By Kim Nelson, on June 8th, 2010%
I AM here.
In the garden.
~
Early morning dawns with promise
Cool air kisses me hello
Quail’s familiar two-beat comment
Letting his companion know
I AM here.
Pre-dawn light, the garden beckons
Heat has not yet scorched the day
Scent and scenery sweetly reckons
What was sown in mellow May.
I AM here.
Harsh now, all the elements be
Searing baulkers, the unwary
But in this early light, I see
The wonders, wrought so perfectly.
They speak to me
Lovingly
Abundantly
Clearly
I AM here.
By Kim Nelson, on May 20th, 2010%
“Happiness Depends Upon Ourselves”
~ Aristotle
Dear Ari,
When you’re right, you’re right.
Love, Kim
~ CHOOSE ~
~ ? ~
Choose to be happy
To depend on yourself
To find joy by the end of each day.
~
Choose to be honest
To live only the truth
No regrets; ne’er deceive or betray.
~
Choose to be valiant
To look fear in the face
Straighten shoulders; lift your chin and love.
~
Choose to be brilliant
To let your light so shine
That the Gods seek you out, from above.
~
This
Is to live.
Choose.
~ ? ~
By Kim Nelson, on March 9th, 2010%
“Behind all this, some great happiness is hiding.”
~ Yehuda Amichai
In the midst of the trial,
The tunnel’s length and breadth
Swallowed up its ending light.
Or did our anger and our grief
Destroy that, too?
In the dark, we clung
We to He
You to Me
Me to You
Fear of death
~ Worse yet ~
Fear of life like this
Stopped us in our tracks
And then
Pushed!
Pushed us
To push back, push on, push through.
Stubborn will, paternal fight, future’s-sight
Love
Were all we knew.
And they grew
Until
Thanks to the process? … luck? … good will?
We found the happiness.
Always there. Never gone.
Hiding just behind,
All along.
By Kim Nelson, on March 3rd, 2010%
~ The Sun Never Says~
I’ve encountered this poem (found on page 34 of The Gift: Poems by Hafiz, The Great Sufi Master, Penguin Compass, 1999) three times in the past week. It must be asking me to listen and then share.
“Even
After
All this time
The sun never says to the earth,
‘You owe
Me.’
Look
What happens
With a love like that,
It lights the
Whole
Sky.”
If we each practiced loving this way, imagine the light we’d create.
Brings so much to mind… creation, “I am the light…”
Brilliance!
By Kim Nelson, on August 30th, 2008%
It sits in my belly, just below my ribs
nestled snugly against my spine
pushing in every direction
sending tendrils of tension up into my shoulders
wrapping around my throat.
It warns, but of what?
***
It’s come before.
Never warmly or with welcome,
But foreboding,
Ominous.
Dark.
I’m tempted to cry or cry out;
but I will not give in.
As it threatens to burst through my head, my heart, my life
I will breathe.
Breathe in goodness and balance
flexibility and strength.
Breathe in my own
comfort
and warmth
and welcome
and light.
And it will leave.
I am light.
I destroy darkness.
I win.
