beauty

.Reading time 1 minute.
maybe if i spill open
my heart
at the break of dawn
and let love shine
like sun gold
as it climbs over
peaks tops and ridges
glittering everything into new day

and maybe if i embrace
the light
with noontide soaring
to release my fears from
the shadows secrets and silence
like feathers
they'll erupt into euphoria
and flight

maybe if i serenade
the dark
as dusk deepens
and surrender my dreams
like sand
they drift to ocean beds
singing dancing and shifting
into pearls sparkling in the night

and maybe if i pour
my self
into the soft fold of night
to fall steeped in love
like moons
swollen cradled and hungry
for the round gravity
of blackness

then surely when i dance
for you
until i die
and give my body to a sacred fire
in beauty i will
have danced lived prayed and loved
in beauty i will
embrace death

with the water

.Reading time less than 1 minute.
i step
into the water
cold tingling
my toes
ankles
the backsides of my knees

swirling all around
submerged 
with the water
i run
twisting and turning
wind like
through wild summer prairies 
and snow-steeped tundra in winter
i run
falling and flowing
light like
through slot canyons
gorges and ravines
i run

with the water
i run
cascading and streaming
over and down ever onwards out ahead and forwards
i run
i run to the ocean
to the magical ocean of my dreams

murmuration

.Reading time less than 1 minute.
my heart     
like a murmuration of starlings     
races, swooping and soaring     
all throughout these rosé wine skies     
aglow and glimmering twilight     

like a murmuration of starlings     
i'm flying     
here in the light and over there in the shadows     

somewhere, i know there is a pathway or a secret door     
somewhere here in the open wild of these fields, windswept and pink     
or here somewhere, in this enclave of elms, shifting and shady     
i am sure, i am sure...     
here is the pathway or the secret door     

like a murmuration of starlings     
i long for home     
to feel forever     
somewhere here or there or somewhere anywhere     
this skin soft landing     
in your arms     
your arms holding     
holding     
my heart

skin

.Reading time less than 1 minute.
the river's soft skin   
slows wild rapids of my heart                    
running to the sea

beauty

.Reading time 2 minutes.
if today i die
may beauty be my only
footprints in the sand

Ikigai, raison d’être, purpose, legacy… What is it, ultimately, that propels you forward in life? That keeps your fires burning at night and wakens you from your morning slumber? That enables you to rise again and once again, after each and every stumble or fall? That heals your grieving heart after loss? That brings you to your feet when life has brought you to your knees? That causes you to smile, once again?

Now and then life brings these questions to me, and inevitably, in one way or the other, I always come back to hózhó. Hózhó is the Navajo word for “beauty,” however, it is not limited to notions of aesthetic beauty but encapsulates a profound paradigmatic lens of beauty as composite expression of harmony, peace, balance, and reciprocity. Hózhó is my north star and my raison d’être.

And what is yours?

They say that each of us has come here for a reason, to fulfill some particular longing of the soul. Perhaps it is to experience joy, or love. Perhaps it is to be joy, or love, or beauty. Perhaps it is to learn how to rise again and smile, against all odds. Perhaps it is to acquire a soft heart after hardship. Or to discover light at the end of the tunnel, or to become that light. And it could simply be to discover whatever it actually is—that, that seemingly eternal chimera.

Whatever yours is, may it propel you ever forward on your path. May you walk in beauty. May you journey well. May your dreams be fulfilled.

belong

.Reading time less than 1 minute.
you and i belong
like flowers and warm sunshine
always together

heartbeat

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i can feel it
somewhere in middle night
somewhere in the endless ink of sky
pounding
this heartbeat of the sun
alive
inside the soft rose-colored walls of my own
heart
inside my love and my longing
for the light
for this night to bleed red onto that far away horizon
distant, and invisible to the naked eye

i can hear it
warm and soft and close
like an oversized cashmere sweater wrapped around my body
my body drifting
my body dreaming
my body deepening
somewhere in middle night
somewhere in the endless ink of sky
this heartbeat of the sun

here now
inside the soft rose-colored walls of my own 
heart
this heartbeat of the sun
is pounding
alive
and is engraving my own pathway
of love
and of light
somewhere
somewhere among the stars

Nagoshi no Harai* On the Beach

.Reading time 1 minute.
   
   into these salty cold
   yet saline warm waves
   i plunge
   i meet the full weight of these giant sea swells
   with my one body
   my body that tastes this world through skin bare
   skin exposed to light and to winds
   through soft bone marrow
   steeped in the red soil of this earth
   my body that loves
   with its small fist-sized heart
   pounding ceaselessly still—like these deep ocean currents
   inside this unfathomable depth
   inside this unnameable mystery
   inside this place of darkness where light cannot reach nor enter

   i meet the full weight of these giant sea swells
   i plunge
   i surrender my one body
   to life

*Nagoshi no harai 夏越の祓い is the name of a mid-summer purification ritual conducted at shrines in the end of June in Japan. We walk through a large circle constructed of grass and make a pattern in the shape of the number eight, or the infinity symbol.

Viennese Waltz 88

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in the arms of the sun
i lose myself to this world
spinning around and around and
     around
inside this open sky blue
and here
here in these arms of the sun
time alone    
                          stands still

diamonds

.Reading time less than 1 minute.
bewitched by the light
on this long road of diamond dust
i dream endlessly