Lately, I’ve been dreaming. Actually, I’m always dreaming. Lately, I’ve felt a pull not only to dream, but to create those things that I’m dreaming of. To take my dreams more seriously.

And, what has followed is… anxiety. Fear. The border between fantasy and manifestation is a risky one. Cost seems inevitable. Failure is always possible. And with both of those comes the possibility of the loss of the dream entirely. This can cause my mind to go into a hyperactive, fear-based place that literally makes my heart palpitate and stresses the systems of my body.

At the end of November I was filling out a weekly review for my therapy session and I wrote, “The last couple days when my mind keeps [ruminating] and trying to figure things out, I’ve been saying to myself, ‘My mind is not a tyrant. My mind is a garden.’ A weird phrase, but it helps because then I start to imagine a garden, which brings in more peace.”

That sentence has continued to come up for me since then. And it has branched into new phrases, each time expanding and deepening its implications:

First,

My mind is not a tyrant. It’s a garden.

Then,

Not a tyrant. A garden.

Then,

Mind not a tyrant. Garden.

When meditating on the first phrase - My mind is not a tyrant. It’s a garden. - I would follow the scene that unfolded, until it brought me to a place of internal peace.

The second phrase - Not a tyrant. A garden. - applied the dichotomy between tyrant and garden to something beyond me. It highlighted a human conundrum. A fixation of the zeitgeist. Hopes, dreams, things we want to keep from dissolving, things we want to manifest can call in an authoritarian attempt to violently grasp control to the detriment of the body (the person or the people). A tyrant. There is always another option - not from the top down, but from the ground. Of many things growing out of common soil. Definitely dirty and grimy, but a work of patience, peace, and collaboration with the Spirit of Life. A garden.

The third phrase is a command. Mind not a tyrant. Garden. The “mind not” does not mean don’t be aware of it. The tyrant needs to be watched. It needs remediation. It needs medicine. And we need protection from its violence - a small legion on guard like in Nehemiah. But that is the peripheral, not the center. Focus on the tyrant seizes my body and closes it up in fear. But when my body imagines and then engages in the act of growing the seeds of what we need and long to partake in, it brings me into a place of watching what is happening on the ground, of using wisdom and knowledge as protection, of maintaining the openness needed to receive the nourishment in the ecosystem.

When the garden we are growing is the focus, even the presence of the tyrant can strengthen our efforts, our resolve, our foresight, our ingenuity. We exchange resources and stave off destruction so that seeds of change can grow. Against drought and predators and disease, we watch and problem-solve, and pray. We work with the drive of that, which says “I/we want to live!” And we want to live abundantly.

When my mind is trying to grasp for control out of fear and insecurity, it stresses my body out in ways that leave imprints of pain and call death closer. When my mind is in garden-mode, it gives the peace and courage to create abundance in a way that allows my efforts to work with the messiness of life around me, and in a way that will outlive this body.

———

Feel free to use the image above or its words as a meditation.

Garden.

April 16, 2025:

I woke up this morning wondering how elephants grieve. I have no clue why that was on my mind…

…but I found a PBS article about it. It seems they come back to the body repeatedly. They may roll pieces of its body under their feet (perhaps making it real that they are truly dead and not gonna move themselves). Sometimes they carry parts of the body, usually the tusks and jaw bones with them for some time. A mother who loses a child might still protect the child for days until she moves on. When she moves on, she might exhibit signs of depression, walking slowly, lagging behind her group for days.

And now, I'm thinking about Langston Hughes writing, "What happens to a dream deferred?" I'm wondering, "What happens when a dream dies?"

Can those who held it, just let it go so easily? Will they carry pieces of the dream from one place to another? Will they return to its place of death sighing deeply, unable to speak? Will they still roll it around under foot to see if it truly has no life in it? Will they protect it for days until they can process and let go? And when they move on, will they move slowly, having lost their strength to dream or simply live?

I wrote this in April and, after traveling for months, finally have the space to come back to it.

When I read it, I think about my parents who grew up in the trajectory from the Civil Rights Movement to the Black Power Movement in the United States. They were tasked with a level of entrance into middle-class America and its institutions that was not possible in generations before them.

