our love

pondering life gifting through death

morning ponder
on life and death and life
the day is so bright
and humans so dear.........

when one of us dies,
i got this sense that everything they have worked out in their lives,
all the challenges brought through to love in their very own hearts,
all this resolution redemption is gifted to everyone they have ever touched and cared for
if even for a moment.

if that is even a bit true
imagine what we are living and breathing
today

the ones who have died before their bodily death
do this with every action they make.

it is all a gift
life giving itself
endlessly for our and its own sake.

Fresh Pressed

Fresh Pressed

the light of hidden flowers
shines in me
like fresh pressed juice.

I see me, as a lover would.

I move in the kitchen
agitated, drinking coffee,
alone.

I see me move out to feed the birds
glad for the job their hunger gave me.

I love me this way
carrying a hidden light
I can see me when I'm still enough.



prompted by lines from Neruda
this poem grew deeper roots in process.
i'm drinking it in, simplified all the way from a marketplace in Peru, through a woman's moonlit heart, a most touching shared prayer to my own fresh pressed light body.

lunch

I made my son lunch today

and fed him my listening.





lamb shank and white bean stew
à la Julia Child

memory lapses into now now now

I'm not a historian
so I don't have to remember
what happened today
or yesterday.
I am a lover
I know it was good.

detail of Der Samen - The Seed

Oil on panel 2010

24x39 inches

love notes

my husband taught me to write love notes
but they were all on paper
too much love or longing to bear
we couldn't share
enough

so we gave ourselves this distance
necessary to come closer to love
to be touched by the flame illness carries
to breathe clay open.

we meet somewhere called the heart
a landscape
crossed by three roads
3 sons
young men
learning to love
without needing to rely on notes
left on the kitchen table
to be read,
alone.

they are learning to bear the heat
of love's flame, too.
three
four
five made a loving family
wild with creativity.

there is no right way
to write
or live
love notes.

breathing the clay open
being breathed, open.




inspired by John O'Donohue's poem "love notes"
(c) Barbara Heile

inside the inside

it is dusk
the lights of the world soften
the door to the temple closes behind me
its quiet envelopes me.

not distracted by the imagery others express
I can see what I see
I can see what I feel
I can hear what I hear.

in the stillness of the dark interior
my own body alights
the strings of my own lights begin to flicker
they are real to me
I become real to me
I am the great poem
that I am.

I smile at you from this place
where I stand
in love.

he's still here........

this is a detail of a process painting I began of myself last month,
I wondered if my mother would arrive again,
but this time my ex showed up.

this painting took me on quite a journey.
first, it brought many good feelings and much care
for him and our marriage and for the family we created together.

secondly, it brought my mind into a fit or two.......like if I feel this way, why am I divorced from him? What's my problem? What's going on here? Am I supposed to remarry him now?

It touched a lot of places in me.
We hadn't had that kind of time together, just the two of us, for a long time.

It was uncanny how it ended up taking form.

Like each painting, life and relationship is a journey, and it is a conversation.
My feelings changed a lot during the course of this conversation.

My mind worked hard to hold some meaning. Or to avoid the meaning it created. And I kept painting.

Later in the process, I began to feel a discomfort with the painting, with him being there....I didn't like it.
Again, it's messy......all these feelings.
And yes, I also had to add another piece of paper to the bottom to hold it all!

But when I addressed this block that I was feeling, to him being in my painting, in my life, even in my feeling life.......this is what i found.

I asked myself, what would I paint if I was not afraid ...... of love.
Of loving him.
Of feeling his love for me.
In spite of the way our lives have changed, what could I dare to face if I was not afraid?

so, my stomach turned.
and I knew I had to feel this and discover if it was going to hurt or bind me or what.

so, it moved, from him into me,  this love took the form of a red band of color. from his heart to my heart
this love moved.
then more and more
and it danced.

my whole being was being penetrated by love
it no longer was his love,
it was no longer my love.
there was no protection
the process lead me to feel the truth of love, of my connection to him, just as it is.

and if - as in a dream - each aspect of the painting is myself,
then love met me through my willingness to know love.

with or without beliefs

With or without beliefs
you will evolve in and as love.

None of us can know the face of love
until we have lived
believing we are so unworthy
of even her glance in our direction.

Then the door opens......

being received

tell someone how you feel today, sister.
let yourself be received
in shadow and light
and be made whole
in love.

tender and sure

tender and sure

love enters

and takes form

to be fulfilled

once again.

sure and tender

love leaves

to be fulfilled

once again.

In honor of all who have passed out of our sight, through all the possible changes here, on earth.

Always a dying and being born; change change change.

I am inspired again and again by Kathy Klein and her beautiful Danmalas. 

You can find more of her beautiful forms on facebook.

my daily bread

                                

buttering my black bread today

 the feeling was so familiar

  and I recognized this:

   I am in love

    and all is well.