The man left his daily time of meditation
(to watch the news on TV)
only to encounter consternation.
He wondered,
Where can my new found Peace be?
Yes, the Temporary Occupant entered,
the man watched his new friend Peace flee.
Only then did Peace he again see,
“My Peace hasn’t fled;
my Peace is still here with me.
From that eternal Peace,
not even the Temporary Occupant
can blind me from knowing in my heart,
‘Once I was blind, but now I see.’”

Advised to search for a hermitage in my heart,
the idea wasn’t completely
a foreign entity to me
but still, it came as a bit of a start.

Thomas Merton lived in a hermitage,
so, mostly, the idea for me
was of a place where one would go and just be.
But in my heart? That might leave me in an orphanage,

occupied by just one lonely one;
and that one would be only, lonely me,
but Peace was there and greeted me
as sure as the rising and setting of the sun.

And I could be with Peace anytime
along the arc of that sun.

*idea from a meditation by Henri Nouwen

“Bloom where you are planted,”
she often would say to me,
but blooming where you are planted
seemed so wussy to me.

I wanted to be out on the front lines —
there with all the action.
For confrontation, I would pine
and for justice, hopefully, get satisfaction,

but over the years I have learned
that I was making myself a victim
by perpetuating, with confrontation in my heart burned,
a violent system.

Chavez said, “I’m a violent man learning not to be.”
“In all your getting, be sure to get wisdom,” —
And so, that saying also came to me —
mysticism, contemplation, meditation, unitive
being with God (not win/lose, us or them, not violent
confrontation) lead to peaceful action.

In hindsight, her words return to me
“Bloom where you are planted,” so on the way
to the next demonstration, I’ll plant a tree
and help the earth breathe free.

*with appreciation for the meditations of
Richard Rohr, Matthew Fox and Henri Nouwen

I listened to the sounds coming from outside,
the cardinal’s call, the tap of a woodpecker.
I hoped the bird’s tap was not on the house
where previous birds have left their moniker.
The bird’s a domicile wrecker.

So I climbed out of bed and made my way
down the hall and to the front door.
The cedar siding was completely intact
and the bird lie dead on the entryway floor.
The neighbor’s cat did one dead bird score.

And so back to bed, I made my way
from the front door and up the stairs
one last look out the window I glanced
“Oh, no!” Pecking on the cedar siding was a pecker pair.
So I shouted, “Here, kitty, kitty!”
It’s survival of the fittest out there.”