In the last few years before I woke up, I began to yearn deeply for Truth. I’d experienced the sudden loss of my father to a stroke when I was 37, then two years later the shock of my mother exiting her life as a pedestrian fatality. My son faced near death twice, leaving me reeling at the fragility of life. My 17 year marriage crashed, hurtling me into a series of love affairs looking for happily ever after, only to find myself alone, again and again and not particularly happy.

The beauty of the unsatisfactory-ness of life, the gift in the chaos and discord, was it wasn’t easy to settle down into the dream and just live it out asleep. This ego called Lori became increasingly paper-thin and unreal. These poems written in the years leading to my awakening to awareness are pointers. There is in them the same seed of deep yearning that is in you, the same call to the beloved Self. Please feel free to share broadly if any one poem speaks to the depths of your own yearning heart.

Enjoy, Awareness Is Here!

Changling

 It happens. When the molting season
flays and tugs and pulls, asking me:
What are you Becoming?

 When the layers fall away
from what was there
all along. And reveal
that the center cannot hold
because the center that was real
in the dream
is unreal
in the waking.

 And I wonder: What is truth?

Do we ever really know
ourselves, when the knower
is unreal?

And the yearning?
Is that insatiable quest,
to be seen, heard, known,
met.
Is it real?

 Do we imagine only
the unknowing
is possible
Do we imagine it
because we have
forgotten
ourselves.

 Feb 2009 

———

God, Breathing Down My Neck

I gave up
Seeking god
Lifetimes ago.
I quit.

It wasn’t paying well,
It had no medical benefits. All this
Longing and searching, beseeching
And praying.
For what?

For the specialness
Of a saffron robe, a life
Of celibacy, a kosher
Existence?

In this life, I gorged on
Bacon, and fucked like an animal
And never once sat down
Cross legged to meditate.

In this life I let go. I decided
To STOP looking.
This is really funny.
When I stopped looking,
God found me. When I was minding
My own sweet business, God
Kept butting in.

What a pain in the ass. After eons
Avoiding me
God suddenly
Can ‘t stop
Harassing me.

Okay,
So what next?
Do I stop.
Do I say, without
A grain of hesitation, Yes!
What happens when I stop running?
What happens when God catches me?
I’ll let you know….

March 2009

———–

Hide and Seek

I thought the game
was eternal
that forever
God would seek.
The rules were omnipotent,
the strategy, ever present,
the game plan
divine simplicity.
God closed her Eye
and counted to three
while I ran at light speed
and tucked myself
into a singularity
at the far reaches
of awareness.
The waiting, after an eon,
got boring. God looked
while I fell
asleep.
And dreamed
I was awake
in a world
where God hid,
and I sought.
Where God was lost
and would never
be found.
Where the rules
were mortal, the strategy
terminal, the game plan
infinitely complex.
I must have screamed
in my sleep,  alerted God
to my whereabouts,
because just when I thought
the nightmare was real
just when I had forgotten
it was only a dream,
I felt a gentle nudge
on my shoulder
the whisper of Her
Voice uttering
the inevitable blessed outcome
of any game played
with God: I win
she said, with Absolute
glee in her Eye
while I let the ecstasy
of losng
fill me
to overflowing.
I’ve learned this:
the trick to playing
any game with God
is to remember
that winning is losing,
and losing is winning.

Sept 6, 2009.

————-

Holy Moral Dilemna

There is promise here, in this paired place,
of a safe ease without the buzz
of what next, what if, if only.

 And yet here, I am sometimes restless.
As if my soul is wired for action, for split
second love and last minute partners,
adventure in each turning.

 As if I am alive only
when I walk the edge
of maybe.
As if certainty
is certain death.

 And I think to myself:
do I have “commitment issues?”

 Perhaps I commit fully
to not knowing.
the way a warrior
commits to battle–
with my life.

 Or the way a monk
commits to God,
in each holy moment
with no expectations
for exclusivity.