I can see now how that task and the dreams associated with it have led to a number of different responses in my family and my connections - a commitment to meeting any threats to that image with force toward others and ourselves, an exit from society into hermitage, an attempt to live as much of that image as possible in places where our efforts and money can stretch further, a rabid yearning to find and craft new dreams. But the energy I feel underneath all of these responses comes from an understanding, whether we face it or not, that many of our most popular and proliferated dreams - the ones we have built histories, myths, systems and organizations on, hoping for posterity - are dying or dead. This is just one example, but I can feel it the world over. There is a grief that comes from this transition.

As a spiritual companion, I carry grief with others. It seems grief doesn’t leave for good. But even acknowledgement that death is real, death has come, needs a process and ritual (and rest). Then, we need practices for transmuting the sorrow, hopelessness, and sometimes guilt into movement and life-making (with rest).

I am still learning how to do this. Especially in a time where there is not just one death at a time - a time when our inability to face a dream’s end and our tendency to protect what is already dead with violent force is leading to even more loss as it causes mass death of people and communities.

I’m no expert on grief rituals, but many of the ones I’ve learned have to do with water - from crying in the shower, to releasing what we are holding in our bodies into a body of water. Maybe even the baptism we practiced in the churches of my youth was a form of transmuting grief over what we’ve done or the death that life has brought our way, back into a new dream of what life can be.

In this moment, I feel we are seeing and living a multitude of responses to the question, “What happens when a dream dies?” I watch and pray and hold space and don’t look away. I ask the water, the earth, the Spirit, time - any resource we have - to help us face what is difficult to face, to help us release what we must, to help us hold what we cannot hold, and to help us move the best we can move in the midst of death and the call of life.

I invite you to do the same. Like a child whose tears cannot be quelled, like a mother elephant who needs to walk slowly as her sorrow moves through her body, I invite you to be honest about your needs, about what you don’t have and don’t know. I invite you to refuse to not be helped by something, in fact by every resource you can access that is beyond yourself.

One thing I've been processing lately is how deeply I have held onto some understanding that I would be rewarded for what I perceived to be my "righteousness." When I was young, this was expressed as being the “good Christian girl” that was focused on God in a way that even the adults around me marveled at.

When it comes to my work and health issues, my vocation, my relationships, I'm often frustrated and lamenting that I don't have more to show for the work I've done, sacrifices made, or for just committing to the search.

I've recognized something flawed in this "quid pro quo" understanding, but have struggled to think different.

But while listening to this video podcast on Ifa and the concept of "Ori," this understanding came to mind:

There are gifts and treasures inside of me that I want to bring forth. And the way that I move is about bringing those things forth.

The reward is not from outside, but inside. And it is a natural result of the journey if I tend to it.

A prayer that I want to offer to you:

May nothing get in the way of bringing forth what I’m/we’re meant to bring forth. May I/we listen and learn how to move in a way that allows that to be so.

I’ve left the podcast below. Also, as I was writing this, a song came up that Sis. LaTonya Earl, the Music Minister at one of the churches I used to go to in Houston, would sing. She would sing, “I’m a vessel filled with power. And I’ve got a treasure hidden in me.” I was able to find a video of her singing this on YT. The audio is not great, so here are the lyrics:

Thank you, Father, for your power.

It has resurrected me.

Oh, the painful circumstances,

That my poor soul could not flee.

I’ve been bruised and battered but not forsaken,

Perplexed but not in despair.

I’m a vessel full of power.

And I have a treasure hidden in me.

I have a treasure hidden in me.

If you want to hear a clearer version. Just search “Corinthian Song” on Youtube. As is the case in the black churches I grew up in, the lyrics change depending on who’s singing it. And I, of course, would sing it my own way today, too!

Here is an audio version of this blog post (with a lil sing and clap-along at the end):

I'm thinking about that old spiritual that says, "I'm gonna lay down my burdens, down by the river side... I ain't gon study war no more."

I don't remember fully what those of my generation thought we were singing about when we were growing up in the black church in the United States. Baptism making you nicer and “more Christian,” maybe? I can imagine the ways the "study war no more" understanding has been or can be used to dispossess us of pulls toward revolution or retaliation against oppression. I can also imagine the ways in which it has been or can be used to promote non-violent protest and faith that God/ the Spirit will move on our behalf (as in with us, through us, and in others as a result of our protest). I learned, in looking up an audio recording for this blog, that it was used in anti-war protest during the Vietnam War.

