Category: Poetry

This is notthe end.  News that may come as a salve in the dry cold of winter, or like an unwelcome tugon the hammock of August.However finishedyou’re afraid you areor wish you could be,remember: this quiet earth resting beneath youis racing around the sun,teaching your bodythe ancient dance of seasons.You are carriedwith a million yearsof faith: that there is more in… Continue reading This Is Not the End

All I Meanby James A. Pearson There are a thousand woundsbut all I mean by healingis this: that you learn to hold yourselfin exactly the wayyou were never held. Here’s the homework I got an online course I’m taking this week: To set a notification on my phone that pops up several times a day… Continue reading All I Mean – a poem for healing

Self-Compassionby James A. Pearson Remember that a lakecan freezeand unfreezea thousand times and feel no shame. A coach I worked with a couple years ago often reminded me that life is a cycle of forgetting and remembering. Over and over. One day you feel close and connected with yourself, with the world. The next day… Continue reading Self-Compassion Poem

Patience darling,it’s still too earlyto trust the seasonwith that tenderness you holdin your globed hands. I can feel it, too—the yearning to plantyour fingers in the warming earthand release what’s so alive in youinto the scrum of all life. But the ground’s still frozen beneath all this mud.And winter on its way outwill take with it… Continue reading The Mud Season

by Antonio Machado, my translation Walker, only your footprintsare the path, and nothing else;Walker, there is no path,you make a path by walking.Your walking becomes the path,and when you look backyou see a trail you can neverset foot on again.Walker, there is no pathexcept wakes upon the sea. Eight years ago I packed everything I… Continue reading Caminante

I wonder if you can pause—just for a moment—the emergency of your lifeand step outinto the quiet of the world. Hear how gently it conveysthe delicate thread of birdsong,how quickly it can soothethe rupture of a passing jet.Feel its vast, smiling invitationto rest back intothe person you’ve been all your life. Listen now–the poppies burstingout… Continue reading Worker Bees

The forest closes behind meand now this subtle path at my feetis the red thread between worlds,a path made by the soft stepsof wild things, who are at homein the tangled mystery. But I am new to this way of walking—how the trail flirts and teases,fading and hiding and calling you on;how it disappears and… Continue reading Game Trails

The day after the election was called I went for a walk in the local forest. It was a cold day. Thick clouds had layered the sky since morning. But just before the sun went down it slipped beneath the gray and lit the trees in a beautiful, heatless glow. Something about the whole autumn… Continue reading Where We Are Now

Voting in this election is critical. But it’s not enough. This poem doesn’t pretend to be a full prescription for what our country needs. It’s just my way of acknowledging that all electoral choices are imperfect. Because even more important is what happens between elections—the long, slow work of building a culture of love and… Continue reading What To Do After Voting