Category: Poetry

This is notthe end.News that may comeas a salvein the dry cold of winter,or like an unwelcome tugon the hammockof August.However finishedyou’re afraid you areor wishyou could be,remember:​this earth that restsso still beneath youis racing around the sun,teaching your bodyto dance the seasons.You are carried with a million years of 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

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, even on its way out,will take with… Continue reading The Mud Season

by Antonio Machado (my translation) Walker, only your footprintsare the path, and nothing else;Walker, there is no path,paths are made 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 owned… Continue reading Caminante

I wonder if you can pause—just for a moment—the emergency of your lifeand step out into 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 into the person you’ve been all your life. Listen now–the… 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

Take back that part of yourselfyou lent to politicians.Peel their slogans from your mouthand pledge your allegianceto the mother down the streetwhose kids have grown outoftheir summer shoes again. And if you’re going to raise a flaglet it be the flag of forgiveness,the flag of our complicityin so much we say we’re against.Under that flag… Continue reading What To Do After Voting