....original photography except where noted....


Friday, October 28, 2011

dancing in the otherworld



sometimes i remember
that on the other side of life
i am partnered....

sometimes as i sit
or lie alone

and when i get very still
and listen --

or when, sometimes,
i fall too far into aloneness....

i sense the otherworld
next to this one,

in all its magnificent wholeness....

a whole realm of otherness,
where aloneness is a choice,
and where others wait to embrace me....

in the otherworld,
there is always a partner for me --

and we dance,

and we dance,

and we dance....

_______________
©2011
beth anne boardman




*photo of author and
friends, by unknown....
blessings to him...!

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

wandering courage



so lately
i've been wondering
about courage....

i wonder if it's courage that makes
the small thrushes sing
in the grey of dawn,
after a fire....

or courage that keeps
the one tiny ember glowing,
unaccountably,
after a dousing....

is courage the persistence
to keep getting up,
after all hope of persistence
has gone?

maybe the waves show courage
when, after the thundering hurricane,
they show up all turquoise and glossy
the next day....

maybe the great horned owl shows courage
as it calls out softly from its high perch
into the deeply black silence
of the night forest....



soldiers tell me they don't feel courageous
as they rush forward into war....
yet they go --
and that must be courage....

i've cared for children
who, as they receive their chemotherapy,
exude streams of unknowing courage
from their very fingertips....

i wonder if sitting in the midst
of not knowing, of waiting
of learning to get up each day
forgoing hope --

i wonder if
the willingness to stand
in the chill wind of
the vast unknown --

if that is not courageous, too....



i feel a kinship
with all things crushable....

tiny spiders under my feet,
small lizards, lying exposed on my front steps,
delicate lavender petals floating down
from the jacaranda tree....

on this planet,
all are tiny,
fragile,
crushable.....

but like the white diamond stars,
we glow in pitchest black....

maybe just waking up
to this

is where courage lives....

__________________
©2011
beth anne boardman

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

it's like this:



what i'm trying to say is,
sometimes, life can seem like a long, hard march
through the darkness....

if not the actual darkness
of loss, illness, death,

then the imagined darkness
of loss, illness, death....

and sometimes there is no
respite, no ending, no light
at the end of the tunnel....

and no difference between
the real and the imagined....

and the only antidote to
wrenching times
is to allow your soul to be wrenched....

rent asunder, broken to bits....

only when you sit in shards
can you feel the essence that
you had bottled up in ideas
and wishes
and arguments
and dreams....

like the buddha under the bodhi tree,
when all is lost, and in the quiet of your emptied mind,
you can feel the fabric of the universe....

just waiting for you to notice,
just waiting for you to remember

that the only fools
are lonely fools....

and that your secret can be
your absolute delight
in the cacophony of leaves,
in standing naked under the moonbeams in your bedroom,
in feeling the angels surge around your struggling shoulders....

______________
©2011
beth anne boardman

Sunday, October 09, 2011

nights of the red tide



in the distance,
a blood-red bloom
stains the gently heaving sea....

dark red,
like veinous blood --

yet this mass consumes,
like the consumers
whose effluvia feed it....

in so many ways
a toxic float --

forbidding, in its darkness,

foreboding, as it looms....

killing abalone and
sickening humans
who eat from its murk....



under clouded skies,
gazing,
in a
mood --

spirits can sink
into this blot,

this periodic blight....

and in the darkness
far beneath the vibrant world,

epic battles seethe --

the likes of which poets write
and bards sing....

whirlpools catch
weakened minds

in spirals of worry
regret
despair....

when the red tide comes,
no life vests can be found....

no dinghy waits topside,
no searchers line the shore....

deep
in the inky blackness --

a ballet of struggle....



yet a sea-magic gift awaits....

ah, just at twilight --

a strange iridescence
a phosphorescence?
a bioluminescence --

a trick of your eye, you think,
a wishing for light --

but ah, the rolling algae,
responding to friction

shout a spark as the crest
of a wave slaps down....

and within its roll, gathers a
blue-white glow....

how perfectly the universe has timed
the visitation of these crazy phytoplankton

to light up
the dark night
of your soul....

and if you can take a boat
father out to sea,
and dip in your hand --

you can trail stars from your fingertips....

oh
there is so much more than death
in darkness....

____________
©2011
Beth Anne Boardman


bioluminescent ocean

photo ©2008
thomas lozinski

http://www.flickr.com/photos/manasquantom/3296435532/