The possibilities for its use are vast and I’m sure someone can give a history of how this spiritual has been understood and used within the black church, in protest, and at large. But I want to speak here of how it sits in my memory and my body. I’m interested in why it has come up for me now and what it is evoking in me. I certainly did not grow up knowing it as a literal anti-war protest song! I know its use felt much more personal than that. Currently, when I sing it, I feel like I’m bringing those two feels (anti-war protest + deeply personal change) together.

Now, I find myself singing "I ain't gon' study war no more" to evoke determination against violent systems built on exploitation and war, especially when the voices around me act like these systems are “righteous” or simply “normal.” I want to sing these words to say that I commit to divestment from those systems and repudiation of the philosophies, ethos, and mythos those systems espouse. My mind, my vision, and my dreams will not give them space or trust.

I want to sing "I'm gonna lay down my burdens down by the riverside" taking seriously the presence of the earth as a grounding and birthing force and the presence of water as a force that carries - washing away and bringing downstream. There is an inter-dependency that already exists between us and the earth. I want to enter into that relationship with intention.

I want to sing to pull myself into a rhythm of practice of sharing the load of life with the earth and water and listening to/ learning of them.

I want to sing these lyrics as a way of repossessing myself by the Spirit of Life. Saying that, in response to the wildness of life, I will “study” and tend to my relationship to the earth and others - NOT to war.

Now - I am sure I am not the first to utilize this song in this way. And the commitments and understandings it evokes have been growing in me over years - they’re not new. Still, using this song in this way, for my self, is giving me a potent and simple resource to meet the pressing shifts unique to this time.

I have carried this song in my heart and in my body for a long time and now it feels like it is creating something new while, oddly, pulling me back to the beginning again.

I invite you to sing this spiritual with me.

And I invite you to consider if there are songs of your childhood or heritage you too would like to re-write, re-purpose or transmute for today.

“Study War No More” by Cynthia Liggins Thomas. More credits and info at the end. Scripture references are also included. A note that they are “in the last days” type scriptures. So, end with the song if that causes you anxiety or discomfort.

Here is an audio version of this blog post:

I wanna share a recent experience I had of being left hanging by the Spirit. (At least that’s what it seemed like at the time.)

When I do retreats or hold space for a group, I have a process that so far has been tried and true. I get some background on the group and the purpose of the space. I set apart time to sit in the Spirit and hold that group and the upcoming space. I usually get an image, word, or some sense that guides my preparation for the space. From whatever I receive in that time comes the intent and invitation for the space, which is constantly being clarified often even up until the moment I am starting to facilitate.

I recently had a retreat where that did NOT happen, which was annoying to say the least. I did get a word - HOLD - and from that word came a couple of practices. But instead of clarifying, the word stirred up more and more as I got closer to the retreat. Even while traveling to the retreat, I remember looking at my boarding pass for the Gate # and on the pass, where the Gate # was supposed to be it said HOLD. And I laughed. I thought, “I guess I’ll find the gate number at some point on the way. And I guess that type of thing will be the experience for this retreat, huh?”

Still, I was annoyed when I found myself standing there at the start of my session with so much and nothing in particular. All I had was space, those practices, and curiosity. I expected clarity would come in the practice. However, even after we practiced together I found myself being like, is that all? Was that it?

I stayed in this wondering and questioning the rest of the retreat. Then, 5 am the morning AFTER I returned home from the retreat, I woke up with sudden understanding, or really acceptance of the experience. One of the practices that came from the word was a practice of “Creating Space with Breath” in which we use our breath to create an opening inside and hold its space paying attention to that opening and seeing what is there or what comes from it. How ironic then, that all I myself experienced was an opening to pay attention to. All I had was something that forsook the patterns and expectations on which I rely to shape my world. All I could do was be present and pay attention to what came up in that absence, including my own annoyance and insecurity.

I am reminded as I’m typing this, that at the world endings and world beginnings that we find ourselves in, many frameworks and expectations fall apart and many repetitive “failures” commence. The breath, I think, is key to continuing to show up to the call of the Spirit of Life amid the vulnerability the unknown and the learning of new ways requires. Each breath we take in the new, transmute it into what we need, then release what we no longer need.

I don’t know if the word was “helpful” for anyone at the retreat, but it certainly did its work on me. Ha! I still don’t fully know why, but I know that it’s ok and I’m ok even without my preferred outcomes, even when I don’t show what I think I know of myself. And that reality opens a world of possibilities.