 How special we make each other
when we promise to love
in twosomes, as if we
are the last pair on earth
and our narrow love
will save the day.

 I imagine God
loves in multiplicity,
and with no conditions.
That God has figured out
that there is more than
enough of her to go around,
that love is never
in short supply.

 I can’t imagine God
saying, sorry,
I’m taken.

November 9, 2009

———-

What happens when the crack
appears in the wall, the fissure
that promises to loose the whole lake
of feeling, the damned damn bursting
from a line as fine as a hair,
or the look in your eyes.

 What happens when it breaks?

 Do I run for high ground, the place
where i am unreachable?
Or do I stand my ground
and let the wave carry me?

 There is asked of me, a willingness
to let the whole damned thing burst
wide open, to be swept by grace
into the arms of no-thing
so that everything
is mine and I am,
Everything.

 Do I dare give up the wall
that has kept me fearless
because I have hidden
from what is real
while pretending,
pretending, pretending.

 Do I dare open the gates
and say to the flood:
Drown me, now, I am
ready. Take me
to the promised
land, on the ark
of surrender.

 Take me, take me, take me

Home.

 November 25, 2009

————-

Neither Nor

The life we lead is postulated in terms
of either- or….as if we have a fork
in every road that begs us to choose:
this or that, this way or that way.
This lover, or that lover…this career,
or that, this value or the other….

But what if…..
What if the game of either- or
is the distraction
that keeps us from the One
Word that would wake us up.

 What if the preposition
that God intended is AND.
Perhaps either- or, is a way
to hide the power
of AND…the power of this AND that.
Him And Her. God And Me.
When i was separated
it was a matter of God or Me–
Who would triumph in the dual
that determined
the locus of control.
As if this illusion was really
my life. As if it was really
worth fighting for.
Instead, I surrender.
There is no fork in my road
there is not either-or.
There is One Truth: All roads
lead to Home. All roads
begin with AND.

December 5, 2009

—————

The Weaving

 Did you know? Something good
is always trying to happen,
even when a loose thread unravels
the whole of existence, or one snag
in the dreamtime becomes a gap
in the fabric of your plans?

 I walked through a web one morning,
a shimmering creation that spider
had spun right over my door,
placed so that when I crossed the threshold
I tore right through all the hard work,
all the nights weaving, leaving
a hole in my path.

 And in a certain light, I knew
that this was not a destruction
but a way through to something,
that my clumsy passage had left
a possibility–in my wake,
an opening.

 You know,
something glorious
is always
trying to happen.

Dec 17, 2009

————

 Modern Love

 This experiment in love

Takes the old formula
of expectation, attachment
And ownership, and mixes
A new elixir, with ingredients
Like surrender, expansion.
And trust.

 I trust that when I soften
In the face of reality, when I yield
My judgments, release
My thoughts,
That I open so wide,
So vastly, deeply, open,
That nothing gets stuck
in the passage, not one
sticky thought, not one
clenched emotion.

 Instead, it all flows through
And I am
Nothing but the free flowing,
Torrential movement
of love.

March 3, 2010

————

Soften Or Die

The Is-ness, is so solid
a chunk of This-Is-What-It-Is.
and yet, in my plight, I argue, what if?
What if, I had done it differently?
What if, I had chosen this way?
What if, I am without doubt?
As if the fists of my refusal
can possibly dent
the edifice, the stoney truth
of What is Happening.
And yet, the Is-ness calls me back,
my sweet lover, my tender reminder
that hindsight is masochistic and
foresight a case of control-freaking.
In the laughing gentle face of reality.
my mistakes are beautiful reminders
that a flaw in perfection is the master
artist, reminding us all
of the truth that is so easy
to forget:
Every dropped stitch,
Every missed calculation,
Every errant brush stoke
is genius, pure genius.
Opening us
to the grander truth,
the Ultimate Yes: No mistake
is possible and every seeming
misdirection is truly pointing
the way.
There is nothing to apologize for.
All of your mistakes are beautiful
perfections, perfectly aligned
to show you One True Thing:
This is What it Is.
When you love that,
love the mistake, accept
the imperfection,
embrace the Is-nes
There is nothing Wrong
and nothing Right.
Rumi said it already.

