SACRED DANCE
The Bushmen of the Kalahari
dance all night in a circle
dance a calf-deep trench in the sand
In a circle around the circle
sit those in need of a healing
And because it is a sacred dance
any dancer at any time may step
out of the dance and do the healing
and then return to the dance again
Knowing without knowing
that everyone is a healer sometimes
everyone needs a healing sometimes
You just keep dancing
THE INNER CRITIC
Poor little Keystone Cop
(although often not so funny)
Leaping from shoulder to shoulder
trying so hard to keep us safe
yelling or whispering in each ear
the old rules based on fear
Telling us what we should have done
and what we should never do
Enforcing rules learned long ago
that may no longer be true
The voice of your mother, still
nags when your room’s not neat
The voice of your father
still wants you up at dawn
Your teacher and your coach
Your country and your culture
Your parents and your younger selves
with messages to keep you safe
The cop only knows what he used to know
and still does what he was told to do
You don’t have to destroy him
or shove him out the door
Just put your arm around him
and tell him you’re no longer four
BIRTHDAY 2000
It’s the day before my birthday
and I’m working on a poem
A poem about how it’s by pain that most
people got all the learning they got
and how I’d rather not
My mother invites me along to visit some
friends of hers in the country
He is walking around on a cane
all stove up from being thrown off
the four year old gelding he’s breaking
Forgetting anything I should have been
learning from my poem
we put on his wrong size saddle
and I climb on to show him a thing or two
And I do, I show how high you can go when
you get bucked off backwards and rump
tossed and land hard on hard packed ground
how to jamb a shoulder and break some ribs
May have learned something, time will tell
one thing for sure, when I wake up the next
morning it isn’t like one of those birthdays
that just slip by
This time I feel at least a year older
maybe a millennium
EAGLE BONE WHISTLE
Chain breathing with the Sioux
at a South Dakota sun dance
Praying that I might become
more perfectly hollow
That thy music may play
more beautifully through me
CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH UPON
Everybody has their troubles
The twinkle of the star
is just its struggle
seen from afar
TAKE TIME TO HEAL
Futures build on scar tissue
not open wounds
THE BUSMAN’S HOLIDAY
I think I’ve done it now
run out of places to hide
painted myself into a corner
surrounded on every side
For like every pilot
that ever learned to fly
I’ve got to help the captain
whenever I’m in the sky
All my time of thumbing
and a haulin heavy loads
links me with the Gypsies
that I meet along the roads
And if I look from side to side
at the lands along the way
why the farmer and the rancher
still within me want their say
Whenever I get to stop to rest
at any sweet Inn along the way
the years I’ve spent in running one
with constant detail mark my stay
And now I’m studying psychology
and the hidden parts of you and me
and prevalidation and master talk
and how one ought to walk one’s walk
Capped with the writers joy and chore
of finding a metaphor behind each door
ACT YOUR AGE
I might have heard it first at six
when mother thought that I was acting three
And again at ten when acting six or three
certainly at sixteen, acting ten, or six, or three
There is the age that I am now
known as the age of responsible men
But there are those who know it’s just an act
the me’s of three and six and ten
WHO’S DRIVING YOUR CAR
The Siamese twins
had to move to England
so the other one could drive
The part of you that drives to the office
is not the one who arrives at the beach
The one who bought the purple dress
is not the one who won’t let you wear it
The one who got the license first
always wants to drive
While everyone else in your psychic car
the ones that can think
and the ones that can feel
all fight for their turn at the wheel
While it so often seems that the you
that includes and is more than them all
Is back in the boot, or trunk if you like
bound and gagged and tied up inside
just going along for the ride
A SHAME
It’s a shame that my shame
looks for someone to blame
It’s a shame that my shame
won’t be called by it’s name
It’s a shame that my shame
will kill to reframe
It’s a that my shame
can’t see through the game
Where my shame and your shame
are so much the same