Category: Poems

We encounter things
So strange yet still so common
Children’s services
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When people explore
Hidden counter narrative
Is that which is there
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It is odd to know
Experience teaches me
That I know nothing
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People just don’t know
that what they say matters
Reflecting on them
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Now we work our best
serving other peoples needs
Then what happens next.
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Orion fell out
Of the sky and scorpion
Usurped selfishly
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Day started in peace
Then wry sense of gain or loss
As the sunset wanes
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Afternoon walk

Walked around aging
It’s better than just sitting
Around getting old
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The magic of eyes

Each of us sees what we want to see
And we are blind to that which we cannot see.
Whether the truth lies in plain view or not.
Our rods and cones are uniquely aligned.

A blink, or a squint, at the truth may open our view, or not.
Like dust in the eyes the view can be rubbed out.
Tears may flow to clear away the distortion.
The impressions from a peripheral glance may bring it into focus.

For those of us with blind spots, which means everyone,
The things we trip over were obvious to those around us.
Just as we see their tripping hazards that they don’t recognize.
But there’s no denying, denial is an effective filter.

How come I can’t get you to see what you will not see?
Perspective is both point of view and position
The glare in the eyes may be the reflection of a vision we have not shared
Or the view is seen together after a long thoughtful gaze.

Do you see what I mean? Can you? Do you want to?
Without insight a beam of light flashes on steel
and bounces off in another incredible direction
Never illuminating the space the steel reflected.

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The line of thin hope
Inhibits effectiveness
Until it is gone
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You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.
Eleanor Roosevelt to Anne
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If prayer has no power but words matter
Then saying some things has meaning

If meaning is found in the results of actions and intentions are a guide
Then the real results matter and perceptions should be filtered by results

Meaning can be inferred evidence gathered as things happen
But people allow perceptions to enshroud truth.

If the sound and the fury can overcome the truth and the good
Then what is the meaning of what we do?

What good is it to know the truth
If the powerful forces in the world dominate the power of good in the world

The power is in me
Your power is in you
This we know is true

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“Knowing right, being wrong. Would you change” Tracy Chapman
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Look down all the days
Our mind can be spotty or clear
Our thoughts can be tenuous or firm
Our hopes can be simple or grand
Yet our breathes will come steady and clear
As our fate is made or revealed.
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Orion runner
Flies through life across the sky
Like it all matters
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If we only knew
Indestructible compassion
Underlies all life.
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When you go with the flow
Then life gives you rapids or a plunging waterfall
The water moves fast down to the sea
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The absence of the ability to pray
In the face of limited evidence of positive results
Leaves you where?
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What is needed is
A serious inversion
Of all our thinking.
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In purgatory
The time passes painfully
With uncertainty
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Orion places me on the planet
But the planet moves continuously
But I can’t change
Change is so hard for each person
We are what we were
We became what we were meant to be
We were meant to be what we tried to be
And what our stumbled path led us into
Change, space, place, and self
Being now, living now, listening now
How?
I can’t express myself except sideways
Through poetry which no one reads or cares about.

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First and foremost a
Loving presence is vital
Found through a prayer
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Thoughts upon reading the introduction to the Book of Job

Life doesn’t have to make sense.
We miss some things if we are busy looking for that which makes sense.
The Creator didn’t say to you or me, “Here, come and be born and it will make sense.” The Creator said, in many ways, “Come and be born and enjoy the beauty of this world; be human and treat all other humans with kindness. Respect My creation and share it.”
Where in that invitation does the Creator say it has to make sense in order for you or me to fulfill our role.
Making sense is a process we use to become more effective.
Each of us has to realize that other humans make sense in a different way than we do. Sometimes our senses coincide in our interpretation; often, however, the sense we have differs.
Our Creator and this world is open to our human senses and our extraordinary intuition.
The best hope we can have is to create and fulfill our destiny even though life doesn’t make sense.
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Through each of our trials
Patience still shines through like a
Glowing corona
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“What one comes to understand in the pursuit of science is the vastness of our ignorance.”
David Eagleman, author of Incognito, The secret lives of the brain.
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Ask humility
A life in purgatory
Shows me the hard way
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Another day in life
Making things better giving
Advise from afar
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Change is not a choice
Change is a struggle to become
Something different
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Orion returns
In September ready to
Wrest kindness from wrath
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In the absence of evidence convenient theories rush in.

CJ Chivers on Fresh Air 07/27/11
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Hard times aren’t going to rule my mind.
Gillian Welch
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Setting off to stick
My hand into the dragon’s
Mouth. Rescuing again
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“People want to believe in heroes and villains, especially when they are frightened. It’s less taxing than the truth.”

“Nothing wondrous can come in this world unless it rests on the shoulders of kindness.”

La Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver
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Meditate on the
Fabulous new beginning
Of every new day
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Rusting and tarnish
Of everyday life give way
To shining spirit
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Do it your own way.
Being a bucket of quirks
Is the human way.
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“Fern was up at daylight trying to rid the world of injustice.”
E.B. White
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Winds of change blowing
The seasons inevitably
To a new era
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New kind of normal
That relies on miracles
Is all that is left
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The dark cloud over
My head is so slow it can’t
even keep up with me

(Not a real haiku but it made me laugh)
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An optimistic
Fatalist saw the outcome
Coming and he smiled
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Watch what you ask for.
I prayed for humility
And look what I got
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Every song played
today was about losers
getting lucky. Me
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The emperor rules
An inner empire, having
Absolute control
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Spinning never stops
Stories go round and around
Until no one cares

Around and around
Like dust in a tornado
Spinning never stops
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From life’s lessons learned I cannot conclude I know what is in the heart and mind of someone.
I can’t say why intractable unreasonable positions are developed.
I can’t say why lies are told and retold.
I genuinely don’t understand why distortions, half truths, and misunderstandings solidify in some people’s perspectives and form their judgments.
I can’t say I understand how well intentioned responses fail.
I suspect they are not given the opportunity to change anyone’s perspective.
There are assumptions made about things in the distant past which never occurred as they were retold.

I can say I hope to understand kindness.
I have learned that if I pray for humility for thirty years the Creator has a special way to help me learn it.
I can say I know that people behave from what they believe are their own best intentions even when they are wrong.
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Now that he is exiled from every place on earth except a desert wilderness. He declares a passion for cactus.
From La Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver
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