I will meet you there.

 March 26, 2010

———–

The Way of Light

 When every cell says no
stop, do you shout yes!
When you already know
the artery is severed,
the root cut,
do you offer
life support?

Stop your cajoling
the deceased, cease your
incesant chanting to raise
the dead. It is done.

What has passed,
had its perfect
bloom
know that
the flowering
fragranced all
of the realms.

 Let go the childish
notion that what is beautiful
is forever.

 What is, is…

All things, have their
perfect blossoming,
and the light, oh in the light,
they are beacons
of truth.

 Some of you shine
into eternity, some
of you shine finitely
but you shine. Oh,
you shine.

Let the shining be all:
Not the idea of it
but the impact.

The smallest lights
are sometimes
the most
penetrating.

April 29, 2010

————

After the Party

 I woke one day
to the first sober
light, the glint
of truth
in a dull
sky.

This light,
bore no warmth,
no hint
of benevolence.

 Instead, inglorious,
the dawn cast a cold
brilliance, a harsh
reminder of what
was lost.

 All the abandon
in the world,
all the revelry
cannot forever
keep me –with the
lure of pleasure—
from joy.

 This masquerade
never really began.
I dreamed the mask
and in the steel
of this new day,
I awake faceless.

 I always thought
God was kinder.

May 16, 2010

———

Homecoming

 My father used to ask:
When will you be home next?
When you will come back
to the place of your childhood,
the place of fierce thunderstorms
and frost-heaved pavement;
the land of pine and granite and winters
steeped in snow that crunched underfoot
on nights where the stars were so bright
the whole white horizon was bathed
in cold blue.

 I used to look up on those nights
and lose myself in the stellar sky show,
and wonder how
I came to be here
on terra firma,
when I am surely
from there.

 He used to ask me
to visit more often,
to return to the birth
place, as if he knew
my soul longed
for reminders
of home–an outpost
in the far north
on an outpost
called Earth.

 He’s gone now
and I visit less often.
Without his beckoning
I am left to remind myself
that while I am here,
I carry my home
with me. Like turtle
I am nestled
between heaven
and earth, tucked
in the shelter
of my longing
for return.

 Home will find me
one deep night
without waking,
an old woman
bags packed
travelling,
to the stars,
returning.

 June 24, 2010 

————

What I Forgot

 I dreamed
I was a minister, preaching
God is A She.

Nothing new,
just more of the same
Divine Feminine seducing
my unconscious
to accept.

 I told the congregation,
from my perch
above a deep
stairwell:  “When you know
again your Mother,
when you remember her
forgiving embrace
you will remember
your wonder
your curiosity
your joy.

 How curious I am
now on waking
that my fear,
judgment
and despair
have ever
ruined a good
party, this
celebration
called Life.

Nov 23, 2010 

——

Remembering Eden

 In my mother’s garden
there are many splendid
deaths. Marigolds rise up
to the sun while the last
tulip bows down to the earth
in a curtsy of falling petals.

 We take our turns in this garden,
each of us, opening as fully
as we dare to the sky,
rooted in time and space
yet reaching for beyond
in a flourish of hope.

My mother grew flowers
in a bed of rocks, each spring
planting pansies and morning
glories, pruning the wild
rose bush my father uprooted
from the side of a forest road.

 Days before she died
she said, “I won’t plant
a garden next year.” She knew
her flowering was complete,
that the earth was calling
her back.

 I wonder now why I ever
mourned her leaving.
When the last tulip took
her bows, the whole garden
clapped in wild applause,
and the sky kissed the ground
in appreciation.

 In my mother’s garden
every performance
is loved.

May 15, 2011