Kneel and Kiss the Ground

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

~Rumi

At first, form is needed.
Then doubt and inhibition must be dispelled.
Eventually form is celebrated with joy.
And expression becomes formless.

~Lao Tzu

A Bird’s Life

Today like every other day
We wake up empty and sacred.(Rumi)

Counting soft bellied quail skittering down
the summerhouse path, their elders live a life of
sustained panic, though there seem still
to be perhaps forty of the young ones, I
am afraid to count. All I can do is leave the grass
long and brown, and have a care the dogs stay asleep
warm sated in the noon sun.
And in the night, when cats, big and small,
follow a scent marked path under my window,
I hope the quail sleep, hearts beating fast and strong.

The evidence of the thread
this thread of delicate fates
brings closer, ever closer, the frailty of our lives;
and like the quail, we call and scatter
and reconnect
the energetic self,
fragmented with fear
of the one thing, the one thing bigger than ourselves.

By Jane Galer
From her wonderful book The Spirit Birds

http://janegaler.com
http://www.amazon.com/Jane-Galer/e/B004KIGU5W