You had a shower and a job and a good working car.

You made us meals and loved us

while we experimented with lack

and beards and breastfeeding

cutting wood and outhouses.

It was grand and we loved you.

Thank you dearest.

News of your death went out viva e mail

to a group referred to as the Harvest Feasters,

bringing up a whole treasure chest of unresolved relationships.

We were young,

experimenting in love and jealousy.

We didn’t know anything.

Our parents were emotionally repressed.

We wanted to do better

but in the end we just walked away.

My only new thing to add to the old equation

is an ability to hold myself with kindness

with the tender smile on my soft face

as I revisit the swirling tides of my youth

and the skills I did not have.

Put Love in your tea

instead of sugar

and drink it looking at the stars.

Heal yourself with the kisses

that the wind gives you.

Stand strong with your bare feet

on the ground

and with everything that comes from it.

Be smarter everyday

by listening too your intuition

looking at the world with your forehead.

Jump dance, sing

so that you live happier.

Heal yourself

with beautiful love

and always remember

you are the medicine.

Words of Maria Sabina, Mexican Poet and Healer

Hi Bob, thinking of your grandmother today, what a love!

For Calling the Spirit back from Wandering the Earth with Human Feet

Call your spirit back

it may be caught in corners

and creases of shame, judgement and human abuse

You must call in a way your spirit will want to return

speak to it as you would a beloved child

Welcoming your spirit back from it’s wanderings

it may return in pieces, in tatters

Gather them together

they will be happy to be found after being lost for so long

Your spirit will need to sleep awhile

after it is bathed and given clean clothes

now you can have a party.

make it a give away

and remember to keep the speeches short

Then you must do this….

help the next person find their way through the dark

Poem by Joy Harjo, drawing by Denver artist Julia- Rymer

Falling forward

unable to breath

the tip of the spear

is lodged near my heart.

Who was it who threw it?

Was it my past self

a battle scared remembrance

a figment requiring healing, now?

How well I know these oldest perceptions

my hidden and gnarled

misuses of love.

Healing is an act of courage

I will be changed.

When I try and get away….

it’s so much better if I just leap

from the frying pan

right into the fire.

Frying pans are flat, one dimensional

whereas fire is not under my control, like love.

It’s an alchemy,

pain is the catalyst,

the necessary spark

and the fire is a leap, a trust, a let go

beyond understanding

the realm of the heart

thoughts hinder.

Fire burns

what remains is ash

or is it gold?

Or both?

I am inaugurated

I am present- ent

And whether I live or die

I am the underlying wholeness.

Hafiz says this….

Just sit there right now.

Don’t do a thing.

Just see.

For your separation from God

Is the hardest work in this world.

Let me bring you trays of food

And something

That you like to drink.

You can use my soft words

As a cushion

For your

Head.

We can not heal

what we can not acknowledge.

In the economy of grace,

as offered in Desmond Tutu’s,

South African,

Truth and Reconciliation Commission,

where all had to take proper

and public responsibility

for their mistakes,

not for the sake of punishment

but for the sake of truth and healing.

Radicle grace is being loved

in spite of ourselves

in the very places

where we cannot or will not love ourselves.

We are a crazy weave with the essential “other”

Our mutual apology, healing and forgiveness

offers a sustainable future for humanity.

Otherwise we are controlled by the past,

individually and corporately.

The unbound ones

are best prepared to unbind others.

So unburden your heart with a friend

if you need to be restored to your true nature

which is love!

My mother subscribed to Vogue

and I buy it for my daughter, Willow

Their sense of fashion

skipped a generation when it came to me.

I got into ripped jeans during protests in college

and never got out of them.

But just look at this fine woman leader

on the cover of Vogue.

Tennis shoes and pink satin.

She’s game

Game on!

It makes you weak in the knees

and proud as a peacock.

Here we go!

Having lost the charts of the rugged coast

this bold lack of navigation

now has us fully lost.

What returns at this late hour

is a song we sang in our youth

on the bow of the Amorita.

It’s a sailors lament

about running out of whiskey.

“And I scarcely think that I’ll get a drink till I get to Buffalo”

Between then and now

who can really say what happened.

A life is so big.

She’s ok where she is

tucked into a hospital bed

foggy with not knowing.

She’d like to lay low

and just let the hull rust.

But we, her family,

screech like gulls

shouting Up, Get Up

We want another day.

I’ll do me

and you do you

and together

we will create

wants needed

for the whole of life

to thrive!

Jan3, 2021 Love Sally