Journey of the Heart

For many years I resisted the way things fall apart. I made a life out of holding things together… I believed that poetry could work as a kind of glue, could help me to fix problems, could help me to know. But then, about two years ago, the world helped things fall apart so completely that I was able, at least for a moment, to see through my longing to make things neat. I could see through my desire to control the world.  Since then, poems have become more a way of unknowing. I come to the page with curiosity instead of answers. Rilke writes in “Autumn,” about how this experience of surrender can lead us into “seeing” god: “ And yet there is Someone, whose hands, infinitely calm, holding up all this falling.” This poem is about my ongoing practice of allowing the world to be as it is without trying to reshape or recreate it.   Oh World I Love You Oh world, I love you, you with your roots that thrust up through pavement, you with your mudflows ...

”My silences had not protected me. Your silences will not protect you.... ...What are the words you do not yet have? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence?” Audre Lorde I first came across Audre Lorde and her work in my Gender studies classes at the university. The lecturer shared some of her work with us and gave us the above quote from her. That quote hit me right in the gut and I knew I needed to know more about her and her work. Audre Lorde Lorde was a poet, a human rights activist, a teacher and a feminist. She battled breast cancer and unfortunately lost her battle in 1992. From this battle came her award winning book called: The Cancer Journals. There's also a documentary about her: A Litany for Survival: The Life and Work of Audre Lorde. My favorite poem from Lorde is called A Litany for Survival and I am happy to share it with the readers of t...

I have been writing poetry for about thirty years - since I was seven years old.... For most of that time, it has been above all a means of dealing with life and of processing my journey.  "The Dance" is a celebration of life through the recognition of its fragility - that from the moment of conception we are just a breath away from death and yet against all odds, we live.  For me, this is a hugely empowering idea, wrapped up as it is in the possibility that this physical existence is only a small part of what we are and will be: the possibility that after this dance with Death, we dance again. 'The Dance" by Ruth Calder Murphy The Dance We dance with Death. Every day from conception to cremation - or whatever other path to bodily annihilation - we dance with Death. She whirls us, gasping, laughing, giddied and giggling to the adrenalin heights of danger and wraps us soft in swaddling arms at night... where visio...

  I wrote this song while contemplating the way our heart gets broken so often in the relationships of this world.... Sometimes these relationships are so intense, that they seem to stretch across lifetimes! In Eastern traditions it is believed that the souls we encounter on our path are all there to help us go deeper into our relationships with our selves and God. Sometimes, they are the same souls, over and over again, and sometimes, new ones, but always bringing us closer to pure love. Although the lyrics of this song came to me around fifteen years ago, they are just now gaining their own wings. I think timing is mystical, and sometimes we cannot see the value in our broken heart until many years later. But broken hearts are good, because they always long to fly toward something deeper, and more real. If we follow them, I believe they will take us there. This is also my understanding of art: Krishna, or God,...

Much of the mystic love poetry from India revolves around musical and theatrical expressions that portray the loving relationship between the soul and God… One such celebrated relationship was that between princess Mirabai and her divine beloved, Krishna. Born in the sixteenth century  into a noble Rajput family, Mirabai married into a family that did not take fondly to her devotion to God. Consequently, she went from royalty to mendicant, and decorated her spiritual path with poetic songs. I first heard of the great poet, Mirabai in the early 1970’s while I was living and studying bhakti yoga at the Hare Krishna temple in Los Angeles, California.  As I had a background in the performance arts Mirabai’s life instantly spoke to me. Her fusion of spiritual sentiments with song resonated with my passion for music, drama, dance, and the devotional path to loving God. In 1968 I serendipitously met a devotee by the name of Mirabai, who taught me that the perfectio...