GIFTS

December 2005

My daughter's heartache
dimmed the lights
this Christmas.
Her raw grief swamped our craft
and we both went down.
But the spirit is meant to try;
Hope lifts our feathers.
We point our noses forward:
one by one,
the healing days
go by.

So yesterday
the sun came out;
the fog had lifted,
trees poking through the mist
the way I like.
Coffee was on,
John Lennon and I were singing
War Is Over and Give Peace A Chance.
Soup was bubbling on the stove,
the incense wafting.
Music is joy
and my feet
still can dance.

Today I sat by someone's dying mother.
How hard she labored
to take just one breath,
then another.
My Christmas gift to God
I had thought that this would be.
It wound up being
God's Christmas gift
to me.
I walked out - on my own two legs -
past all the wheelchairs,
past those in bed,
into the falling dark.
Breathing in the fresh air
was a miracle,
the line between
my life and theirs
so stark.

Tonight at the end of the road
I watched a heron
lift elegantly
against the winter sky.
My daughter's voice is growing
ever stronger;
her spirit
is remembering
how to fly.

My inbox was full of love
as this welcome new year starts-
my life's true wealth
is friends with golden hearts.

Even in pain and grief
-who doesnt have it?-
I remember to be grateful
every day.
I am in love with nature,
and she is all around,
so affluence abounds.
Circling, endlessly circling
through this stuff,
I make my way,
and I keep on coming home
to what's
Enough.

What we're looking for
is already inside us.
What we focus on
within our life
expands.
What we do when things get tough:
haul wood and carry water,
use our hands
to give to someone who has
less than us,
sit with the dying,
remember the living,
write a poem,
assauge the loneliness
of the human heart
by giving.