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Art heals. Poetry is winning.

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Prepare

That first earth gift of breathing. Opened your body, these lungs, this heart. Gave birth to the ability to interact. With dreaming. You are a story fed by generations. You carry songs of grief, triumph. Thankfulness and joy. Feel their power and they ascend. Within you. As you walk, run swiftly, even fly. Into infinite possibility.

Let go that which burdens you. Let go any acts of unkindness or brutality. From or against you. Let go that which has burdened your family. Your community or nation. Or disturbed your soul. Let go one breath into another.

Pray thankfulness for this Earth we are. For this becoming we are. For this sunlight touching the skin we are. For the cooling of the dark we are.

Listen now as the Earth sheds her skin. Listen as the generations move. One against the other to make power. We are bringing in a new story. We will be accompanied by ancient songs. And will celebrate together.

Breathe this new dawn. Assist as it opens its mouth. To breathe.

~Joy Harjo from Poet Warrior

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By Amy Bornman

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January 20, 2021: “For there is always light. If only we’re brave enough to see it. If only we’re brave enough to be it.” --Amanda Gorman

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Solstice 2020

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the beginning of 30 years of adventure!

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500+ pedal-powered miles later..

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Gillian Welch - Everything Is Free

Gillian Welch - Everything Is Free No video, just the song.

if there’s something you want to hear, sing it yourself

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Index, WA

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westward vista from the living room 

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A little bit of blue sky breaking through during the climb up St. Helens! 

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UW quad in springtime

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old picture from a winter walk in my happy place

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Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness. How you ride and ride thinking the bus will never stop, the passengers eating maize and chicken will stare out the window forever. Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho lies dead by the side of the road. You must see how this could be you, how he too was someone who journeyed through the night with plans and the simple breath that kept him alive. Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth. Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore, only kindness that ties your shoes and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread, only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say It is I you have been looking for, and then goes with you everywhere like a shadow or a friend.

-Naomi Shihab Nye

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Grand, indeed.