Journey of the Heart

The Owls’ Teachings by Carolyn Chilton Casas From beyond the darkened orchard, I hear the blossoming calls of a great horned owl and his companion’s reply. From oak to pine, they converse in a secret language while I sit in between, guessing at the meaning. It’s a blessing to feel their presence though they can’t be seen, and yet with my closed eyes, I picture their soft, feathered bodies, heads swiveling side to side. Could there be a teaching in this— to open a space in my heart, to consider them friends for whatever time they are near, until they take wing? Oh, the jubilance among wild things! An indigenous man in Guatemala told me my spirit animal is the owl. For a time after the death of a loved one, a barn owl visited at dusk, bringing much needed solace from another dimension. And the clear message— a cherished love between two beings can never die. Carolyn Chilton Casas   lives on the central coast of California, the perfect landscape for a love of nature, hiking, and playing b

    Learning to Lie Still by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer It isn't easy. Good, then, to have a cat come lie in the curve of my arm with her full weight on my weight, her warmth against my side. If she purrs, so much the better. How could I rise and disrupt her low gravelly song? So I lie still. Awake, but not scrolling. Not speaking. Not running to fix. It comes to this—my great hope for learning to lie still is to become a cushion for a cat. It’s a noble hope—to lie still as a cat in the curve of my arm, still as a pool of daylight on the sill, still as the sun itself, holding the center as the whole world moves around it.  Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer  co-hosts  Emerging Form  (a podcast on creative process), Secret Agents of Change (a surreptitious kindness cabal) and Soul Writer’s Circle. Her poetry has appeared on  A Prairie Home Companion ,  PBS News Hour,   O Magazine ,  American Life in Poetry,  on   Carnegie Hall stage, and on river rocks she leaves around town. Her collection 

  Buttercups by Caroline Mellor I spent the morning fretting.  Will I ever be enough? Have enough, do enough? Will I ever earn enough money, have my own house, enough savings to retire on? Will life be kind to my children? And, do these strange metrics of security have any meaning  on an overheating planet? I spent the afternoon in the field. For a good hour and a half I watched the bees feeding on the buttercups, noticing how the flowers dip and bend to meet the bee  and, after he gathers his bounty of golden dust, how they bounce back up to catch the sun.  My questions went unanswered. But by evening — that most beautiful of words, ‘evening’—  the garden was quiet  and the moon was rising over the hedgerows in violet, star-speckled skies.  When I closed my eyes, all I could see were those nectar-full yellow cups  bending and dipping to meet the bees in the high June light and I was glad, then, that I had spent my afternoon in their gentle company noticing how they never once asked if

Firenze by Sara Byers   And then she wrote,  of the bridges and the stars and the flames,  of the desperation in the eyes of travelers,  and the peaceful sweetness  when the air hits her tongue,  of the moonlit masquerade of bells and sirens,  and the quest to discover what’s next,  she wrote of sun beams and hilltops and bibliotecas,  of soups and discos and morning rants,  she wrote of everything she had been  and all she hoped to become,  her imagination carried her to the morning  when her eyes would open  to a framed picture of piazzale michelangelo  hanging on her wall. Sara Byers  is a burgeoning poet who dreams in words. After relinquishing her CEO title in 2021, Sara began an exploration into spirituality and the soul. Overnight strings of words erupted soon thereafter, solely quelled by putting pen to paper. Sara has written over one thousand poems, and believes the energy and messaging they hold are universal. She shares her poetry daily on her Instagram page, @dearjoylove.