salted with sorrow,
spiced with happiness,
a new day begins

embroidering life
with the threads of happiness
and tears - my patch quilt

when the sadness comes,
stay with it and hold its hand
until it is ready to walk away
with peace

stop touching the wound
or it will never heal - let
the scar tissue build -
love unreciprocated -
stop picking at the thoughts

bon voyage my friend
for I may never see you
again - I miss you

trolls hiding behind
their screens throwing bile - don't bite
and feed their ego

thinking of something to
write - I try too hard - empty
page and empty mind

the conversation
drifts to a halt, tomorrow
we will start again

sitting on the floor
cross legged, my back against
the wall, breathe, my mind
riots and flows with a stream
of thoughts and sometimes slows, as
the mud settles in the pool

here I am again,
the empty page before me,
maybe tomorrow

the birds are singing
and my window is open -
early morning peace

compared to the Earth,
to the solar system,
to the spiral arm,
to the galaxy,
to the galactic cluster,
to the galactic super-cluster,
I am so tiny,
a conscious speck amidst deep time,
(and deep time is from here
to the Victorian Age,
the Romans,
the Stone Age,
the first primates,
the dinosaurs,
the Cambrian,
single cell life,
Earth formation,
our Galaxy,
the early stars,
the Big Bang)
this now is so rare a thing
so precious beyond gold or diamonds

I breathe in star remnants,
Nitrogen, Oxygen and a touch
of Hydrogen (and others)
I am in awe

the solar system
a speck in the galaxy,
and the universe

little by little
two steps forward, one step back,
my self esteem life

I light the incense
and watch the smoke coil into
the air - life and death

no inspiration
so just plod and work and hope
tomorrow repeat

of course
everything is ultimately
impermanent.
Does that make
everything futile?

Perhaps in a sense.
Yet the journey,
always the journey

from supernova dust
to DNA dancing, (and life, life, life)

to the Heat Death of the Universe.

We each surf our
wave of now.

I float down the river backwards,
I see memory,
I glimpse the now,
and the future?

To me it is lost in a geography
of physics.
Fixed and unknowable
or something more strange,
the future is
an ellipsis.

the point of living
of course
is love
to me that seems obvious

yet
yet
yet I think too much
I'm Eeyore on his back
floating downstream

of course
everything is ultimately
futile
but that misses the point,
the point
of course
being love

travel to the beach
from the confines of your mind
close your eyes - enjoy

little by little
the morning rises - blue skies
and sunshine in Spring

the ingredients
of a peaceful life - focus
on simplicity

spice with a little chaos
to keep things interesting
look for balance
let go
be kind
enjoy friendships
love

let go, let her go,
let go, let go, let her go,
unrequited love

little by little,
glaciers move, day begins,
and life evolves - change

sometimes there are
earth quakes and
paradigm shifts
but mostly
drip
drip
drip
wearing away the mountain

life under lockdown
finding peace and quiet within
despite the virus

to go through the storm,
to undergo a sea change,
to find inside
compassion for myself,
to find inside
the sea and the beach
I can walk upon in peace,
to look out at the world
and at the stars
with sun washed eyes.
I did not die.
I clung to the raft
and with help survived.
I see the world now
through a lens of dappled ocean light, mostly.

there is only love
to save us from the abyss,
and hope, always hope.

from star dust we came
to star dust we will go - find
some love in between

stream of consciousness
flowing towards the ocean
to become diffuse

I saw you briefly -
my raft on the sea of dreams
then drifted away

shadows on the wall
memories of yesterday
burn away like dew

my week - a blank page
which I try to fill with some
imagination

the fifty-seven
stars, that help me navigate
my dreams, lost from sight

on my bed, my raft
on the sea of dreams, it breaks -
reality dawns

there is a silence
within, if we can find it,
between the heart beats

little by little
trying not to run through life -
grasping at the now