love-notes.jpg

love notes

a ritual to start the work week

Monday, January 15, 2024

walls fall all around us
barriers built to withstand
the onslaught protect
our soft parts from the
necessary harms of being
alive awake and alert
but it’s the unnecessary
hatred the fear-stoked
barrage that breaks us
blows our bricks to bits
what if we could refashion
this inglorious mix of worn
stones and blasted shards
if the key to compassion
is not buried among the
rubble but the rubble
itself if these fragments
wait to be made into walls
wide enough to hold us all

 

love notes
a ritual to start the week

Christopher Shepard
Monday, January 8, 2024

You don’t need to show us your scars
for us to know them
for us to know you
we feel your rough spots
in the brief hesitation
before you return our gaze
in the time between your text messages
in your quiet resolve to ask for help
just maybe not yet
in the earnestness with which
you share your work
our love for you grows into those gaps
warms against your coolness
so you need not hide your sharp edges
for we do not fear them

 

love notes
a ritual to start the week

Christopher Shepard
Monday, January 1, 2024

Do you remember how to make change?
How to take a twenty and return
a ten, two fives and five ones? Maybe
trade some of it for another good
or service, render yourselves even
and square? Do you remember how to
be tender? To find equal worth in
different goods? To serve another’s needs
as well as your own? See how value
appreciates, know how to break it
down and count it all back up again?

 

love notes
a ritual to start the week

Christopher Shepard
Wednesday, December 27, 2023

Morning fog makes a mystery
of the yard, transforms trees,
blurs the property line and turns
a commute into an adventure.
Knowns hold so many unknowns.
Wednesdays can be Mondays and
Thursdays all at once and seconds
can slip through our fingers like
sandcastles built too close to the
surf, like the sudden swerve
that so quickly crashes and spins,
then stalls, stretching a short trip
into endlessness. Things die when
we say they do. Years don’t need
to end to begin something new.

 

love notes
a ritual to start the work week

Christopher Shepard
Monday, December 18, 2023

sit crawl stand and walk
repeat again now faster
run play hide and seek
repeat repeat repeat

a b c and d
repeat again now faster
more less among and by
repeat repeat repeat

bend stretch rise and lower
repeat again now faster
stitch knot knit and purl
repeat repeat repeat

hours days months and years
repeat again now faster
step learn practice and breathe
repeat repeat repeat

 

love notes
a ritual to start the work week

Christopher Shepard
Monday, December 4, 2023

passions compete for focus       disorder
grief takes over       withstands       rain
vicious reign        genius       seeks disciples
left       shivering       so quickly cast aside

holiness       fades once given form

 

love notes
a ritual to start the work week

Christopher Shepard
Monday, November 27, 2023

Floating in the frame
of an east facing picture
window, a prism
swallows the rising sun,
takes its untouchable
light into rock solid innards
and sprays rainbows around
the room, revealing
the multitudes we bask in
day after glorious day.

 

love notes
a ritual to start the work week

Christopher Shepard
Monday, November 20, 2023

Release the pain your heart’s been
clutching. Let go of that safety

blanket made of swords. Did you
know your defenses were so sharp?

That thorns grew from the hedges
planted to protect you as you

slept? Beauty, rest. Sit still in
the power only peace offers.

 

love notes
a ritual to start the work week

Christopher Shepard