Lily Pads

The future is strange 

A thousand lily pads floating by 

For which would you break your stride?


I can’t be angry at the process of life 

If anything 

I am in awe 

It is hitting me 

Viscerally 


Why go to school 

When I could be my own 

Source of discipline 


Ah, sweet relief 

The feeling of being needed 


The sweet relief 

Of having feet on the ground 

Feel the energy of the earth 

Holding my spirit down 

Just enough to keep this whole thing

From coming unwound 


I see you as a partner 

A partner in radical truth, and honesty 

That is our bond 

A ship that sails well past the horizon 

Again and again 

Reinventing 

What would I give up 

To have you feel 

My honouring 

Not myself 

But everything I think I am 

With our collective strength 

I come to know 

That I am so much more 

Than those thoughts 

Which hold me


How quickly the tides can change 

When you are living with an open heart 

Everything that passes through me 

Is light, bent 

Around the knuckles of my bed frame 

So that I have somewhere to sleep

Tonight 


Life is my partner 

tonight we have this dance,

But for tomorrow, I pray 

Let me live with the grace of 

First chance, taken 


I am being swept 

Like sand from my hideaway bed 

In a small town by the beach 

Comfortably out of reach 

Hoping life finds me 

Later today 

Maybe I will 

Feel the sun 

And it will be enough 

To make me smile 

After all 

There is so much to be happy for 

Without having anything at all 

That is a rich man 

Who feels safe 

In the endless change of it all 


My body is shaking

I have come so far 

And yet there is 

So much more to go 


The usual comforts 

Are astonishingly absent 

In their place 

There is only life smiling back at me 

Saying 

There is no need to be afraid 

You’re only letting go of everything 

That is ripe and ready 

Fall away 

Fall away and know a freedom 

Which will teach you how to really live 


I can’t get lost in you, 

Or any one, any more 

The only option left 

Is to shine 

No matter who is with me 


Look at us 

All of us 

Growing, changing

Dying to live 

From each moment 

To the next 

Here I am 

Eating peanut butter out of the jar 

Watching my face drip with the wilderness 

Of unrelenting love and 

Beckoning 


Here we are 

Ready to ignite 

One day at a time 

The future is never too far

Spend your days

Knowing 

Life is a process 

of its own design 


Out of the mist a voice resounds: 

Keep going 

Pick up that broken boy breathing shallow on the beach, stoking the fire 

Finding strength as the light of day fades 

Are we grown if we cannot face the night? 

Soon, what was fearful becomes fun 

And we will look back 

Knowing we could not learn any faster 

And we will smile 

As the next generation 

Over takes us