Prayer with beads… August 30 update:

These are the moments I share with you
This is how I am enfolded in your love

This is how my breath moves in your body
This is where you rest in me

3x108 or till you don't count

Affectionate, tender, recognizing that your love is an offering that
does not have to be accepted or reciprocated for it to exist, the
Beloved knows

Much less mattered then, yet in some ways it mattered much more.
Every year it mattered both more and less than before.
There was a brittle kind of innocent sensuality
There was an attempt to understand causality
There was a love of play and incipient mental agility
There was cruelty and some defiant fantasies
And a dreaminess to the real that floated in and out the door

Harpo Marx tore the strings out of a piano
That kind of crazy made more sense than manners and such
Groucho insulted everyone with a flair for only rudeness

Even then a part of me was interested in nudeness
I smacked a girl with a stick because she was cutting our grass
It attracted me strangely, her defiant fear and excitement
It was a lovemaking I have never forgotten, both pleasure and shame
My father was watching and told we what I did was wrong
I knew he was right but agreed when DH Lawrence told me he was wrong
I knew that too all along
A conjunction conundrum, a deadeye mix of pride and blame
Another memory that refused to integrate, another impasse

Living when young is too precious to ignore
But then isn’t every moment? Who gets to decide
Whether life is worth living? Nobody. Yet the question never goes away
While we keep looking for the line we really want to walk

To remain alive, to continue fresh and brave inside.

Here, not here

Beloved,
in the absence of your presence
I find space, inviting (opening)

in the presence of your absence
I find silence, waiting (wanting)
but when you begin to turn,

O mystery,
dancing this way and that,
I just drop my head into your lap
and
dream

“Vulnerability is a dark crystal, hidden next to our soul and transmitting the soul’s light along three subtle axes: emotional opening, sympathetic connecting and aesthetic surrendering. Or we could call them love - harmony - beauty. In vulnerability our spirit is awakened to love, connected thru harmony and released in beauty.” — Kiran Rana

Somehow it takes a day for me to gather myself to the new year. Yesterday, I felt afloat or in a dream, untethered from who-what-where I was, and content. Today, I feel here, still content, ready to say "Hello, life, Hello, time, Hello the familiar and all unfamiliars to come. Let’s gather in Being."

Maybe that’s what I was feeling when I wrote the list poem below in January 2017. Still happy anew.

New Dear 2017

A new where
A new tear
A new fear
A new hear

A new heart
A new hearing
A new head
A new clearing
A new caring
A new daring

A new wanting
A new awaiting
A new arising
A new surprising
A new moment
A new meeting
A new bold tone
A new greeting

A new stepping-stone
A new repeating
A new oddness
A new oldness
A new warm
A new coldness
A new hardness
A new softness
A new boughtness
A new soldness

A new-in-dow opening
A new out-door closed
A new day accepted
A new way unfolds
oncenew departs
nownew renews

A new breath
A new embrace
A new greeting
A new grace

Shalom Shanti Hu Yassou
This Year
Happy
Anew