This is one of my favorite poems for the holiday season. It reminds me of how much poetry really illuminates what essentil in our lives. Amazing Peace Thunder rumbles in the mountain passes And lightning rattles the eaves of our houses. Flood waters await us in our avenues. Snow falls upon snow, falls upon snow [...]

Several years ago I attended a week long retreat in a canyon on Navajo land in Arizona with poetry therapist John Fox, author of Poetic Medicine and Finding What You Didn’t Lose. The trip was part of a longer personal journey to connect more deeply with the yearnings of my soul and to live and [...]

Amazing Peace Thunder rumbles in the mountain passes And lightning rattles the eaves of our houses. Flood waters await us in our avenues. Snow falls upon snow, falls upon snow to avalanche Over unprotected villages. The sky slips low and grey and threatening. We question ourselves. What have we done to so affront nature? We [...]

Here’s a deeply moving and inspiring poem by Irish poet and philosopher John O’Donohue (1956 to 2008) who had a great grasp of fertile quality of imagination found in Celtic Wisdom. He wrote so beautifully about in his book Anam Cara. A Morning Offering I bless the night that nourished my heart To set the [...]

Some years ago I did a workshop with John Fox, author of Finding What You Didn’t Lose and Poetic Medicine, who works with poetry for the purpose of healing. In his groups the focus is on drawing inspiration from poetry and writing poems of self expression and healing without worrying about needing to master the [...]

I think German poet Rainer Maria Rilke was probably the greatest spiritual poet of the 20th century. Here’s one of my favorites. The Man Watching I can tell by the way the trees beat, after so many dull days, on my worried windowpanes that a storm is coming, and I hear the far-off fields say [...]

For The Time Of Necessary Decision The mind of time is hard to read. We can never predict what it will bring, Nor even from all that is already gone Can we say what form it finally takes; For time gathers its moments secretly. Often we only know it’s time to change When a force [...]

I always think of poetry as written by the soul of the writer for the soul of the reader so when I read poems I let them wash over me and feel into them as I read. Favorite poems remind me of what is really important to me. Here are some that speak to my [...]

The fate of poetry is to teach us to fall in love with the world inspite of history. – Derek Walcott New England poet and essayist Donald Hall calls poetry, The Unsayable Said, referring the ineffable quality of poetry; the way it gives voice to experiences that are beyond words. I always think of poetry [...]