When even small birds
know who to listen to so
that all of us can
soar, you’d think we humans would
take note and not let
entrenched interests rule the roost
and soil our nest with fear.
JDG
(The reference is to the small finch that landed on Bernie Sander’s podium as he spoke in Portland, Oregon Friday.)
In an effort to be tidy
they clipped forsythia’s golden wings.
She stands now, rigid and straight,
her flow surrendered
to the tyranny of row and square.
JDG
I don’t want to make
too much of this, but it’s true –
Every day on my
way to work I pass by several
cemeteries. Though
I know they haven’t just sprung
up, my awareness
has and with it, a heightened
sense of all life’s joy
and all life’s suffering, of
all that once was and
all that is no longer -the
poignant price of being mortal.
JDG
A blanket of white
questions covers that green field
punctuated with
purple exclamations –
a lively letter from Spring.
JDG
Full moon chases sun
across the sky. It’s not their
destiny to meet.
JDG
At day’s end I pause
and offer thanks for pauses
large and small that let
me rest from busyness and
find my way back to center.
JDG
To be fully seen,
accepted but not excused –
invited to look
at an act of foolishness,
not alone, but in
communion with another –
that was the lasting
legacy given to me
all those years ago
by my Irish grandfather
on a stoop far from
his native land. May I have
grace enough to pass it on.
JDG
Two hundred years old,
that African Methodist
Episcopal church
in South Carolina, shows
every one of us
how we can be great again.
We must embody
love, wisdom, and courage -all
three – simultaneously.
JDG
“I’ve
come home,” she
said, her face alight
with joy, her voice filled with relief.
It was in these Virginia mountains that she first
learned she had the grit to see hard things through. Now,
four years later, she’ll bring that learning into her college classrooms
as she is strengthened and challenged by these mountains to see more hard things through.
JDG
Another middle of the night survey
of all that’s wrong
with the world and me –
and another chance to practice.
This time I’ll try that ancient form
of meditation, tonglen.
I’ll breathe in fear, foolishness, and hate
and breathe out their antidotes,
courage, wisdom, and love.
When the air is filled with these,
perhaps I’ll find my way to restful sleep.
JDG
