Winter is here! Snow and ice are everywhere–just as New Year’s revelers are preparing to hit the roads! So be careful, folks. And obey the signs!

Well, OK, not all signs.

Disgusting weather alert!

It’s all that snot that did it!

Works for me.

Shouldn’t have eaten so much cake.

Warning: Darwinian conditions ahead.

If you get stuck, ask for help. But be careful who you ask.

Lord, is there such a thing as un-praying?

Ah, what’s a little snow, eh?

No comment.

Two pieces of sizzly, juicy quiche
Nose to nose on a plate
Waiting to be devoured
Two steaming cups of coffee
So much better than one

Two people cuddled up together for a time
In a warm cozy bed
As dawn breaks on the first
Chilly morning of fall
So much better than one

Two mourners
One sitting at her mother’s graveside
Holding her father’s hand
One standing above her
Gently rubbing her shoulders as she weeps
So much better than one

Two lovers sitting out on the back patio
After the obituary and the service is written
And the sisters are gone
Gazing up at the Harvest Moon
Listening to love songs
So much better than one

(c) Jane Ellen Holliday Wilson
October 2017

In a time of national crisis, what our country really needs is a good poem.

—Herbert Hoover

This is the time when we must say to the stranger,

the other, sit here. Notice how difficult it can be

to even come to the same table, how hard

to look the other in the eye. Something in us screams,

“Right, I am right.” And it is hard to hear the voice

beneath that scream, a whisper of a gospel that says

nothing at all.

This is the time when we must say to ourselves,

I am also the stranger, when we must look

in the mirror and not know who it is we see—

someone capable of being more courageous,

more compassionate, more devoted, more

astonishingly vulnerable and connected

than we ever knew ourselves to be. Who

is that stranger in the mirror, we must ask,

and vow to never…

Each day, before the sun rises
I cast my lot with the believers–
those who have come to know
that there is a Source within
from which all things emerge,

which does not play
by our rules and constraints.
It is Mystery, sometimes
soothing mother, often
maddening jokester,
always larger than our vision
of what it should be.

When I awake, the birds
are still voiceless, the streets
not yet in rhythm with the duties
and desires of their denizens.
I sip from a steaming cup
to melt away the remnants
of the night’s lethargy and
burrow slowly into the stillness
of naked Being where
I listen and wait.

This is the place where
deeper meanings are discerned
and commitments are forged.
This is the place where healings
are announced and poems
are conceived. And for those
who would bow and surrender,
this is the grace of the Sacred
Now—divine…