Previous Poetry
|
|
|
|
|
Question |
|
|
If Only, Dad |
|
|
| It doesn’t interest me to know what you do for a living. | |
| I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing. | |
| It doesn’t interest me how old you are. | |
| I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dreams, for the adventure of being alive. | |
| It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon. | |
| I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain! | |
| I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, | |
| without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it. | |
| I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own; | |
| if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, or to remember the limitations of being human. | |
| It doesn’t interest me if the story you’re telling me is true. | |
| I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. | |
| I want to know if you can be faithful and therefore be trustworthy. | |
| I want to know if you can see beauty even when it is not pretty every day, and if you can source your life from God’s presence. | |
| I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, | |
| and still stand on the edge of a lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, "Yes!" | |
| It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. | |
| I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done for the children. | |
 |
It doesn’t interest me who you are, how you came to be here. |
| I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back. | |
| It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. | |
| I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away. | |
| I want to know if you can be alone with yourself, and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments. | |
by Oriah Mountain Dreamer, Indian Elder
(Contributed by Conant Golden Eagle, 1147 Lance Drive, Santa Rosa, CA 95401)
BACK TO TOP
What is love between two man? A tree
letting go of goldred
leaves letting go letting go so they can come close to the earth where all joy begins.
Kenneth Pobo, 123 Folsom Avenue, Folsom, PA 19033
"I have found a part of myself that I had lost touch with since I was a small child.
I have discovered touch through massage.
Each massage I offer seems like an instantaneous means of coming closer to people, of bypassing the pretense and protection of language and allowing the bodies to talk directly to each other.
Sensitive touch has become a meditation, a leaving of the normal stream of consciousness, a leaving of the mind’s sense-making, and a coming into the body’s sensitiveness and sensualness I have an incredible sense of giving and receiving in the same instant.
Coming from a self-perpetuated state of sensual anorexia,
My appetite for touch has increased dramatically since I have decided to believe in the value of this type of connection.
It feels like a wonderful re-awakening."
by Caelin, quoted in the fall newsletter from sammasati@compuserve.com
| the beauty of touch | |
| of trust | |
| a letting-go that hurts in the most beautifully freeing way | |
| a child needs love | |
| so do I | |
| Does loving touch come naturally? | |
| I feel deprived sometimes | |
| isolated amongst so many man and women I never touch | |
| do you feel it too? | |
| I feel afraid | |
| as my body grows numb | |
| what’s happening to me? | |
| There’s a person under that suit, under that job title, under that image | |
| caught up in the whirlwind of modern life | |
| money and sex |  |
| in every headline | |
| power | |
| and why don’t we put our hearts together? | |
| It’s hard | |
| Everyone’s experience of life is so different | |
| until we touch down | |
| we come into our bodies | |
| freeing ourselves from the noise, | |
| peacefully considering and re-shaping our intent | |
| hearts open | |
| touch becomes a source of loving alternative | |
| experience worth sharing | |
| worth living for. | |
by Tom C., Ottawa, 1991, after a 
weekend
| I look back on our relationship that had no meaning | |
| with the insight and experience only time can offer. | |
| I now see the distant past of my life | |
| in a focus never before more clear. | |
| When the time came when we knew we must say goodbye, | |
| we sat in silence and pain was left unfelt. | |
 |
|
| Now that you're gone I wish you had given me | |
| the gift of touch and emotion, | |
| for I know that your touch would have made my life | |
| strong and abundant, | |
| and I know to share my touch with you | |
| would have made your death worth living. | |
| The lessons of life you could never give me, | |
| to touch and to feel true pain, | |
| I have learned now to cry and to laugh and to love | |
| from the wisdom and passion of strangers. | |
 |
|
| If we could go back in time to that day | |
| when everything went unspoken, | |
| I would hold your failing body in my arms | |
| and with tears and words tell you I love you. | |
by Rich Ingram.
Rich Ingram is a Registered Massage Therapist in private practice in Vancouver at 604-682-2442.
