I love this image from a recent walk, seeing both the cones on this Pine Tree, but also the long expanding needles. Particularly in Spring, such sights nudge me to reflections on newness, on life expanding. The images — when I’m open to feel and to follow — they inspire a depth of being that comes from essence.
And so does poetry. Writing in prosed form has become one of my longest daily commitments now. It is over the last six years in particular that I’ve made habit of both writing poetry and reading more from others. It’s oodles of journal entries to reflect on what the morning and the overnight has offered. Some of those remain in rough form. Some get polished. Some get shared. What I love most about it, over these six years, is that writing poetry brings me to a relationship with essence, which I feel has been with me for 60 years. Poetry invites an attentiveness to the core of what is happening and what is unfolding, what is feeling and what is finding. Often through simple beginning points, such as new growth on a neighbor’s Pine Tree.
Hmm. Poetry invites relationship.
With essence. I find also, with structure. When I write, I’m paying attention to the way that a poem wants to appear on the page. I’m paying attention to phrases that wish to be repeated. And there’s something I love in this. An invitation to relationship with structure is broader than words that I write on page. For then, I’m also paying attention to structure in other aspects of my life. In work. In relationship. In family.
Yesterday I wrote more paragraphed, short essay style about what All Humans seek. To be loved. To be heard, seen, and loved. Belonging, safety, accomplishment. Well, there was a prosed form that came first, from morning journal writing. Again, with attentiveness to some of what is most simple.
For clarity, and love of essence.
What All Humans Seek
Tenneson Woolf
The descent to neuro-entrained fear is steep and slippery.
It is harsh deception and over-reached survival insistence.
Fear’s shouting is persistent.
Yet I don’t think what we desire is really that complicated.
I, and so many others, seek belonging — acceptance of who we are.
I, and so many others, seek safety — physical and emotional, spiritual too.
I, and so many others, seek accomplishment — excelling and contributing both solo and with others.
The first step is deeply inner.
If sought only in the outer, there is less container to hold found healing waters.
The first step also is to give what one wishes to get.
It is living and invoking belonging, safety, and accomplishment.
I am learning that there is profound necessary undoing to find way to essence.
I seek belonging — to notice and welcome what is already and undeniably here.
asdThe plethora of friends and colleagues with whom creation and joy compels.
I seek safety — to celebrate and assert what already is.
asdThis home, this car, bills paid, a meal to nourish.
I seek accomplishment — to love and accept what is already occurring.
asdThe planning meeting, the shared podcast, the collection of poems nearing publication.
Yet maybe essence is even more simple than that,
in the poetry and in the practice.
Live
from
love.
asdIn self.
asdWith others.
asdWith Life.