I take a shot at redemption which looks every bit like caffeine and chocolate. This is my time to shine like an electric eel on the ocean’s floor. Take it, shake all over, keep drinking and adding flavor, count to nine: It’s time

And you are on the air.

Testing, testing: Hello, hello…Someone once told me I could walk a line and not fall into the pit below. I’m testing the wire, and so far, my balance improves every time I turn around. Sometimes I can even do tricks. But what I really long for is to use my wire just for perching, like a bird. What I really long for is to take flight and soar all above this deep chasm and into the mountain-ridged blue sky.

Wearing hearts as flowers, I ride my bike through the streets. I’m so sad and I can’t put my finger on why, not that I’m trying. I hear the morning doves through the open spring window cooing and somehow this comforts my ruffled feathers. I weep tears of stardust and leather. I write my flesh as it fades into time. I’ve always been exactly as young and as old as I am now. Why must we all go through aging and death? We’ve all agreed, and we all live on beyond it in heaven, and yet we seem to think it’s such a good idea we keep coming back for more.

The archangel strings his guitars. I write another song, but somehow it’s wordless. It’s like I’m Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s wife, on the morning of June 28. I know what’s coming but I go about tidying up the bedroom as though nothing’s wrong.

Yesterday, after learning that I have the Bard1 gene that’s associated with the breast cancer in my family, I went for a run. After a while, I wondered how I’d feel if I’d heard instead that I didn’t have the gene. I felt so much better: I soared. And then I thought: I’m going to choose this as my reality. After all, I don’t have cancer, I may not ever get cancer, and I’d rather feel free and relieved and blessed and like I dodged a bullet.

So I choose the whole, but with the focus that helps. I mean why not? It’s all invented anyway.

I have a dream that the oysters enjoy the lap of clean, clear saltwater as they gestate.

I have a dream that I feel wonderful no matter what happens today, a weeble, a duck buoyed along bobbing with great happiness in the warm sun.

I have a dream that all the people I love, my beloved Christopher in particular, feel my love and that we all enjoy and bask together in this miracle of existence.

I have a dream I have fun.

I have a dream I stop worrying about anything inconsequential, or in general, and focus my heart’s intentions and my deepest desires on fulfilling them and on the greater good for all creation. Amen. I’m willing to will Thy will.

I have a dream that my heart gets to be whole.

That I don’t need to be anything other than me to succeed.

That I’m just right exactly as I am.

That everyone I love is well cared for, has all their needs met, and feels splendid now or soon.

I have a dream that we pass ColoradoCare easily on the ballot and have a terrific time doing it.

That we all feel connected and supported in the now, thanks.

I have a dream that everything just flows.

I have a dream that my luck or destiny unfolds beyond beauty into the sacred infinite realm of the highest good potentialities manifesting for the good of all creation. Amen.

I have a dream I have a sense of humor.

That my stress relief is palpable, causes everyone else to exhale and trust also in a ripple effect that soothes all our nervous systems.

That we return to the center grace of all that is and purr into the moment.

That my heart resonates with God’s will and hums with the intelligence and creativity of nature and all life.

That I can help.

That I contribute.

That I let the river flow and only effort where it’s needed and rest and allow when that’s what’s best.

I have a dream that I can trust myself

I have a dream that I do trust myself.

I hold my heart and cry at this astonishing peace.

I am peace. We reunite, my life and I.

And now I find the wordless still center and breathe.

Let this be the source of all my words.

I am willing to will Thy will.

I cry as each aspect of myself is enfolded into the larger whole, like feathers on a great dove. It hurts to be here, to really be present. It hurts so good.

The sacred heart of compassion rings truer than true the way the rich loamy Earth with worms grows everything that grows.

We come here together, to be grown. It is a molting. It hurts. And yet no feeling, ever, was more an elixir and a balm, or more needed. Like drinking God down in great gulps. Take me now, I am yours.

Forever and ever amen.

I treasure this exact moment in time, when my 45-year-and four-day-old strong fingers type; my face smiles etched with exactly this many wrinkles; when across town my exactly 15-year-old daughter readies for her last day of sophomore year at her dad’s before they stop by here on their way to school; and—in a different direction across town—my dad tries to sleep following a hip replacement. I resist all the heavy stuff that’s going on, but there’s no way to embrace this moment without it. And this moment, and the next and the next, unfold in exquisite prismed detail. In each wrinkle, in every breath, all creation shoots out in a great white heated burst.

Take that and smoke it, Colorado. I’m with you anyway. I hug us all anyway. We write the songs anyway, whether the words make it out of my mouth or not. But I have to try. The silence of denial can’t last. I open my mouth, take a deep breath, and yell “Let’s not go out today, Ferdinand!” knowing I can’t change one thing and yet to be silent would be to always regret my silence. I live to call out the truth of now.

Both are true: The world hangs on our dime. And we have nothing to do with its progress.  Everything—the whole balance hangs on our every breath. And yet we’re inconsequential too. I can’t make up my mind. It’s always both—the aging and the eternal, the power and being but a drop in the ocean that’s moving, moving, away from God so that it can return, return and lap each individual oyster with the clear water it needs. And whether it’s a gritty piece of sand that’s pestering and aching and troubling you or a pearl in the making, I’m here for each of us anyway, writing, writing because I must. Thank you for your ears and your gripes and your silent streams of breath. I hear you and I bow my head and say Amen.