TAMING THE TIGER*

In the forests of the night

I will assign a symmetry 

to my fear. I will see tigers 

where there are none

believing their stripes 

and terrors are truths.

Midnight machinations

will make memories

appropriate to the present

to explain the inexplicable

from sources patterned 

and processed as accurate

perception. Resolution is 

what I seek. A frame 

for the furnace. A permission 

to heal. A lamb wanting to waken 

inside an eye, fleeced

and burning bright.

*A mash-up of Peter A. Levine’s, Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma and William Blake’s, "The Tyger."

SPIRIT CIRCLES

Some connect to spirit 

through the sound of a gong

Some use poetry 

to round out their music

Some set the curve

of a hawk wing down

to bask in the cleanse

of a full moon

Still others simply watch

a squirrel make loops 

in an avocado tree next door—

its chittering is ringing in the leaves

THE TASTE OF GOD

After weeknight Little League games,
whether we won or lost, 

whether I played or not,
my mother would take me 

to Loard's Ice Cream parlor.
I would always order the same thing: 

Cherry Vanilla on a sugar cone.

Grief has me wanting 

that concentrated goodness again
that my mother made possible 

in the one simple scoop,
in the sweet juice and rind 

of the half-frozen cherries.
God was in that ice cream.

THE CONVERSATION

The child's room is now a mind. 

Only there is there room

for your voice. Only there 

may you enter 

the conversation. Still, 

you're not convinced 

you've convinced anyone 

you're worth listening to. 

Or that your side of things 

is valid and true. 

To be heard, you raise 

your voice and complicate 

the already complicated case 

you're making. And before

you know it your mind 

is a mansion 

of mirrors. And every room is 

an avalanche of sound,

a collision in the collusion

of shattering glass.

THE CATHEDRAL MOMENT

 

Even if hurting is happening

you can still go inside.

 

Enter through the portico

of pain. Once within

 

the cathedral walls

don’t pillage the space

 

with your disappointment

inhabit the sanctuary fully.

 

Let the sanctity 

surround you, absorb you.

 

Send distraction into 

the halo overhead

 

into the streaming sunbeams

into divinity’s dome

 

cooing like doves disappearing

into hidden rafters.

 

Every second 

can be the Sabbath

 

when observance dissolves

into presence.

MY MOTHER’S KEYS

When I took my keys 

from my pocket

something about them

was different.

They were lighter 

than before.

For five years

I've carried my mother’s 

three keys on my key ring.

Today I turned them in.

Her apartment is

no longer hers.

It is somebody else’s 

now. How quickly

the deceased are replaced 

by the living.

There are only two keys

on my key ring today,

the keys to a house

my mother gifted me.

The keys look so lonely there

by themselves 

side by side, like strangers 

not knowing what to say. 

Like grief and gratitude

meeting for the first time.

I hold them in the palm 

of my open hand 

and think: 21 grams. 

Could it be that 

the weight of 

the missing keys is 

the same weight of

an ascended soul?

THE BONFIRE*

Any day now

the Neptune Society

will be calling 

to tell me 

that my mother’s 

ashes, that are in transit,

have arrived.

You should burn yourself completely. 

If you do not burn yourself completely, 

then a trace of yourself will be left 

in what you do.

Suzuki Roshi said this 

in a book I just happen 

to be reading right now. 

The timing of the quote

took my breath away.

There is no trace 

of my mother anymore.

Fire has had its way 

with her—which is what 

she wanted. She wanted 

her human form to be 

disrobed of its flesh 

and bone by flame 

when the time came.

I strive daily,

especially now,

to follow in my mother’s 

footsteps, by cremating 

my experience as I live it, 

by trying to cleanse myself 

of conflict and contraction,

so that I might become one

with the inner light of spaciousness 

and the love that resides there.

I want every day to be

a good bonfire,

where my energy burns 

clean and pure, while the self 

goes easefully

up in smoke.

*Inspired by Reverse Meditation: How to Use Your Pain and Most Difficult Emotions as the Doorway to Inner Freedom, by Andrew Holecek.