
We call you to release those deep moans
Of your despair.
We need you to be strong no more,
But to be weak…
So weak that you crumble
And allow life to hold and support you.

You cannot move through this
With mere determination and focus.
It will take surrender to
Being present
To the deep despair,
the fear,
the pain,
And sorrow
Inside you.

KARE
2/06

A week after returning

I am tired – bone tired.
So tired I’d like to stay in bed for days
Easing in and out of sleep.
My eyes are heavy.
My stomach twists in knots.
My diaphragm constricts.
My breath is short and shallow,
Preventing me from going deeper
Into my sadness and shame.

What am I ashamed of?
Having so much,
Still yearning towards more,
The constant hunger for more.

I am so impatient
And I have so much.
I should be giggling with glee at my great fortune.
Instead I lament in not enoughness.

Breathe in deeper.
Deeper still.
Breathe into that place where scarcity
Cannot mask your grief.
Sit quietly as you did with Empho
And feel the gift of grief.

Grieve for the children,
Gift and Rose.
Grieve for the mothers
dying in their beds
as their children work from dawn to dusk to feed them.
Grieve for the 1 out of 3 babies
who will not see their first birthdays.
Grieve for the 80% of adults who are unemployed
and awake each day “without a purpose”.
Grieve for the children sharing sexual favors for food.
Grieve for the women who don’t dare ask their husbands to use a condom.
He will only banish her from her home
and have sex with wife number 2.
Grieve for the women who work 8 hours a day,
each day, as volunteers
caring for those who are dying.
Grieve for Cora who goes into the townships day after day
as her grief and anger challenge her sanity.
Grieve for the little girls who are raped,
the children with no parents,
the little boys who will never know a father.

And then, Celebrate the Abundance
of light in Sam’s eyes,
of steady work for Niko and I,
for a husband I trust, love and respect,
and who trusts, loves, and respects me,
for our beautiful home and strong community,
for a refrigerator that is full,
for gas heat,
electricity,
running water,
a toilet,
for too much stuff and the luxury of purging,
for health and the inconvenience of a 5 day flu,
for the burst of color in our garden,
for the opportunities to learn and grow and be me.

So much,
So much,
So many gifts given me.
God, help me to be
a good steward.