Here is the practice, “Creating Space with Breath:”

Also, for my east coast people, here is a resource - a group called “Heal Your Love,” started by Darren and Gloria Hagood that creates healing space using breath work and sound: https://healyourloveperiod.com/

With my wonky blog posts, poetic-ish poems, and all this talk about trying and failing, I figured it would be useful to explicitly name an ironic something that is trying to guide my life now: PLAY.

Recently I’ve been watching birds and butterflies and other insects and animals play even in the midst of the work and attentiveness that goes into their survival.

Amid the urgency brought by awareness of the many crises of the world, the death and destruction brought by systems and arms of oppression, and the pressing pulse that begs us to eek out new ways of living together, it has been necessary for me to call upon all parts of myself. Play is something that allows me to exercise new parts of myself and find freedom from being the producer-consumer I am pressured to be.

Instead of explaining how exactly that works, I’ll share a couple resources that make the connection between play and other facets of liberative movement.

A Playful Care Practice

I really love this playful care practice Session led by poet Ross Gay, as part of Open Edu hosted by Slow Factory.

Places to Practice Play with Others

Rooted Global Village

I have attended learning spaces by Rooted Global Village. Each one left a lasting imprint. They have a couple of play-centered programs right now. But even if those don’t work for you, I recommend engaging with them in any way you can.

https://www.rootedglobalvillage.com/through-the-kaleidoscope

https://www.rootedglobalvillage.com/edge-play

We Will Dance With Mountains

This is a course by Bayo Akomolafe that I have not attended, but hope to someday. I also immediately resonated with Bayo’s work when I found it. If you read enough of my writing you can probably see why. But in a nutshell, I find it playfully embraces mystery and many ways. You can search for his talks across the internets.

https://www.dancingwithmountains.com/

Oh, Also!

Last, but not least @blackforager whose playful (and very knowledgeable) posts have led me to lots of wonder and joy.

View this profile on Instagram

Alexis Nikole 🌾🍀 (@blackforager) • Instagram photos and videos

Also, from her posts I found out about a piece of plant literature by George Washington Carver called Nature’s Garden for Victory and Peace that I’d somehow not heard of.

This guide was published to assist people in identifying wild edibles amid food shortages caused by World War II.

I can’t help but think of the daily time stealing away to explore, delight in, and experiment with plants since he was a kid and how that led to his generosity of innovations in difficult times.

This was my second attempt at collaging multiple pictures of the ground opening or breaking through. Isn’t it too square? It was for what I experienced of the vastness and fecundity of the ground. I didn’t know how to both fill the page and get it beyond the page.

I became exasperated searching for plants who were not as intertwined with other plants and who I’d captured with clean enough edges to isolate it and allow it to jut into the white border like that one green leaf. And most of all, I didn’t have the patience for it not to be ordered.

Some quick words to accompany this attempt:

earth

opens despite

grounds we’ve built

to keep it reminding

us we don’t possess

imagination profound

or fecund enough

to bring forth

ecstasy

Since I couldn’t overcome the limitation of the photos I’d taken and their edges, I played with them, and saw a different landscape that spoke to me.

The edges of a couple of the pictures I took became mountaintops and a familiar picturesque portrayal of the ground came into view - one that always hints that there is more to see on the other side.

A “rough around the edges” poem to accompany this attempt:

gratitude

for not yet turning the page

for the mountain in sight

but not over

for a space where I don’t see too much

and my only task

is to walk*

*move/crawl/rest/ take in the valley

My brief but months-long quest to capture the ground started in the fall of 2023. I was walking the trail in my parent’s neighborhood. It is not a very scenic trail, in my opinion - mostly houses and fences on one side and a false bayou on the other. Part of the trail is covered in a black rubber-type material, the rest is sidewalk. My forest loving self is often disappointed by it, as I am by most suburban landscaping.

But I am often challenging myself to see abundant life and wildness in places where there first appears to be none. One day, walking this trail, I noticed the rubber black covering splitting. My guess is the hot Texas sun and the life in the ground itself caused the split. There were deep cracks and gashes, some of which the trail’s caretakers had attempted to patch up only for it to split again. From those cracks were emerging all types of small low-to-the-ground flowers and “weeds”. In some cracks you could see all types of insects carrying resources and building homes.

