“Is this the path of love?”
a poet’s words on repeat
as I walk barefoot on the grass
where Puriri has let go
her abundance of flowers
mother earth’s loop of
letting love live
giving life love

Awake in the dark
Heart aching for beauty
Silence whispers: rest

~

Awake in the dark,
images and sounds of
humanity’s cruel violence
exploding indiscriminately
all over people and planet,

despair, grief and outrage,
all clamouring for attention,
heart choking in an
ever-tightening vice,
I ache for beauty…

Searching for soothing
words and other voices,
eventually the silence of the earth
and the deep night
offers its solace
stillness and calm.

15/06/2025

I promise myself
gentleness in welcoming
this new day
this new rising from sleep
however fickle or luscious it was
in the night just gone,

I promise myself
to savour
each new opportunity
to respond to the earth,
the trees,
the kingfisher
flashing past my kitchen window
briefly pausing
amongst the glorious colours
of the liquidamber,
each day

an opportunity
to respond to
the sun, the clouds, the rain
my body, my recovering brain
each new morning,
allowing space
to feel the deep silence
embracing and enlivening
it all

I promise myself
to stop wrestling
to stop fighting time,
to stop pushing
and squeezing
as much as I think
my brain will allow me
to do today

I promise myself instead
to offer an olive branch to time
to listen to what *this* hour
of the day and the season
invites me into..

listening

soft belly
open heart

08/05/2025

Trust the trail on the ground,
trust the ancient and wise ones,
the poets,
the stars…
the sun and the moon
the wood wide web,
all oozing nourishment
and a deep time foundation
to stand on

Slow down,
truly,
trust your heart
your gut
your body
when you give yourself
time,
and space,
and kind attentive listening
to what they’ve all
been saying
since the beginning
of time

17/02/2025

* with a nod to William Stafford’s poem “Watching the jet planes dive” (1960), with a link to hearing its author read it: https://voca.arizona.edu/track/id/62519

It seems we are in similar, yet more dire, times.

While our worlds
in all directions
are flying
out of control
like so many
spinning plates,
smashing
the last vestiges
of basic humanity,
care and compassion
for fellow human and
more-than-human beings,

in my own tiny world
most of my plates
have stopped spinning
just as out of
my control,
though there’s no shortage
of visits, meals, phone calls,
walks, rides,
kindness, care,
understanding and love
from friends old and new,
family, and even
the professionals

and feeling held by
the great mother earth
trees, birds, father sky
moon and stars
and the soft touch
and blessing
of angels’ wings

🌏🌿🌳🕊☀️🌦🌈🌖💫

13/02/2025

It was clear,
coming to rest
on my long awaited
family holiday,
my body was done..
No resistance
no resilience
no reserves left.

Yet still another month
and a half
of shedding tasks
roles and
jobs
that took more
and still more away
than I had left to give,

until it all came to
a truly, undeniably,
incontrovertibly,
crashing halt
and my brain slammed
into the in-side of my
skull.

Yet still, like a
runaway train
having hurtled down a ravine,
rumbling on
through sheer momentum,
on its recent track
the engine still going,
although slowly puttering out,

until finally, finally
coming to a stop
a resting place,
long enough
for the necessary message
to come through:
the ONLY thing that
“bodily-felt-sense” really
takes the pressure off,
to give the shaken engine
nourishment and
space to heal,
is to deeply rest,
between ALL,
reduced
measured and
gentle only,
daily activities
for the foreseeable
future

25/12/2024
17/1/2025

Bearing witness to
the barbaric annihilation
of Palestinian people,
and their lands
while Western powers
aid and abet the destruction,
and gaslight
the rest of the world,
all the while
filling their pockets
with the profits
of the war machine

There is no turning back,
no unseeing of
what fell into
the cellular memory
of bones,
into the dark depths
of ancestral
roots

no turning back
from seeing scores
and scores
of live images
of the depraved cruelty
of genocide

no turning back
from recognising
what the arrogant Western
colonising
mindset and actions
have perpetrated
with impunity
for CENTURIES,
on indigenous peoples
and their soil, humanity’s soil,
all over the globe

no turning back
from all this,
here condensed,
concentrated
on a small group of human beings
on a tiny sliver of land
in just
116
interminable
days of horror,
in full view of anyone
with a cellphone
who has capacity
to look

This    has   got    to   STOP

(I have been rocked to my core.
I feel I have to do what I can to
help raise awareness,
help open people’s hearts,
help galvanise action,
help in any way I can – my small and necessary way,
to stop the western world to fund and participate in this GENOCIDE
and the ongoing oppression, marginalisation and colonisation of indigenous peoples all over the world.
I am sitting with what this will look like for me, right where I am, here in Auckland NZ)

01/02/2024

I will not turn away
from seeing babies, the children,
become orphans,

I will not turn away
from seeing
women, men,
the strong ones,
the weak ones
the old wise ones,
ripped open,  torn to pieces
their homes no longer,
sometimes their ancestral graves
ripped up and desecrated,
their families, 
sometimes whole generations,
under the rubble.

