Yearning to Travel

Here I sit on the porch of Doe Bay Yoga Studio over looking aquamarine waters of the San Juan Islands. The sky is a bright cobalt blue. The islands roll up and down themselves with voluptuous viscosity. Trees whisper with the wind. I am here, dropped from a cocoon or a robin's nest, staring out at water and sky. My belly is full from a homemade lunch of Quinoa Pasta with veggies and tomato sauce.

A lone ship schoons over the channel. Bits of snow still play upon exposed areas of landscape between the curvature of Douglas Firs. I am here. I have escaped, and still I dream of future travels. Today it was Nicaragua--learning Spanish and meeting local women and medicine people there.

Yearning to travel is a beautiful thing. It means I long to see more of myself. What color am I when I stand in the shade of a cedar tree? What shape does my shadow make when I cast my prayers out onto Mother Ocean? I long to see the gradations of tone, voice, light, shape, and movement. In yearning to travel I feel a hunger for contrast and texture. I want to know through experience. I long for places to speak directly into my heart and leave footprints there. Then one day, when I am old, I will have many paths to wander inside and I'll make a tapestry of all my remembrances.

I do not seek to escape myself through traveling, but rather to move away from the things that get in the way of knowing myself more deeply. This is a sacred enterprise, not to be shrugged off as a child's wanting. It is a mature woman's voice calling from the crags of her own soul, singing into the caverns of her body and seeing what treasures reside there. This travel is more of a running to. Running to the unknown, the mystery, away from what is patterned and worn out. It is a journey to find meaning and truth in the ordinary and simplistic. It is a quest to discover the temples that live outside my brain, lodged in a valley of soul.

This journey is a sacred one. As I place each foot in front of me I reveal more of myself to the world and the world reveals more of itself to me. I am not stopping here. This journey will continue as long as ever I live: a journey into more, more, more of who I am.

Spring Poem

The winter is almost over.
Giving way to crystal-leafed buds
The crocuses know.
Blooming in late January,
Pushing their hands through tendrils of earth
They are springtime
Magnetized
Out of slumber.
I feel their hearts beat a steady rhythm
In tune with the earth,
With love,
Eternity.
This one symbol:
Crocus buds pushing through January earth
Brings hope once more to a heart in darkness.
No more waiting--
Patience is drumming again!
Strumming on an innocent lute.
The smile from an angel tweaked open,
After Christmas,
Fairies in bloom
Mothers subsume their colors
In white-purple wastebaskets
Or milk jugs hard with clay
This poem is going nowhere
Just like these crocuses--
In going nowhere,
They always get somewhere.
That's because
They have
Hope.