The ground cannot be tamed, I thought with excitement. There was some way in which that acknowledgment spoke freedom for me. The suburban ground - this thing that looks so coiffed and unmoved was breaking free over and over again. I too, in being myself could naturally break and break from society’s landscaping and containment.

From that day forward, it became my joy to look down as I walked and notice the life in the cracks, the life from the cracks, and the life of the earth indicative of the cracks themselves. I am reminded, here, of Bayo Akomalafe’s We Will Dance With Mountains. I am also reminded of a significant experience I had when I was at a retreat center for a ministry I worked for.

I was walking and felt the Spirit tell me to stop and turn to the side and look at this bush (or small tree?). This bush-tree was not burning like the one Moses encountered. There was nothing spectacular about it at all. But the longer I looked, the more I saw layers of life within it. I wrote about it later in my journal:

“There were flies and beetles of every kind. Blue flies and Yellow flies and Brown Beetles and Black Beetles and Green Beetles. Then a Grasshopper hidden on a stem. A bee moving from flower to flower. A bat in the tree, a chipmunk running about. A black and white butterfly.”

This small experience was revelatory in ways that I will probably write about in other posts. But one thing it sparked is a practice of turning and looking, of truly regarding the life and the wildness of life that is easy to miss. If it is difficult to notice the layers of life in a small tree, it is often even more difficult to notice the life in the ground itself, much less to capture it. Maybe that is one of its strengths. It is difficult to contain or anticipate its movements.

Back to my parent’s neighborhood trail: I started taking pictures of the ground beneath the rubbery neighborhood trail, and the sidewalks, trying to capture this life. This proved to be really frustrating. I’m not a photographer. And I found I couldn’t capture the ground breaking the side walks with the potency that I could feel in real life. I could not capture well the red ants in the cracks milling about, nor the abundance of the tiny flowers that flowed from the thinnest of splits in the black rubber.

I tried to represent the fullness and liveliness of the ground by turning the photos into digital collage, but every page seemed too small and too square. I thought to create a collage where different elements would burst out from a central point, instead of trying to fill the screen, to better represent the abundance. But I found extracting the tiny elements I was working with felt too labor-intensive and ended that before even getting anything on the page. I bemoaned not being a better visual artist and not being able to work with images with the ease and quickness I used to when I was younger and constantly making things.

Finally, I gave up and assumed I wouldn’t be sharing this work. Because it failed to capture what I wanted. Because it was incomplete. But I’m trying to honor the process over the product. And the process did what it needed to do.

The ground is alive and cannot be tamed, it spoke again and again with every failure to capture it. Just like it cannot be contained under that rubber black trail, it cannot be captured by my lens or my representation. Somehow that gives me joy and relief and gratitude - for the ground, for the life in it, and for the parts of us that are underground and shifting or breaking through.

I share a couple of my attempts in the next post (Crevasses: Untitled & Incomplete). An invitation into practice is below.

Turning & Looking Practice

This practice can also be done not with the eyes, but with the ears, by listening. It is simple and can be done indoors or outdoors… almost anywhere really.

Stop and look at a small part of your environment (or listen to your surroundings).

What life or signs of life do you notice? Name at least three things.

Look (or listen) longer. Name at least three more things.

Look (or listen) longer. Name at least three more things.

Take all of this in deeply. Pay attention to how you feel or what these signs of life evoke in you (feelings, sensations, understandings).

I know talking about ancestors can be tricky for many people for many reasons. But sometimes I feel as if there is someone, at least one person, maybe more trying to sneak in at opportune moments, trying to let me know that they are here holding me and helping me.

Many of the people in the churches I grew up in and in my life now would say, “That’s Jesus!” or “That’s the Holy Spirit!” or maybe even, “That’s a guardian angel!”

What I can say is, it feels like someone who calls me Chile. Not Child. Chile. It feels like a black woman who, when she puts her hand on mine, I can feel the plump palm and callousness. Who, when I put my hand on top of hers, I can feel veins underneath strong but lotion-ed skin.

That could be my imagination, my mind conjuring a comforting figure. What I know is a couple of months ago I felt it very distinctly - someone holding me in place, putting their hand on mine - and it was warm and just tangible enough to know that it was someone.

Those unexpected moments of supportive presence are gifts. So too are the moments I’ve experienced of intentionally calling a specific person to mind in prayer, meditation, or imagination and letting their image or energy offer support. Below is a practice that brings both those experiences together. I recorded this for a recent retreat I did for women of color. Let me know how it works for you.

