I look up from my book
The air ringing with sounds
Ceramics scraping wood
Steam hissing
Laughs entangling with sighs
A woman sits by the window
Hands wrapped around a cup
Tea tag wound around fingers
But I was drawn to the lipstick on her teacup
-gws
I lay beneath a starless sky
Wondering where they have gone
Have they become the freckles
Dancing across my nose
Strands of silver streaking my hair
Glitter in my joyful tears
Have they fallen to Earth
So I can shine
-gws
In these strange days
I can’t help but wonder stranger things
I’ve heard it said that life here on this earth is a graduate class for the soul
You see, we are not bodies with a soul
We are, instead, souls with bodies
We have chosen to walk and talk and hurt and love
We have made an agreement with Oneness
To take a fraction of what we are
And condense down into this biological machine called a body
We have chosen to leave Oneness to become one
Single
Alone amongst others who are also alone
I can’t help but wonder what we are meant to learn
What don’t we already know through our original experience of Oneness
Maybe it’s the simple act of experiencing the finite
A contrast to already being so familiar with the infinite
What an existence we must lead in Oneness
To allow us to be so curious that we willingly come to THIS place
Full of fear and uncertainty
Cruelty and chaos
But also kindness and compassion
And love
Love with all its grit and glamour
Its risk and reward
How brave are we to give up the infinite NOW of Oneness
For the finite uncertainty of Earth time
Where those around us that we learn to love and cherish are
Too, bound by the limits of a linear existence
Where love and loss are the rhythms of life’s tides upon this world
Such contrast and contradiction
I suppose there’s beauty in it
Oh, to be able to know now what I will know after
To be able to answer with certainty what it was all for
The good and the bad
To know how good of a human I was
Where I helped
Where I hurt
Where I healed
Will I miss this experience when it’s over
Will I choose to return again
Will you
I think about all of the various mythologies of life and death
I think about how more than one thing can be true at once
How time and experience is such a strange soup
So as the world becomes more and more outlandish
As long held collective truths seem on the verge of collapse
The undeniable feeling that something new is being birthed
Through this terror on the back of a desperate hope
I can’t help but ponder stranger things
And my place within it all
-gws
Sometimes
A woman is an island
Steadfast amid the violence
Of salt water and storm cloud
Eyes ever focused
Where the sky caresses the sea
Kissed all over by the ebb and flow of waves
Dancing with moontides
Volcanic at times
Worn and weathered and wiser
As beautiful at sunrise as sunset
As much a force as nature herself
-gws
Put away the books
Lying scattered across the floor
The table
The bed
Spilling across surfaces like toppled ink
A labyrinth of poetry and prose
Keeping me trapped in verbose clutter
-gws
Thunder rattles behind her ribs
Lightening arcs from her tongue
She is storm clouds
Bringing steady rain to parched earth
Raging winds to clear the way
She is elemental
Wild and raw and rare
Her smile crepuscular
Her love blisteringly radiant
I live to study her meteorology
-gws
Let me
Write leading lines of poetry for you to follow
Tell stories that map the shape of a life for you to drag your finger along
Lay down relief lines that loop and dance in the shape of words
Let me expound through exposition about
The glory of the light and the shadow
Playing tag across the ground on a late summer day
Let me create a charcuterie board
Where you may sample experiences
Bitter rejection
Sweet elation
Effervescent joy
Bilious sorrow
Buttery new love
Spicy lust
Let me fold words like origami
Creating complex and beautiful things
Out of the simplest pieces
Strung together in a garland
Every angle leading to an experience
Every plane representing a feeling
Let me be a mirror
That you may recognize
Something familiar in my lines
So that you know that you are not alone
In the experience that is living
But that we walk in parallel
Submerged in this infinite sea of stars
-gws
With naught even a whisper
I closed the book
Put down the pen
Then cracked a new book
To begin again…
-gws
I thought there’d be one more Christmas
Below the foggy redwood line
In the temperate golden sunlight
Of California’s winter time
But life had other plans for me
And so the next I knew
My life was packed in boxes tight
And northward bound I flew
Here the winter skies are gray
The hush of snow abounds
No California winter sun
Shines down upon this ground
The life I’d come to know so well
The sea salt and rolling fog
The Bay and golden foothills
Now grace this monologue
This Christmas in our new home
Amongst the peaks and pines
Finds my tiny family brood
Building new and joyful lives
Those California Christmases
With lit palm trees in lines
Painted purple sunsets
Now only in my mind
Here night descends at 4PM
We tuck in nice and warm
The PNW slows life down
Outside my new front door
More time to talk about our days
New adventures we began
New traditions being created
With new family and friends
Another California Christmas
Has rolled around again
I reflect upon it fondly
As my new chapter begins
-gws
The leaves change here
Oranges and reds popping out
Amongst stubborn green
The wind shifts
Autumn comes to call
The world leans in here
Demands life to slow down
The quiet season is coming
The world makes ready its winter bed
Telling you to pull out your blankets
Candles and hearthfires
Demanding preparations for long nights
Wood smoke and hot chocolates
And much needed rest
gws
Words Wishes and Wisdom 