The moment we choose to love we begin to move against domination, against oppression. 

The moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others.

--bell hooks

Fear and love

Inhale small fears they turn into doubts into words into ideas
into anger into hatred into violence.

Exhale large fears and large words they tumble back onto you
it’s easy to get buried by our own mirrors.

Inhale small fears and they whisper and travel to your mind
observe them and thank them for trying to protect you.

Exhale acknowledgement of the beauty within your instincts
and the courage to love small fears.

Inhale hard love suck in the smell and reward reap eat chew
swallow devour all the goodness and love that is given to you.

Exhale calmness in acknowledgement of the beauty within the
courage it takes to not fear love.

--Tanya Tagaq
Split Tooth, Viking, Penguin Canada, 2018, p. 10.

My beloved child,
Break your heart no longer.
Each time you judge yourself, you break your own heart.
You stop feeding on the love which is the wellspring of your vitality.
The time has come, your time
to live, to celebrate and to see the goodness that you are…
Let no one, no thing, no idea or ideal obstruct you.
If one comes, even in the name of “Truth,” forgive it for its unknowing
Do not fight.
Let go.
And breathe – into the goodness that you are.

--Bapuji

They Say It’s the Best Bloom in Ten Years

She wants to go see the bluebonnets, she says.
This is after she tells me they’ve said she has three months to live.
And I want to find her vast fields of bluebonnets,
acres and acres of white-tipped blue bloom.
And I want to send her more springs to see them in,
more days to live one day at a time. I want to remove
the pain in her belly, the pain that aggressively grows.
I want to make deals with the universe. Want to say no
to the way things are. I want to tell death to wait.
I want to tell life to find a way. I want to hug her
until she believes she’s beloved. I want to give her
the pen that will write every brave thing
that she’s been unable to say. There are days
when we feel how uncompromising it is, the truth.
How human we are. There are days when the bluebonnets
stretch as far as the eye can see. There are days
we know nothing is more important than going to see them,
a billion blue petals all nodding in the wind, teaching us to say yes.

         —Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Waiting for Happiness

Dog knows when friend will come home
because each hour friend’s smell pales,
air paring down the good smell
with its little diamond. It means I miss you
O I miss you, how hard it is to wait
for my happiness, and how good when
it arrives. Here we are in our bodies,
ripe as avocados, softer, brightening
with latencies like a hot, blue core
of electricity: our ankles knotted to our
calves by a thread, womb sparking
with watermelon seeds we swallowed
as children, the heart again badly hurt, trying
and failing. But it is almost five says
the dog. It is almost five.

-- Nomi Stone

In Blackwater Woods

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

--Mary Oliver

Father, you are ancient

Father, you are ancient,
grinning your goofy smile.
One hundred and sixteen times
my age, you are today; yes,
I cannot help but smile
when you make those funny,
complicated sounds.
I wave my tiny arms
and feel your joy
splashing onto me,
your warm breath on my cheeks
and your gentle caress
making my bright eyes brighter.

Father, you are ancient.
I will forget this moment,
only because I cannot help it,
but please, retell it to me
when I am able to remember,
so that I can be reminded
that you loved me always,
Father, ancient
and never more alive.

-- William Dickenson Cohen

Love

Love
but not the kind that runs
on glowing feet
to and from quick meetings
hunting and hunted down
wounded and wounding
not the kind that gets high
on painful good-byes
but the love
which gives peace and rest
which warms and protects

Love
but not the kind
which has hardly stilled its hunger
before a new one arises
not the frantic one
whipped by demands
often more painful than divine
not the love filled with anxiety
scared of being burned
at the same time scared of not getting to burn
but the mildly flowing love
which dares to rest
and, when the time is right,
to arise from rest.

Maria Wine, translated from the Swedish by Christina Lindström Andersson (last line tweaked by me)