—-

The intention of this meditation is to bring an embodied awareness of the support and care available to you.

It starts and ends with the body, by finding a comfortable position and engaging your breathing. From there it engages your imagination. When your imagination starts to flow, feel free to let your body do what it feels it needs to do.

If it helps you to maintain the comfortable position you started with, please do so. If it helps you to soothe yourself with rocking, touch, or repetitive motion, please do so. If it helps you to move your body in tandem with what you are imagining, please do so.

If at any point you feel heightened discomfort, agitation, or fear, return to a place and position of safety. Return to focusing on your breath.

Most of all, feel free to not get it right. This is all for your support and care! I trust that your body and spirit know what is needed and can carry you there.

Written version

This practice is called Someone to Hold My Hand. If hand-holding is not something that is desirable, comforting, or possible for you, imagine something different! Do what feels supportive and caring for you.

For this written version, read the meditation through to get the gist, then go for it:

First, get in a comfortable position. (You can sit or lay, on the ground, on the floor, on the bed, whatever is comfortable for you… you can also do this practice walking if that is comfortable for you.)

If you are stationary, feel free to close your eyes or find a focal point on the floor a comfortable distance in front of you.

[Breathe deeply and slowly at least three times.] Start to settle into a pace of breathing that is comfortable and calming for you.

When you have a comfortable and calm rhythm of breathing, bring to mind a person that is supportive in your life. This can be someone who is alive or someone whose passed whose memory or presence is supportive for you.

As you breathe, imagine this person is here with you. Pay attention to what they look like, what they smell like, how their presence feels.

Imagine that they come and hold your hand in theirs. From their hand comes a warmth, and you feel that warmth move throughout your body.

Allow yourself to take this warmth in and rest in it. Keep breathing at a calm and comfortable pace.

You can stay here as long as you need. Just breathing, and holding their hand, feeling the warmth, and resting in it.

If you feel led to say something to them or engage with them in any way allow yourself to do so. Allow them to engage with you as well.

If you find something pulling you out of this comforting presence, you can return to your breath, and re-engage.

When you are ready to let them leave, thank them for their presence.

When you are ready, return to focusing on your breath. Then return to the room, opening your eyes to the space around you.

I wrote the first poem in this series, in March 2022. By the end of April, I'd quit my 9-5 and left Chicago where I was living at the time. The past few years had seen countless doctor's visits, 3 minor surgeries, 2 emergency room visits, months of severe insomnia, digestive issues, and hair loss.

Even though I am a mystic and a Spiritual Director, it took a year and many different places to “get” what my body and spirit were telling me. April 30, 2022, I took only what I could fit in my car and made my way to Atlanta, Georgia to do a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) with a friend. We had hopes of starting a co-op down the line. After two months, I realized I hadn’t rested at all. I’d moved from work to different work. I rested two months, then started making big plans again to buy land in Georgia and build a house. Those plans failed drastically and I had to move back home to Texas. After that upheaval is when I got the message in the second poem of the series.

Then, I started looking at doing what I couldn’t do in Georgia overseas. I went to Ghana at the end of March 2023, with a logistical mind. Get the details about what it would take to build an oasis. Two months into the trip, standing in the dungeons of Cape Coast castle, I realized with my whole self that I am a miracle; there’s no reason that I should exist. And yet I do. The tone of the rest of my trip changed. After that, I got the last two messages in the series.

These poems and messages were made at the end of a long unraveling and a pained release - a description that can probably be applied to our collective life during these past few years. The visuals in the following posts were made from roaming my home, finding objects, and putting them together, temporarily, with intuition and experimentation.

Both the words and the creative process represent the uncertain beginning of new ways of moving that I'm seeing in my life and the lives of many people around me. They foresee that these meandering, experimenting, foraging ways can make something lovely, messy, and complete out of whatever we have and what we are given - not what we're told we have to get at expense of ourselves.

An Unexpected Pilgrimage is a series of poems or messages from the Spirit and visual art that I will be posting over the next couple of weeks. Sign-up to receive updates and follow along.

At the end of each poem will be an invitation that is a variation of this:

Breathe.

Look or listen.

Feel what you feel.

Wait.

Consider what your story is to tell and what you have to tell it.