POEMS

"Poetry is a break for freedom. In a sense all poems are good;
all poems are an emblem of courage and the attempt to say the unsayable;
but only a few are able to speak to something universal yet personal and distinct at the same time;
to create a door through which others can walk into what previously seemed unobtainable realms,
​ in the passage of a few short lines." (David Whyte)

That is why I often weave poems into my Yin and Restorative yoga classes. I'll be posting my favorite ones here. 
The artwork is by my talented sister Pille Tael (aka Billy Munk)

WHAT WOULD HAPPEN...?

What would happen
if you removed the word ‘anxious’
and just paid attention
to these flickering sensations in the belly?

What would happen
if you took away the concept ‘lonely’
and simply became fascinated
with this heavy feeling in the heart area?

What would happen
if you deleted the image ‘sick’
or ‘broken’ or ‘bad’
and just got curious about
the tightness in the throat
the pressure in the head
the ache in the shoulders?

What would happen
if you stopped looking for solutions
and checked to see
if there was actually a problem here?

Come out of the exhausting storyline, friend.
It’s not true. It was never true.

Commit sacred awareness to a single living moment.
Come closer to yourself, Now.

Bring warmth to the tender places inside.
Infuse sensation with the light of attention.

It’s never as bad
as you think.

– Jeff Foster

​TRUST THE DARKNESS NOW
 
If you are lost.
If nothing makes sense anymore.

If all your reference points 
have collapsed.
If the old life is crumbling now.
If the mind is foggy, tired, busy.

If the organism is exhausted
and longs to rest.
Celebrate.

Trust.

This is a rite of passage,
not an error.
You are healing
in your own original way.
Contact the ground now.

Breathe. In, out.

Make room for the visitors:
The sorrow, doubt, fear, anger.

An ancient emptiness -
They just want to be felt.
They just want to pass through.
You are a vessel, not a separate self.

You are a sky, not the passing weather.
An old life is falling away.

A new life is being born.
Others may not understand.
But trust anyway.

Celebrate.

Contact the ground.
​
-       Jeff Foster

JUST FOR NOW
​
Just for now
without asking how,
let yourself sink into stillness.
Just for now,
lay down the weight you so patiently bear upon your shoulders.
Feel the earth receive you, and the infinite expanse of the sky grow even wider as your awareness reaches up to meet it.
Just for now,
allow the wave of breath to enliven your experience.
Breathe out whatever blocks you from the truth.
Just for now,
Be boundless, free, with awakened energy tingling in your hands and feet.
Drink in the possibility of being who and what you really are-
so fully alive that the world looks different, newly born and vibrant,
Just for now...

-  Dana Faulds

​

TODAY
​
Today I’m flying low and I’m
not saying a word
I’m letting all the voodoos of ambition sleep.
The world goes on as it must,
the bees in the garden rumbling a little,
the fish leaping, the gnats getting eaten.
And so forth.
But I’m taking the day off.
Quiet as a feather.
I hardly move though really I’m traveling
a terrific distance.
Stillness. One of the doors
into the temple.

- Mary Oliver

BREAK
​
Rest, now.
Let the weight you run from every day
now draw you down.
Later there will be time to tend
to everything left undone.
Now, rest.
Fall
into your own bones
lying horizontal on this bed.
Come
into your dark corners.
Come into this
original nakedness
under all the layers.
Come where all your losses
split
you
open.
Don’t rise,
yet --
Rest.
Be drawn deeper down
into the salt tide of tears.
Let grief wash you,
then drown you
beyond the name
you first were given,
when you reached to touch
your own mother’s face for the very first time,
and she smiled her light down into you.
Now reach those same fingers
for the face of infinity --
so that, opening your eyes
you will know
the one dreaming you
is pleased with you,
that everything seen
is your self,
and that now is the time
to rise wholehearted into the work
aching to be animated
by precisely you.

- Brooke McNamara

MAY YOU AWAKEN

May you awaken to the mystery of being here
and enter the quiet immensity of your own presence.
May you have joy and peace in the temple of your senses.
May you receive great encouragement when new frontiers beckon.
May you respond to the call of your gift and find the courage to follow its path.
​May the flame of anger free you from falsity.
May warmth of heart keep your presence aflame and
may anxiety never linger about you.
May your outer dignity mirror an inner dignity of soul.
May you take time to celebrate the quiet miracles that seek no attention.
May you be consoled in the secret symmetry of your soul.
May you experience each day as a sacred gift woven around the heart of wonder.”
​
~ John O’Donohue

​Today
I gave up
On healing my trauma
I gave up
On practicing the skills
To become whole
Today I gave up
On evolving
Into that ever elusive
Better version of myself
Today I submitted
To the wound of love
I stopped pointing at it
Looking at it
Soothing it
Tweaking it
Fixing it
Finessing it
Hiding it
Polishing it
I stopped this game of separation
I crawled inside the wound
And spread it open
I decided to wear it like a gown
I accepted my total and utter
Failure
To be anything else
But me.

