poem- Slices of Life

Spring, I prune the rose bush of her barrenness.
She rakes my naked wrist with her thorns.
Her greening will eventually explode into blossoms.
Meanwhile, I contemplate the red rows she’s plowed into my flesh.
What will grow here?

Shopping malls break ground,
Each one choking the landscape, same invasive species everywhere you look.
A modicum of community is built by logos we all know by heart,
Yielding strange fruit that leaves a familiar taste but emptiness in our guts.
When will there be enough?

Stickers decorate the bumper of my personal weapon of mass destruction.
Once I named my cars, like faithful servants.
Now I see plastic & metal monsters digging graves for soldiers, wheezing kids, and oil-slicked birds.
The WMD in my garage burns gas and the planet.
When will I stop driving it?

--Terra Rafael

Three Short Poems on Food & Love

This love is a feast,
with foreign & familiar flavors
combined in new delicious ways.
I am well fed.

******

Fresh squeezed orange juice
served by a smiling goddess-
no peeling or chewing necessary.
We drink the thick sweetness-
Sunshine
transformed by living trees
& loving hands
into nectar of vitality.

******

My tribe had only flat bread
Until you gave us leavening—
A mystery that now makes our bread
Rise up, as though alive
And offer up more of itself.

--by Terra Rafael

Poem - Bodies of Winter You

When the winter is dark and cold outside,
Remember,
That your Being is not made of frozen crystals.

Your food body is a furnace of metabolizing Life,
Exchanging airs with the plants,
Eating their bodies until your body becomes food too.

Your subtle bodies, constructed of mind and spirit,
Create organizing waves, rhythms of musical inspiration
That your universe can dance to.

Your bliss body is eternally one with Christ,
Pulsating with the joy of the Star of Bethlehem,
Shining brightly even through the longest night.

--Terra Rafael

A Winter's Night

I awoke to the sound of the snow
Drumming against the windowpane
The moon called out my name

Dreaming while pulling on boots and wrapper
I opened the door to the magical night
And walked into frozen white

Trees creaking from winter’s art
Sang songs of midnight
Into my open heart


Jesse

Wind

As the wind whipped by

I heard her whisper

I saw her touch trees

and watched the fall of their leaves

She wrapped around homes

danced with plants

and peoples

as she reached up toward steeples

She frustrated all who resisted

with quick turns

she laughed and laughed

then twisted

Her presence you knew

as the hats blew

she stole glances

with her whistles and prances

All the while

she smiled with glee

at the day

and the play she created

Wind whipping by

catch her hand

and you will know

it was all a show

Mary

In the Secret Hall of Dreams

In the secret hall of dreams
I see my mother’s hand
Floating on a breeze
Gliding over sunflowers
On the mountain where she lives
And wild grasses on the alpine
Bend and bow
As she moves by.

Her hand is thin and wrinkled,
Knotted, misshapen with age
Yet she holds her brush steadfast
Above the canvas
Painting to honor that mountain
The soul of the earth
Her Mother.


Jesse

One Quiet Day

From where I sit
through glass door and windows I look
at a white wonderland world

It feeds back to my eyes
purity, loftiness and
dreams of a quiet and still earth

The snow piles up
along with thoughts of
how to spend this one quiet day

Only the wild turkey visits
to forage through layers of ice and snow
finding bird seed, now buried

His beak, the perfect instrument
for this job
and for making pathways

the brave woodpecker
follows
to eat what is uncovered

What wild beak
will peck through my thoughts
on this one quiet day

Mary

Our Life

Often its in the carrying of so called ‘burdens’
we grow the most
stretching ourselves into spaces
we hadn’t imagined
being changed by the ‘thing’
we wanted to rid ourselves of
in the working of its weight
we meet each day
finding a way around its ‘inconvenience’
and inconceivable presence

often we are being ‘sculpted’
as hands push and prod
parts and past what we thought
we thought we needed
removed by unseen hands
a vision of eyes
we might only glimpse
to trust that
if its here… it is serving
if its here…it is perfect
in its heaviness

what it requires
is our presence
our release of thoughts
about what it is
embracing ourselves
and all of ourselves
being kind
and seeing with new eyes
the beauty in this
our life

Mary

Grass Blowing In The Wind

As I watch
Light filter through the late summer grasses
Blowing breezes
Drift in from my childhood.

I long for the hills
The golden fields
The lapis skies
From that other time.

As the sun slants across the mountains
I know that
Autumn is on the wing.

Jesse

Is life really a bowl of cherries?
Red and juicy
Fresh from the tree?

Come on,
Can you do it?
Can you be red and juicy
Fresh and free?

Do you know how to chuckle and giggle?
To smile
To laugh
To howl and slap your knee?
Can you laugh at yourself
In all your silliness
Ridiculousness?

Can you eat crow and
Humble pie?
Or do you want green jello
With cottage cheese and pineapple?
It’s okay
But not as good
As fresh cherries.

