Note to Self:
Go outside! Feet on earth, hands in water, hands on bark. Fresh air in the lungs.
Take a quick moment to notice your body. Are your shoulders up there beside your ears? Breathe in. Breathe out, and let them settle back to where they belong.
Here’s a poem from The Song of the Toad and the Mockingbird:
Bridge
Walk barefoot on Earth.
Walk, knowing your very being
is Her being.
Her rocks are your bones,
Her rivers your blood,
Her Living Soil your muscles and skin.
Be a living bridge between Earth and Sky–
Earth marries sky within you.
Your spine is a conduit.
Walk, open and aware.
Walk, electric with knowing.
Gratitude List:
1. The dogwood tree is beginning to bloom. The two dogwoods stand on either side of the driveway. I call them my guard-dogwoods. I haven’t hung poems on the one closest to the house for years, but I still think of it as the Poet-tree. It will always be the Poet-tree.
2. Yesterday I walked back to myself. The sadness is still there, but I think now it is riding with me instead of me riding it.
3. The Helpers. You are one. And You. And You.
4. Resilience.
5. And still, that violet. That blue.
May we walk in Beauty!
“We have all hurt someone tremendously, whether by intent or accident. We have all loved someone tremendously, whether by intent or accident. it is an intrinsic human trait, and a deep responsibility, I think, to be an organ and a blade. But, learning to forgive ourselves and others because we have not chosen wisely is what makes us most human. We make horrible mistakes. It’s how we learn. We breathe love. It’s how we learn. And it is inevitable.” —Nayyira Waheed
“To me, it’s all right if you look at a tree, as the Hindus do, and say the tree has a spirit. It’s a mystery, and mysteries don’t compromise themselves—we’re never gonna know. I think about the spiritual a great deal. I like to think of myself as a praise poet.” —Mary Oliver
“When you hold a child in your arms, or hug your mother, or your husband, or your friend, if you breathe in and out three times, your happiness will be multiplied at least tenfold.” —Thich Nhat Hanh
“I stuck my head out the window this morning, and spring kissed me BANG in the face.” —Langston Hughes
“In the morning, wonder and be generous like the sun.
In the evening, meditate and be kind like the moon.”
—Debasish Mridha
“There is a huge silence inside each of us that beckons us into itself, and the recovery of our own silence can begin to teach us the language of heaven.” —Meister Eckhart
“Every spring is the only spring—a perpetual astonishment.” —Ellis Peters
Mockingbird Chronicles 