-Maya Luna

​"You need not leave the room
Remain sitting at your table and listen
You need not even listen,
simply wait,
just learn to become quiet
and still and solitary
The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked.
It has not choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet." 

- Kafka

HOW I BECAME A WARRIOR

Once, I ran from fear 
so fear controlled me.
Until I learned to hold fear like a newborn.
Listen to it, but not give in.
Honour it, but not worship it.
Fear could not stop me anymore.
I walked with courage into the storm.
I still have fear, 
but it does not have me.

Once, I was ashamed of who I was.
I invited shame into my heart.
I let it burn. 
It told me, "I am only trying
to protect your vulnerability".
I thanked shame dearly, 
and stepped into life anyway,
unashamed, with shame as a lover.

Once, I had great sadness 
buried deep inside.
I invited it to come out and play. 
I wept oceans. My tear ducts ran dry.
And I found joy right there.
Right at the core of my sorrow.
It was heartbreak that taught me how to love.

Once, I had anxiety.
A mind that wouldn't stop.
Thoughts that wouldn't be silent.
So I stopped trying to silence them.
And I dropped out of the mind, 
and into the Earth.
Into the mud.
Where I was held strong 
like a tree, unshakeable, safe.

Once, anger burned in the depths.
I called anger into the light of myself.
I felt its shocking power. 
I let my heart pound and my blood boil.
Listened to it, finally.
And it screamed, "Respect yourself fiercely now!".
"Speak your truth with passion!".
"Say no when you mean no!".
"Walk your path with courage!".
"Let no one speak for you!"
Anger became an honest friend.
A truthful guide. 
A beautiful wild child.

Once, loneliness cut deep.
I tried to distract and numb myself. 
Ran to people and places and things.
Even pretended I was "happy". 
But soon I could not run anymore.
And I tumbled into the heart of loneliness.
And I died and was reborn
into an exquisite solitude and stillness.
That connected me to all things.
So I was not lonely, but alone with All Life.
My heart One with all other hearts.
​
Once, I ran from difficult feelings.
Now, they are my advisors, confidants, friends,
and they all have a home in me, 
and they all belong and have dignity.
I am sensitive, soft, fragile, 
my arms wrapped around all my inner children.
And in my sensitivity, power.
In my fragility, an unshakeable Presence.
In the depths of my wounds, 
in what I had named “darkness”,
I found a blazing Light
that guides me now in battle.
I became a warrior
when I turned towards myself.
And started listening.
​
- Jeff Foster

LEAN BACK
​
Stop pushing the future into being
with the force of your mind
Lean back
Into the arms of the world
the blessed lover you have been waiting for. 
Lean back
Let the world love you
through all of its many parts
Lean back
following the joy in your heart
Lean back
letting the breath of the trees fill you body
Let go of making it happen
the world has more resources
and will respond in a thousand ways
you didn't know existed. 
Let go of form
the world has so many arms to hold you
Lean back
let go
The ride has just begun.

-  anonymous 

​

SONG FOR AUTUMN

In the deep fall
don’t you imagine the leaves think how
comfortable it will be to touch
the earth instead of the
nothingness of air and the endless
freshets of wind? And don’t you think
the trees themselves, especially those with mossy,
warm caves, begin to think

of the birds that will come — six, a dozen — to sleep
inside their bodies? And don’t you hear
the goldenrod whispering goodbye,
the everlasting being crowned with the first
tuffets of snow? The pond
vanishes, and the white field over which
the fox runs so quickly brings out
its blue shadows. And the wind pumps its
bellows. And at evening especially,
the piled firewood shifts a little,
longing to be on its way.

 - Mary Oliver

SWEET DARKNESS
​
When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.
When your vision has gone,
no part of the world can find you.
Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.
There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.
The dark will be your home
tonight.
The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.
You must learn one thing.
The world was made to be free in.
Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.
Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn
anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.