I will not turn away
from seeing them fleeing
from here
to there and back again
followed, hunted down,
bombed,  shelled,  shot
crushed, burned,
obliterated

No longer ‘just’ occupied,
with no rights
with no protection
with no say
over their own lives,
over their home land,
for 75 years,
by some colonial decree,
but now
also starved
thirsty
without medicine
or warm clothes,
relentlessly pursued
and slaughtered
by the tens.of.thousands…..

I will not turn away
from seeing and hearing
the utter depravity
of a demonic mission
to massacre a whole people,
aided and abetted
by the wealthiest,
most power hungry,
colonialist
‘civilisations’ in the world

I will not turn away
from seeing and feeling
what the courageous,
heroic journalists
within Gaza
desperately need us to see
and hear, and feel..
because no-one else
is telling their stories

I will not turn away,
so i can feel my broken heart
guide me
to do what we,
all of us individuals,
can do
each in whatever ways
we are able to do
together
in our thousands
world-wide,
to make sure
EVERYONE knows
We want this genocide
to STOP

I will not turn away…
and yes,
it is breaking my heart,
daily
it hurts,
a lot,
but only a fraction
of how much
these bloody atrocities
are hurting the children
the women,
the men
of Palestine

#LastingCeasefireNow #freePalestine #stopsupplyingbombs

The other day
when the grief of the world
grabbed you by the throat
crushed your heart
and shredded your gut in anguish
there was only one question:
how do you respond to this?
how can you even be with this?

Next…
in the blink
of an eye..

when you knew
you are made of
earth, water, air and fire,

you are made
of stardust,
of clouds, rivers, oceans,
of trees, plants
       and fungi,

that moment
you knew:

all creatures
       legged, winged, finned
                and more
are your brothers and sisters

your mind
       has no boundaries,
your open heart and
your deep
soft belly
are the ground
        of your being

that moment you knew
the answer to your question,
right there:

be love

do whatever
calls you
and
be love

(revised 22/03/23)

I just came across this poem I wrote about my experience of our first level 4 lockdown. Time has come to share it..

LOCKDOWN 2020

Covid 19 lockdown
Covid 19 hunker down
Covid 19 rahui   protected space
Post bubbles
Covid bubbles

Thrown into your own
Space     wide open
Space     spare space
What had seemed a
Good space
For so many years
A cloud free space

Now propelled into
A grief space
           Grief, grief, hole
            Space, pain
            Abandoned
            Grief space
            Alone space
Not belonging
Not enough
Outsider
No connection
No connection
With myself
Space

Uncertainty and fear
All around me
Everywhere
Every where
This brain no longer
         Coping
         Handling
         Resilient
Irascible
In chaos
Flailing arms
             And eyes
                    And FB events
                            And everyone
    Is shouting
          Come to me!
                      I’ll save you with
           My irresistible
                  Exciting
                         Deeply nourishing
Exercises
              Meditations
                          Healings
                               Business plans
You can be successful
       Happy
                       Rich
                                    Secure!
            Untouched
            Unflappable
            Relaxed
            Resilient
            A saviour…..  !

BUT     MY     CLOUD  
    My heavy blanket upon waking
                                             IS
              BACK

My heart was broken
                        broken

                        broken

So            what now?
   Another layer to address?
   More layers to heal?
                      …

Wait
There’s a glimpse
                     a hint     in
        the bathroom
I just caught it…. just
                                        then  
By the door frame
                   Just a glimmer

THIS
               My dear friend will
                  Take me, by the hand
                      If I let it, to
            The place (whose
             Only task it is….. )

             To the place
             And the time
            And the moment
 Where the running
        In circles
                        Stops
Where answers don’t cut it
Any more
Where even looking
              For answers is
    Looking in the wrong
               Direction

This is the time for
                             Questions
Questions that take me
Deeper
      All the way to where
I know
                   I
                           Am
                                       Enough

        All the way to where
I know
   my body knows
               the one,
                    (the only!)
                         next
                             step
                               I can,
                                   I need
                                     to take

(Written 05/04/2020
In my little house… my refuge, during my bedbug-infested, heartbroken 2020 Covid 19 level 4 lockdown)