Category Archives: poetry

original poems by Janice Sandeen

having taken

having taken what was offered

having taken the cast off, shed, forgotten

what no longer had a home or a heart to tend it

my heart became full, full up, weighted, borne

of burdens not my own yet mine nonetheless

tending tenderly tentatively landing home

having taken in, in here, not that there isn’t

an infinite capacity within, but what about

the fit, a resonance, a lightness of being?

having taken in only to give up, give over

resting in free space, an emptiness of rich order

lacking nothing, born of that which is now arising

this way, of responding to clear, calls me,

calls me out, calls me to see the subtle nature

of interplay, interaction in the field of knowing

the weight of things within and without

as the way of clear can be to enter even further

in to the very thing that blinds and obscures

losing sight, it rests with the spirit to guide,

to inform, to dissolve that which binds me

within a hold that brought edge, nourishment,

truth at one time, yet not at this time as it is

surrendering to what is loosens my grip and

frees this very tightness of the bud to its release

arriving here, this morning

each morning, there is something new arriving

and something left remaining from the day before,

even moments before in this blend of all things.

yesterday, i spent the day with myself and 40 others

and the trees and the meadow and countless other wild

voices, threads, conversations, and the fire at the center.

i had been called some time ago to be at this place.

was it the forest, was it the poetry within me, was it

the fire that still had some work to do with me?

was it the place, was it the people? was it the famous

ones, the storytelling, the green? was it the one

that is the many and the all and the beingness wrapped

into that vibration that so easily calls me home?

•  •  •

whatever was the call, i sit with myself now, in this

new arriving, the alchemy of elements shifted within,

burned, opened, laid to ash, ground to pigment, left to be.

am i changed or is this changing the very one that i am?

it is within this sitting, within the arriving that greets each

moment, each new day, that these questions find their form.

sometimes the wood is damp, sometimes the flames spring

from an exquisitely seasoned fuel, the heart calling in song.

sometimes the heart weeps and the fire burns and the wings

hold tight in wait for the flight that will take them, soon.

that holding, exquisite in its own right, visits me now and

burns, the damp forced out in tears. these tears, arrive

this morning, having found their way as this conversation,

this stone path, bringing voice to this morning song.

fantasy fantasia

many, many fantasies ~ the heart of seeming existence

yet another filtering in, bleeding into this moment

bleeding in, the mix of this and that  …  here  …

here and there mixed into ‘here’ ~ then what?

commingling, cohabiting, confusing, cross-pollinating

• • •

thus the nature of three distinct awareness streams

we are the seed and the flesh of this both

being in the now

being outside of the now

being, being as being

• • •

being reactive in the now

being reactive outside of the now

being reactive

we are the seed and the flesh of this both

we grow within the matrix we know

• • •

being repressed in the now

being repressed outside of the now

being repressed

every cell listens to the vibration of the song that is playing

every heart moves within a medium it calls home

• • •

my home is being, being as being

even when i fight this or flight from this

and fantasy fuels the fire of my higher knowing

taking this ride, sometimes with the bottom falling out

surrendering to anticipation as the composer of the score

• • •

i return to being

and here the glory of that return

feeds and nourishes from purity previously unknown

opening out into that wider field

emanating being