@whispering_oak
DARE
Doing the thing that everything in you resists is where growth lives / A life of only safe choices is still a life slowly made smaller
SOUL
Somewhere deep, a voice that no one else can hear / Only silence knows the weight I carry home
SUN
Something changes in the room when it arrives / Under every shadow it has placed a warmth
DIARY
Dog-eared at the month that was hardest / Inside the cover a name and a date
DESK
Dedicated corner where the work becomes real / Every surface eventually claimed by habit
ROOM
Rain making the window a living painting / Only the lamp to hold back the evening
CREEK
Chattering over the pebbled shallow bed / Running its small errand to the river
FROST
Finding every surface before dawn / Rimming the red berries with cold light
TOWN
Two o’clock and the square almost empty / Old pigeons with their old habits
DREAM
Drifting between the known and the almost known / Rooms connected in impossible sequences
KNOW
Knowledge starts with admitting all you do not know / Nothing understood too quickly stays understood for long
DAWN
Different every morning though it tries the same / And still we are surprised when it arrives
ARISE
A new thing does not ask permission of the old to appear / Rising is not a sign that the falling did not happen or was not real
CAFE
Cup refilled without being asked here / A long Tuesday afternoon filling itself in
LEARN
Letting every experience pass through you rather than get stuck inside you / Every encounter, even difficult ones, carries a lesson if received with openness
FIRE
Feeding on what the forest left behind / Into the dark it throws its orange arms
DAWN
Darkness always ends because it is not the final word / A new beginning does not ask permission of the former night
PEACE
Passed between two strangers in a glance / Every softening of the brow is peace
TIDE
Taking the beach further than we thought possible / In the morning a whole new shelf of sand
TENDER
The softest corner of the heart / Every kindness offered without price
BROAD
Beyond the narrow view is where the real complexity becomes visible / Reaching past the familiar frame is how the mind expands
SKY
Still above everything that tries to reach it / Keeping every bird it ever held in memory
GRIEF
Gathering what the gone one left behind / Resting in the middle of loss
CHEER
Crying out across the space to meet you / Here, your name is called and you belong
BASE
Before you build the high, you tend the ground beneath / A foundation not examined is a structure always in some danger
LAMP
Late on and the book not yet finished / A small warm radius in the large dark room
GUILT
Gathering each could-have-done-it-better / Under all the busyness it waits
LAUGH
Love expressed in the body's open language / A contagion that belongs to every person
SEED
Small enough to lose between the fingers / Everything it knows came from one other seed
ADORE
A pull that doesn't ask to be explained / Drawn into the orbit of another
ECHO
Everything said aloud returns to you in some form eventually / Carried by the space around us, words have their own long lives
SEEK
Searching is the honest state of anyone who is alive / Everything worth knowing hides a little from the casual glance
GRACE
Going gently with the self when the self falls short is hard / Responding to imperfection with patience is a practice, not a gift
DREAM
Door at the end of a hall I can almost name / Rising up to the surface without warning
EXIST
Everything that is here now was once not here at all / Existing is the quietest and most astonishing fact
GIVE
Genuine generosity is the art of giving what it costs you something to give / In the moment of offering freely, you discover what you truly hold