Divinity

You are Divine Inspiration

You are not separate from me

You are everything which Is.

You are beauty incarnate.

You are a body, but you are

not only a BodyBeing

you are a Light Being.

You are divinity,

non-interrupted.

You are the Grandmother’s singing voices

creating the Sacred Song.

You are a dancer

a Shiva

a goddess

a Festival celebrated by thousands

of devotees twirling in colorful robes.

You are the Light

which you see in yourself when

you close your eyes and

listen to the Wisdom

That is come down

through the ages

Through the Grandmother’s tongues.

You are Consciousness

and you are stars

you are the space Within

the Stars

You are the light that

bounces from the sun to the

earth and back again.

You are the kindness in a stranger’s eyes

You are the gentle rain falling on a summer’s day

You are the thunder and the lightning.

You are the destruction

and the Creation.

You are all of Us.

We are all You.

You are the dancer/gymnast/artist/poet.

You are the elderly woman who no longer leaves her house

You are the baby

with eyes open to the newness of

Everything.

You are the mother holding her child for the first time,

You are the love that shines between her eyes and her infants’.

You are the vastness of the ocean.

You are the trickling mountain stream.

You are the glacier

You are the grain of sand in the Sahara.

You are the entire Sahara.

You are the perfection

of a ripe plum

hanging off of a tree, its leaves shaking in the warm breeze

of an orchard.

You are the bee that fertilized that flower

that became the fruit.

You are the seed that became the tree.

You are the roots.

You are the bird that flies above.

Dear Ten Years Ago

Dear Ten Years Ago,

You didn't know you were a Queer.

(or, you did but you were still trying to hide from it.)

You were 26, pregnant with Baby number Two and still married for the first time.

You were perpetually unhappy.

You lived in a little house on Lemon Street,

the one with the awful brown 70s carpet and the five citrus trees in the yard.

Two of the lemon trees had cross-bred with grapefruits to create some kind of

Abomination Fruit.

Under the shade of these trees in the mornings,

you would go and sit in the grass

to meditate.

Dreaming of the ways you would make your life better,

Someday.

You still dream of that someday,

But now you know that life can be better,

And it is in so many ways already.

You know who you are now. You know that the little fling

you had with your best friend when you were both 25,

the one that didn’t mean anything,

wasn't a fluke. You know that your depression didn't happen

just because your mom had it, or your grandma did.

You know that life is better out of the closet.

You also know that every day is not going to be easy.

You know that life outside of the self-imposed closet is

still just life,

and that some days will be hard.

You know that Grief

with her dark veil

will still sneak up on you

at inappropriate times

and you will excuse yourself from a meeting to

cry in the ladies’ room.

You will close the stall door just as the tears begin to flow.

You will sit down on the toilet seat,

sinking into that grief

and let it flow out of you.

Because you will know that

“the only way out is through.”

And you will wake up one day

and finally feel that the

weight of it is no longer sitting on your shoulders.

No longer with you at every turn,

no longer a burden you must carry with you

until the next time

you find it lurking around a dark corner

of your mind.

You will see that grief will always be with you,

in some small way

but that it needn’t consume you.

You will see that a piece of toast with butter

and a cup of tea

can be beautiful things.

And you will keep doing your practice.

You will write yourself this poem.

You will realize that you are still so young.

And, in another ten years you will write yourself another

and be amazed at how far you have come.

(inspired by 
Stay Here With Us:

poet Andrea Gibson’s project to combat suicidality) http://stayherewithme.com/2013/07/