- David Whyte

REST IN EVERY STEP
​
Have patience.
Slow down.
The gap between
'Where I am'
and
'Where I want to be'
is full of possibility.
So don't rush through it.
Take time.
Find the dignity in slowness.
Learn to love the gap.
Grace it with your presence.
It is bursting with life, and creativity,
and it holds unexpected treasures.
Have patience. Slow down.
Life is only Now.
In Presence, there are no gaps.
Find rest in every step.
- Jeff Foster

SACRED EXHAUSTION
​
Your tiredness has dignity to it! Do not rush to pathologise it, or push it away, for it may contain great intelligence, even medicine.
You have been on a long journey from the stars, friend. Bow before your tiredness now; do not fight it any longer.
There is no shame in admitting that you cannot go on. Even the courageous need to rest.
For a great journey lies ahead. And you will need all of your resources.
Come, sit by the fire of Presence. Let the body unwind; drop into the silence here. Forget about tomorrow, let go of the journey to come, and sink into this evening's warmth.
Every great adventure is fuelled by rest at its heart.
Your tiredness is noble, friend, and contains healing power... if you would only listen...

- Jeff Foster

"It’s dark because you are trying too hard. 
Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. 
Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. 
Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them. 
Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me.

So throw away your baggage and go forward. 
There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, 
trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. 
That’s why you must walk so lightly. 
Lightly my darling."

~ Aldous Huxley

​

THE THING IS 

to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you’ve held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.
​
- Ellen Bass

SHE LET GO

She let go. Without a thought or a word, she let go.
She let go of the fear. She let go of the judgments. She let go of the confluence of opinions swarming around her head. She let go of the committee of indecision within her. She let go of all the ‘right’ reasons. Wholly and completely, without hesitation or worry, she just let go.
She didn’t ask anyone for advice. She didn’t read a book on how to let go. She didn’t search the scriptures. She just let go. She let go of all of the memories that held her back. She let go of all of the anxiety that kept her from moving forward. She let go of the planning and all of the calculations about how to do it just right.
She didn’t promise to let go. She didn’t journal about it. She didn’t write the projected date in her Day-Timer. She made no public announcement and put no ad in the paper. She didn’t check the weather report or read her daily horoscope. She just let go.
She didn’t analyze whether she should let go. She didn’t call her friends to discuss the matter. She didn’t do a five-step Spiritual Mind Treatment. She didn’t call the prayer line. She didn’t utter one word. She just let go.
No one was around when it happened. There was no applause or congratulations. No one thanked her or praised her. No one noticed a thing. Like a leaf falling from a tree, she just let go.
There was no effort. There was no struggle. It wasn’t good and it wasn’t bad. It was what it was, and it is just that.
In the space of letting go, she let it all be. A small smile came over her face. A light breeze blew through her. And the sun and the moon shone forevermore.

 - Safire Rose

Autobiography in Five Short Chapters
I.
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in. I am lost. I am helpless.
It isn't my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

II.
I walk down the same street. 
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I still don't see it.
I fall in again. I can't believe I am in the same place.
It isn't my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

III.
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it there, I still fall in. It's habit.
It's my fault. I know where I am.
I get out immediately.

IV. I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

V.
I walk down a different street.

​- Portia Nelson

... from Facebook post by Jimi Wollumbin ... 
...Personally I have come to believe that we are not facing an ecological, an economic, a political, a healthcare or a technological crisis, but a crisis of culture. The emerging global culture is profoundly unhealthy in some foundational ways. Some folk feel comfortable calling this a ‘spiritual crisis’, others prefer thinking of it as a ‘narrative crisis’ since the underlying myths that guide our lives need to change.
But whatever way you think about it, the basic unit of global change is still you.We are each of us cells within the great body-politic that we wish to heal and reform. We have each internalised stories, beliefs, values and metaphors that need to be re-evaluated.
During his 8 years in Soviet prison camps Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, author of the Gulag Archipelego, asked himself daily how Russia had created such an inhumane and hellish regime. You’d think that as a historian he would have traced the causes to political, ideological and economic roots… but he didn’t. In essence he said that such cultures arise out of the rot that breeds in every individual's heart when they cease to honour and speak the truth within them.
What he is saying to us all in 2020 I believe is not simply that we must speak out against tyranny in all its forms, but something much, much harder. It is that we must create the global culture that we yearn for in every interaction that we participate in. We must have the courage to speak out against the lies we tell ourselves that keep us safe and comfortable in our own private prison camps, the gulags of the soul.
So yes, write letters, shop wisely and march in the streets, but much more importantly, vote for the future you dream of with every interaction that you participate in. For what is ‘culture’ except the sum of our individual lives? I am asking you to re-write your New Year’s resolutions and go beyond calories, kilos and careers.
Sweet friend, the world needs now you so very, very much. It needs you to be brave, it needs you to be forgiving, it needs you to rock up… but most of all it needs you to be true to your precious human Soul.
With heart,
Jimi

​

FOOD AND WATER
​
Sit yourself kindly down
and begin to breathe

with and as
the ache of being,
instead of above it.

Remember your first questions.

