April snow

Nestled between the needles,
white amongst the green,
tucked into crevasses to hide
from the warm, yellow sun
rising.

We, the snowflakes,
will soon die here.
Our lives are short, but sweet
in April.

pressure

Stop putting so much damn pressure
on yourself.
You are not in a life-or-death situation.
If you make a mistake
(what classifies a mistake anyway?)
there will be opportunities to do better next time.

If you keep holding out
scared of imagined consequences
preparing for remediation of the fallout
without taking action at all,
you will kill yourself
before getting a chance to see the success
beyond the worrying,
unwarranted.

standards

Please, oh please,
stop being so hard on yourself
day after day.

Who sets the bars, the standards
you race to meet?
The person who sets them
maintains the power to change them.
Is it you?

new world

When you start shifting your attention
to water the flowers you want to bloom,
things change
within you, and around you.

Shifts bring change.
They allow us to see, envision,
a world different from what we lived before.
Change can feel uncomfortable
and in discomfort
we seek to find comfort,
maybe back in the place we came from.
Running backwards is not the answer
we need,
or actually want.

What if
the new world you see before you
is where you’re meant to be?

Listen,
as it releases a deep exhale,
rustling a gentle breeze across your skin,
extending its arms to welcome you
here.
This world, this new world,
has been waiting for you.

clean start

There’s no point in trying to gain control
over anything.
Once you have it, it disappears,
or morphs,
or ropes you into submission
with the tables turned.

Start each day clean, fresh.
What you knew yesterday,
what you thought you had all figured out,
no longer exists.

natural duality

The moon rests at the peak of its cycle
full, and bright,
shining radiant white light
down upon the world.
Contrasting against the enveloping jet black night
it calls forward shapes, animals,
out from the dark and into my view.
I hardly need my headlights
as I travel down the highway.

I marvel at this natural duality
of light and dark,
at the dualities surrounding me.
I can see the light, I can see the dark,
vast they are, in all they invite to live
within them.
Welcoming and accepting they must be,
for I see dark in light, and light in dark.
Perspective matters.

Choice also matters.
When I can see the light and the dark
and their inter-connectedness,
choice matters
and the choice is mine.