Jesse

Poem - Beauty Way

Can the world survive if we follow the Beauty Way?
If we focus only on the Highest Vision,
could we bridge the gap to actually attain that world on this earth?
Can there be angels without devils?
Can we trust, can we love, can we live
openly,
without being sucked dry or destroyed by takers & fakers?
How big can the Beauty Way be and still survive?

by Terra Rafael

Waking Life

Ever present eternal being laps

  at the shores of my existence.

Gently reminding me

  there is no me.

Gently washing lifetimes

  of identities,

that cling,

  as spirit soars.

 

This waking life,

   the elixir available to all,

beyond the reach of mere words,

   drips in, seeps in.

Allowing, dissolving

  what we previously resisted,

griped,

   and judged.

 

I reach past the mind,

  simply,

and the waterfall of being

  stares back,

laughs,

  moves,

in me…

  me?

Mary

 

The Creator

I love this writing world

   you pick up a pen

and wala

   magic wand like

you create.

 

A blank page fills with wonder

   of past, present, and what’s to come,

nothing to something.

   It moves through you

from imagination to existence.

 

Are we so different from The Creator?

 

Ah, but we get to realize,

   become

an awakened part of her

   endless dance.

 

Dance free

   awakening on the face of this time

eons have called forth

   your pen to wake up to.

 

Mary

Again

I shall pick my golden pear
When I am old and life is fair
And dragons roam among the trees
While daisies bow to blowing breeze
There I shall roam with grace and ease
Again…

Long after wars and poverty have taken hold upon the land
I will make my prayers of sand
And pray that life will change the lie
Before the children die
Again…

Before I am old
And my soul is sold
Again…

I shall pick my golden pear
And live…
Again…

Jesse

Turning Point

My turning point
Sheered off.
What was sheered?
Oh-just everything I’d thought.
Thought, believed.

But through the eyes of your dying breath
I saw
beyond
Beyond the small mind and all its investments
and how poor those investments were.

To the light shinning through the face
to touch a place
of grace.

Swan sitting in the suns rays
to illumine
what previously lied false

Angels come in all sizes and situations
This one dangled
in the dance of death
and opened doors
and doors
and doors.

Mary

I Pray

I pray as I walk in the woods

  thanking the sky

for clouds, rain and light

 

for the wildflowers.

  Varieties of colors splashed upon the

hillsides

 spilling their spirit for all

 

Smiles of rocks

  with moss joyously

screaming

green

 

Bird songs

  sparkle in trees

and flit about

 

Deer so comfortable

 they barely

look up

 

A surprise visit,

 hawk moth

drinking deeply in the blue

purple of penstemon

 

Mushrooms

  jack in the box

everywhere

 

the temperamental

  spring – flowing freely

 

my tree friend

  always smiling and loving

me

 

I pray as I walk in

  the woods.

Mary

The Gift

In this death,
there’s been an intersection of beauty, truth and freedom.
It carries me to shores further along
than I’ve been in a long while.

With new views, feelings and certainties.
I am renewed in knowing the beauty of now,
the power of this moment,
and the grace of all things.

I attempt to pick up words to
touch this grace.
Useless.
Yet here I am.

A humble gratitude pours forth.
I’m in awe of the potent force that
swept clear a lifetime of
false ideas.

I lived within those ideas for so long,
I couldn’t see them.
They become part of the frame
I was looking through.

They limited me, as does this tool of words.
Some gifts are eternal.
Not made for pictures or words,
reserved for new shores and heart to hear.

Mary

Goodbye

The last breath

holds me

takes me

releases me.

How much more can I say about

its far reaching impact.

In the face of pure beauty

all is forgotten,

forgiven and out-shone.

All that is left is one pure

moment, beyond the words

I fumble with,

to try and touch it.

Gifts tumble forth,

the fountain of eternal life

right in our midst

but so often unseen.

Open-palmed I look

into your eyes

close those eyes

and say good-bye

Mary

Alright

Flinging myself into the unknown corridor
I half cringe not knowing what lies beyond
I half celebrate the faceless unmapped moments

What could be more hidden
than each undetermined minute
revealing and resolving in its time

faces and feelings overlooked
unnamed and yet to be traveled

I awaken to a lullaby
of willow trees and soft winds
of summer about to begin

And then I remember
it is alright

Mary

All This and Stillness

Crisp morning air,
sun’s warmth reaching to meet my skin.
Hummingbird darts past,
trilling his way to his turn at the feeder,
as chipmunks, looking for seed, scatter beneath me.

The pigmy nuthatch lands just inches from my head to eat.
Rocks smile, holding their sacred space.
As the songs of many birds fill the air
and my ears.

The air moves slightly to remind me
it’s not yet summer. It’s coolness
contrasts the sun’s embrace-just enough.

Sun’s soft light slowly illumines and warms each rock and tree,
moving down the mountainside as it
travels upward.

Bridges between stillness and all this,
between all this and stillness.

Mary