Enduring and unanswerable,
they can make you
curiosity again.

Gently,
allow your heart to hand you
every last piece
of who you truly are.

This is the food you’ve been hungry for.
This is the water that will quench.

Softly you dissolve
into an undomesticated friendship
with your world.

Enter into it again
with that quiet quivering
in your now more-human heart,
and let an uncaused joy
come out of your eyes --
so the others feel it,
so it’s all of ours
to eat and drink and share.
​
 - Brooke McNamara 

ADRIFT
​
Everything is beautiful and I am so sad.
This is how the heart makes a duet of
wonder and grief. The light spraying
through the lace of the fern is as delicate
as the fibers of memory forming their web
around the knot in my throat. The breeze
makes the birds move from branch to branch
as this ache makes me look for those I’ve lost
in the next room, in the next song, in the laugh
of the next stranger. In the very center, under
it all, what we have that no one can take
away and all that we’ve lost face each other.
It is there that I’m adrift, feeling punctured
by a holiness that exists inside everything.
I am so sad and everything is beautiful.
   - Mark Nepo

​
​Just
sit there right now
Don’t do a thing. Just rest.
For your
separation from God
is the hardest work in this world.
Let me bring you trays of food and something
that you like to
drink.
You can use my soft words
as a cushion
for your
head.
     - Hafiz

Do you think peace requires an end to war?
Or tigers eating only vegetables?
Does peace require an absence from
your boss, your spouse, yourself?...
Do you think peace will come some other place than here?
Some other time than Now?
In some other heart than yours?
Peace is this moment without judgment.
That is all. This moment in the Heart-space
where everything that is is welcome.
Peace is this moment without thinking
that it should be some other way,
that you should feel some other thing,
that your life should unfold according to your plans.
Peace is this moment without judgment,
this moment in the heart-space where
everything that is is welcome.
 - Dorothy Hunt

DON'T HESITATE
​
“If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happened better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.”
 - Mary Oliver

WHAT TO REMEMBER WHEN WAKING

In that first hardly noticed moment in which you wake,
coming back to this life from the other
more secret, moveable and frighteningly honest world
where everything began,
there is a small opening into the new day
which closes the moment you begin your plans.

What you can plan is too small for you to live.
What you can live wholeheartedly will make plans enough
for the vitality hidden in your sleep 

To be human is to become visible
while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others.
To remember the other world in this world
is to live in your true inheritance.

You are not a troubled guest on this earth,
you are not an accident amidst other accidents
you were invited from another and greater night
than the one from which you have just emerged.

Now, looking through the slanting light of the morning window
toward the mountain presence of everything that can be
what urgency calls you to your one love?
What shape waits in the seed of you
to grow and spread its branches
against a future sky?

Is it waiting in the fertile sea?
In the trees beyond the house?
In the life you can imagine for yourself?
In the open and lovely white page on the writing desk?

    - David Whyte

​FOR WHEN PEOPLE ASK

I want a word that means
okay and not okay,
more than that: a word that means
devastated and stunned with joy.

I want the word that says
I feel it all at once.

The heart is not like a songbird
singing only one note at a time,
more like a Tuvan throat singer
able to sing both a drone
and simultaneously
two or three harmonics high above it--
a sound, the Tuvans say,
that gives the impression
of wind swirling among rocks.

The heart understands swirl,
how the churning of opposite feelings
weaves through us like an insistent breeze
leads us wordlessly deeper into ourselves,
​
blesses us with paradox
so we might walk more openly
into this world so rife with devastation,
this world so ripe with joy.
    - Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

​I BELIEVE IN ALL THAT HAS NEVER YET BEEN SPOKEN

I believe in all that has never yet been spoken.
I want to free what waits within me
so that what no one has dared to wish for
may for once spring clear
without my contriving.

If this is arrogant, God, forgive me,
but this is what I need to say.

May what I do flow from me like a river,
no forcing and no holding back,
the way it is with children.
​
Then in these swelling and ebbing currents,
these deepening tides moving out, returning,
I will sing you as no one ever has,
streaming through widening channels
into the open sea.
   - Rainer Maria Rilke (translation by Joanna Macy)

BELONGING

Belonging is a river
not a goal.
Every point is holy--
but you cannot linger there
without losing yourself
for you are the motion
of your journey.
No idea,
no attainment,
no goal,
can encompass
the truth
which lives only as it dies
into new life.
Your are the pain--
let it go.
Your are the joy--
let it go.
You are actions taken and not taken--
let them go.
Your are the dream--
let it go.
Move with the mark
of the unknown upon you
and life will enter your blood like a river.
This world was always holy
and you were always a rising flame
upon its altar.
​   - Bernadette Miller