empires rise and fall
and the world’s great cities are built to someday crumble back into the earth
as landmasses collide and drift apart
the stars, in brilliant constellations, climb up into the night sky only to disappear again
buried somewhere beneath the horizon of day
and we come and we go, again
and again
and yet
we dance, again
all the while we dance
again
in these eternal arms of love
i want to fly with wings
like the angels
full of light and love and peace
beautiful
and in the divine wind, dance
like the starlings
precise, purposeful, impeccably wild and free
in spite of all these tears
the hardship and the heartache
in spite of our wars and endless trauma, catastrophe, disaster and destruction
i want to fall
again and again
like the drunken fools
madly in love with this world
my heart
today
has no words
only fire
in this body burning
sacred
holy
and
divine
❤️🔥
my heart today has no words only love for you for your love for me
ありがとう is arigato, “thank you” in Japanese.
On the last day of my visit home to see my mother, I took one last sunrise photo—my heart filled with gratitude for her return from the hospital and steady recovery… My heart overwhelmed with gratitude for the doctors and nurses, the friends and family who prayed for her recovery, for the ability and support I received from my work to abruptly drop everything and fly across the Pacific to be with my mother, for the healing she received and for her own strong will to heal, for time with my family and our cat, for the ever deepening awareness of just how precious this life is… My heart flooded with the beauty of each and every new sunrise.
The following poem is inspired by and written for my mother, who enjoys gardening and playing the lyre, who loves harvesting the blueberries and baking bread, who delights in feeding the birds and fish and all the little creatures… for my mother, who is a poet and is poetry… for my precious mother, who is the sunrise…
I wrote the above haiku and reflection below about two and a half years ago. With the recent outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas, I thought it apropos to share this again. May a world of peace for everyone dawn—pink and soft light over the horizon of darkness.
From Aristotle to Einstein, philosophers, artists and poets over the ages have spoken about the power of imagination. In some regards, it is lamentable that we often perceive knowledge as an accumulation of so-called objective “facts”, and imagination as a kind of unreal world of dreams. But the creation of anything and everything always starts with the imagination. So what then actually, is imagination? Is it not the source of everything?
Since its creation in 1971 by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, the famous song “Imagine” has been invoked worldwide in a shared desire for humanity to transcend differences and to live “life in peace”. You may say that imagining world peace has not created it; however, in the act of imagination, in stating and singing and sharing the dream, are we not creating the real experience of peace within our own hearts and together with others? When we imagine peace, we experience it. Likewise, when we imagine violence, we experience it. What we imagine, we experience. What we imagine, we become.
We are all dreamers—it is our birthright and our true nature. So why not dance and dream together, for a world of peace? We are our dreams. May they be light.
i did not come here just to love you
i came here
to be love
together with you
to dance
and in one another
come home
breathlessly with these deep sighing waves
eternally and endlessly
like stars
i came here
to be together with you
in love
this body
sacred
holy
a temple
something divine
divinity itself
its beating heart
portal
to the universe
yes, to the universe and beyond…
but most of all
a portal to
l o v e
let the doors wide open now
throw away the key
f l y
Michiru Adrienne 