Wonder, where do you come from?
A gift of compassion or
a flash of insight?
A full cup in a steady hand or
a fountain ever refilling?
What feeds your roots,
what fuels you,
what sets your stage,
empty and waiting to be
filled with color and sound
and magic?
Can we grow you or
must we sit
in the dark
impatiently crinkling our programs,
squirming with anticipation?
And when you surprise us,
meet us around a street corner,
make us stop
and change,
where were you headed
if not here?

---

love notes
a ritual to start the week

Cultivating coulds takes care:
watchful eyes and nimble fingers
to spot signs of yellowing worry
and hungry-hungry fear-mongers
creeping around leaf-edges and
crawling up healthy stalks; to nip
should-buds, to pinch and pull
encroaching supposed-to-weeds;
to see and treat the threats that
seek to feast on your desires and
deplete your dreams. Protect these
precious crops with patience and
persistence: plotting and plodding
will grow what-ifs into what is.

---

love notes
a ritual to start the week

Smurf blue and cloudless,
our outersphere glows — earthly
copies put to shame.

---

love notes
a ritual to start the week

Like a sculptor chipping away
at unformed stone to reveal
the masterpiece waiting within,
we spend our days shrieving,
stripping the hurt, lonely layers,
peeling the protective skins fear
believed we needed, pulling off
cloak and shroud and veil to leave
our light unencumbered at last,
shining just as it always has, but
brighter without our shadows
to dim us.

---

love notes
a ritual to start the week

The world turns green before me.
The path cleared, balance restored,
takes given, gifts taken. Blades
soar! Leaves open doors to new
skins, new cores. Their glittering
shadows reveal more than they
cover: a whisper, a roar.

---

love notes
a ritual to start the week

“Maybe I can shine, too,”
wonders the child
with a firefly
trapped under glass,
eyes ablaze in possibility.
Yet even as their little hands clasp
those glowing prison walls,
they leave the darkness unplumbed.
Yes, let the light
move you, my loves,
awe you and lead you forward,
but don’t forget
the scared, trapped creature,
that cloud of twitching apprehensions,
who sits in the cavern of your belly,
begging for the rush of fresh air.

---

love notes
a ritual to start the week

Orange light spills
over the horizon,
ending the long sleep
and the cold night:
dawn—the next miracle
—pulling back the shroud,
lifting our voices from us.
Intuition settled and
meditation complete,
an alarm blares,
calling us to action.

---

love notes
a ritual to start the week

Like mission control counting down to launch
or my brain in the morning
daffodils must be this way.
Their nodding buds abuzz
all bustle and hubbub before the bloom
with building energy and final checks.
But ah!
What yawning stillness they must find
what perfect poise
pure potential
their yellow folds must hold
in the breathless moments between one and liftoff.
Milliseconds stretch into minutes and months
miniature winters
waiting to spring.

---

love notes
a ritual to start the week

They birthed the world
as one but not at once,
the way a newborn is said
to reflect elements of 
their lineage — their eyes 
a gift from a grandparent,
the way their nose whiffs
of one side and their ears
echo the other — but growth
shows the depths of those
connections as well as
the departures — a new
stride lengthened by
determination, a previously
unseen squint creased by
persistent skepticism. Yes,
the world grew this way, too.

---

love notes
a ritual to start the week

The flames call me
back to the cave,
the flicker in your eye
an ancient memory.

The trees call me
back to their heights,
their fruit and their roots
urging toward the ground.

The waves call me
back to the depths,
to vastness, to weightless,
to gasping, to sludge.

The clouds call me
forward in their wispy
whispers, incessant pleas
to wish, to “what if…”

---

love notes
a ritual to start the week

Slick bricks took me down,
now the sun burns unseen ice
straight into vapor.

---

love notes
a ritual to start the week