This Life

Photo by Hulki Okan Tabak on Unsplash

You can’t make this life what it is not.

But you can plant seeds and watch

what blooms under your feet.

The field you create will feed your soul.

The life you create will feed the soul of the world.

You are grace rising to grace.

You are a part of a larger field of being not of your making,

but in it you dance and dance and become and become…

The dance you dance is in Life’s embrace.

And as you embrace Life you enlarge Its soul.

No, you can’t make this life what it is not.

But you can open the gates to all that lives within,

release the thousands of winged things.

©2020 Joanne Young Elliott

The Dance of Becoming

Image by Myriam Zilles from Pixabay

There’s this dance.

We all do it

though we may not

be aware of it.

It is a dance

of becoming

of drawing down

the energy

of imagination

into bodies

into lives.

Dreams become

the dance and we

become the dream.

But some give up

the dance. For its

two steps depend

on the third step

back.

They give up because

they don’t understand.

Those steps back

feel as though their

dream just got

further away.

Really, a step back

allows us to see.

Perspective is

everything.

It becomes the light

by which we grow.

©2020 Joanne Young Elliott

Wings Spanning Ages

Image by skeeze from Pixabay

Wings spanning ages

you grace our street

in this current era.

A shadow gliding

out of the past

becomes ever now.

Red-tailed hawk,

glorious shifter

of time and being

barely glimpsed

caught only out of

the corner of my

eye and mind.

©2019 Joanne Young Elliott

Lullaby for a Friend

Image by Lumina Obscura from Pixabay

Rocking in the arms of the Mother

your heart hums in harmony with silence.

Peace be still, she whispers.

Peace be still, my love.

Resting in the silence of the night

your mind moves from restless to calm.

Quiet now, she whispers.

Quiet now, my love.

Sleeping in the peace of her arms

your soul sighs with rhythmic breath.

Hush now, she whispers.

Hush now, my love.

©2019 Joanne Young Elliott

It's All Perfect

Photo by Nikita Tikhomirov on Unsplash

We don’t ask the tree why it is where it is.

We may want it to be elsewhere, but we know

it is exactly where it needs to be.

We don’t say to the storm, why here and now,

if we understand it’s a part of a larger unfolding,

a symphony of being in time.

We don’t tell the river to change direction,

go back from whence it came. The water

simply flows to the ocean.

All arrive in the here and now playing their part

as perfectly as a rose at each stage of blooming

or the butterfly in each phase of its life cycle.

I am here. I am now. There is no other place,

no other way to be except this. All that arrives

in this moment is perfect exactly as it is.

© 2019 Joanne Young Elliott