Tag Archives: voices

The Activity of Being

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The wind breathes life into the leaves
And they are dancing,
To the music of the sunlight streaming.

High above me, the birds are not afraid
To let others hear their songs,
And with them I would wander, sharing music of my own
If only elements were all I had to live for.

So many voices, drown out by airplanes and great rivers of cars.
And the light within each creature hardly seems to shine,
Lost beneath the tides of artificial illumination
They vanish as we take what belongs to them, make it ours.

Like the birds who greet the sky at dawn,
With their ancient song of wisdom,
I will scatter drops of melody upon this place.

Perhaps, one day, every life will hear
What long-ago we soon forgot to be ours,
And as silent time passes, we’ll add back our voices
Rekindle our shining, recognize our wholeness.

It is time to remember,
For being is the great activity
Moving us, moving through us all,
And in it we have never given up participation.

Among the two many reasons, the gnawing unknowings,
Even where shadows blossom and the kindred we continue not to claim are keening,
always wonder and belonging, to hold us like beloved children,
Call us to return. Call and await us at the center.

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Voices From Cnoc Alúine

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Caoilte

I will raise mountains to the sky
I will cover Islands with the sea
And I will gather broken things
And weave them quietly through dreams.

I will sing forgotten songs
And lift my voice, though none join in
And I will come by wind and rain
To see the lost live once again.

Ailbhe

Who will count the landscape’s scars
The path is red, blood of old stones
Shards of time, earth mother’s bones:
Once more found, are we never alone.

I

I will journey on the seven tides
To find the reason for your cries,
And I will sit in surrender to
The sadness welling up in you.

For you who are so very dear,
I will hold the far more near
And shed a single, weary tear
For all the dreams that flew from here.

Oisin

The great conversation is not halted
By the sun burnt desires of the taking
I am here in all that is,
What lies broken, all awaking

Do not cast a cry from the tallest trees
For what was never meant to last
Has not future met it’s origin
Has not the child come home again,

Striving for beyond,
And held the strands of the pattern in weaving between her fingers,
To become the song of sunbeams whose streaming laughter lingers?

In your hand you hold the vast and through it learn to soar,
Patiently within you, for child, it is yours.
There is no turning back, only turning, earth and seasons turning,
A time for growing and relearning.

Time to realize we’re all some mother’s child,
Time to honor and continue to rekindle
The wild look in your eyes,
And the color of belonging, green and blue and wise.

Did you really think there would be a single one
Who would not make it to the other side?
Change, the knot
That cannot be undone, it lies

Between our orchestra of longing,
And the whole with fractured facets rearranging.
And among chords played, between silences, we fly,
Letting go of all that’s left behind.

Life shimmers like a firefly’s light,
Transient and tenaciously, we dance what’s yours and mine.
Life leaps in joy and wonder into everything,
Glowing then for all it finds.

Life strikes out in frenzy through forever,
And for that, ever, ever shine.

*This is in response to my friend Ali Isaac’s post, “Almu, The Home of Irish Hero Fionn mac Cumhall,” which you can read here: http://aliisaacstoryteller.com/2014/05/15/almu-the-home-of-irish-hero-fionn-mac-cumhall/.

The Search _ At The Beginning, in 2010

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Like the wind, I cannot stop shaking
Where all my fears uncoil.

I am listless and wild,
Questionless, seeking answers

Seeds needing planting
Till the fields, again, again, again.

But I can no more make my life a steady flame
Than flames themselves, they dance so wildly, flinging light

I might burn out, or overflow the seams I sewed too tight
Around that voiceless cry, that I cannot help but hear tonight.

Howling across time,
Raw dreams thrown up to glaring sky.

Hear the keening at the crossroads,
Here is what they said to me:

Gone, oh gone to all the corners of the earth
Your people, and all our own

There were some who might have known who you were
But now, you don’t even know yourself
So you wander, wander on.

Never mind your empty stomach, so hungry for wholeness,
Never mind your parched lips, so thirsty for laughter,

Never mind your closed eyes, so weary of staring into the sun,
Never mind your restless hands, that ache to make, to mend what you’ll become.

Ah yes, no matter what or where, go on and on and on…
Ah yes, you recognize it in you, so strong determined one,

Never mind your feet that stray into what already has begun,
Too impatient to wait for the mind to catch on,
There’s been more to it than that, you know.

Come back to us, if you know who we are,
The urge, like tides, to pull you safe inside,

Safe, that is, from the gnawing of your own need
And find at last that you have come home,
That you are welcome and will no longer wander.

You have walked this way before,
To catch the fragments in your outstretched hands.

Please, no more cold,
Shivering as if eternity itself had touched you.

The quest for the question drives out everything else
The answer is a single song

Take the thread that was always yours to hold
Pull it through hand over hand,
The maze you walk no longer feeling so wrong.

Take hold of the directions, and join in
The beginning, the one you’ve always known,
Follow, then, to where you might belong.

To search for they whose words I heard–
That is where I’ve gone.

I Am — Barely

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I am barely speaking
I am waiting for
The times when
I will no longer
Weep for you.

I am barely blinking
I am remembering
The spaces
We once occupied
At the same time.

I can hardly keep listening
I am sitting
In the silence
And it is so loud
And I don’t know
What I am.

I am barely moving
I wander the places
I could have shared,
But held close in.
I could have belonged to,
But only longed for.

I am barely sleeping.
The circle of
Time and space
Chases me back onto myself
To the mirrored
Reflected pieces falling
With nowhere to land.

I am barely becoming
Aware of
The dissonance of silent voices
The fragile brokenness of living
Aching to be made more than the marrow it is
Coursing as it does through dreams.

I am almost terrified
That choices are stepping stones
Vanishing once they are crossed over
As if decision is wading through the mud and the fog
The mists veiling what lies ahead
And nothing but footfalls behind me
Beginning to lose definition.

I am barely teetering
On the point
Where water meets sand
Would you jump in
No telling which you’d meet
Or would you simply
Keep still?

I am barely asking
This question
Which has no answers
Only arguments
With tales trailing behind them
Longer than before I was born.

I am imperceptibly hoping
That I will turn around now and walk away,
But if I listen or move
Or even blink,
I might miss you passing by
And remain unknowing.

I am tentatively dreaming
Of the day when I do not retreat
Back the same way I have come
So that then, if we are ever
Again in the same place
You will know that I am
No longer afraid of my own shadow.

I am deeply wanting
To find the time to tell you
That I have listened
To myself and followed
My own footprints
To a space
Of my own.