If you ever lose heart and the earth seems as distant as stars fading into the noise of your busy mind, know this. That a tiny island exists in the blue hands of the ocean. That a tree grows upright into the salted clouds. That two eagles love each other enough to spend their lives greeting the morning sun together. That two eaglets stand in their nest, gazing at the heavens. Looking down to the forever ground. They eat and sleep and flap their wings. And one day in July, one by one, they will jump into the air. They will know the difference between existing and what is beyond. They will hold onto nothing. The hurricane will come, courage catching their pinions on fire, as they mount the wind, climbing ladders into realms of the invisible.


--T.L. Stokes






Thursday, February 25, 2010




The Hill


Down the black path
curved hill of jagged tree
arms and shoulders
above the restless creek
we flew in white armor
crying privately.
In wool shadows
surprisingly bright
was a woman,
white hood,
swede cape long
to her feet.
Deep the eyes
that capture sadness.
Something shattered
by the gaze.
No words
formed.
Wanting her to last
one more moment
I forgot to ask
a question.
Knowing my human heart
she understood--
and rose up,
swept my afterthoughts
into one, great, wide
marriage of air
and longing.





for the eagle

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Simplicity





I want the poem for Wardie to be sweet,
infused with warm seaweed salt smell
of the north Sound. On the face,
oh how it feels on your face.

With hands of wind
stirring up the water.

With a boat and a motor,
and a fishing pole.
With bait, his pipe.

I want to be a child in the log house,
at the knee, listening to old stories
of ferry captains,
of fishing. Feel family
gather around for a summer meal,
small talk, generous hugs,
days and love that seem
forever.

I want the poem for Wardie
to have Rose in his arms.
I'll leave it at that,

just an old proud man
with his sweetheart
in his arms.






for Wardie

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

see-through fingertips





She has eyes on the tips of her fingers.
Long light streams like angel hair pasta,
invisible and glowing
snake outward to the closest entity.

Hooking up,
a low sound enters the air.
No one can hear it.
The ears go mute.
Everyone's hair
begins to float upward.
You can taste
static electricity,
it is something else.

A field of poppies
moves into the distance.
No one here dies.
The dead wake up
and pay attention.

The living
are transformed.

She turns her eyes
from her fingers
like flashlights.
Into your body she goes.

It is how
you find your name.

We are all light,
all of us,

--some can see it,
and some cannot.


***

a place for silence




from Inviting Silence
by Gunilla Norris


When we make a place for silence, we make room
for ourselves. This is simple. And it is radical.

***

By making room for silence, we resist
the forces of the world which tell us to live
an advertised life of surface appearances,
instead of a discovered life--a life lived in contact
with our senses,our feelings,
our deepest thoughts and values.

***

..silence seems to deepen. A room devoted to silence
honors and invites the unknown, the untamed,
the wild, the shy, the unfathomable
--that which rarely has a chance to surface
within us. It is a visible,
external symbol of an internal reality:
an actual room
signifying space within ourselves
set aside for silence.

Monday, February 15, 2010

the soul


from Shamanic Spirit
by Kenneth Meadows



The Soul is a body of light.
It is an inner light...

Light is a form of energy
and your Soul is your body of
Light-energy..

...your Soul..exists
in approximately the same
spatial location as your body,
and interpenetrates it,

it exists in another plane...
the Dimension of the Soul.

...your Soul,
like your mind,
is a non-physical aspect
of your total Self..

..not that your soul
is an extension of your physical being,
..your physical body
is an emanation of your Soul.

...the Soul is as real
as the physical body.
More 'real' in fact, because
it has greater
permanence.

You are a Spirit.

Not a body with a Spirit,
but the very opposite..
a Spirit
with a physical body.
A Spirit with a mind.
A Spirit with a Soul.

A composite being comprising
body, mind, Soul and Spirit..

...The Soul
may be regarded as the 'Light'
of the individual,

whereas the Spirit
is the 'Life'--the essential being.
The Spirit is the original being
before the manifestation
of form.

...So the Real You is spiritual,
with physical and mental outlets.
That which is spiritual cannot be seen,
but its presence can be felt

and it is aware
of its own existence.

You, then, are a Spirit--

aware of your own existence,
of your own individual identity,
of your own unique being-ness
here on the Earth.

A spirit with a physical body
through which it can experience
the consequences
of its own choices
and actions..

Life on Earth is thus a journey

made by the Spirit
through the 'slower' vibrations
of physical reality..

...in order to express itself

through physical world experiences
and so shape and fashion
its own future-
its own destiny.

Sunday, February 14, 2010

the list of today

today

1. I heard a gang of rogue waves washed groups of people
tumbling them from the surfing competition, from the sea wall,
from their breath.

2. M. gave me roses, peppermint and almost lickable.

3. M. held me while we danced on our knees.

4. I wore 3-D glasses on top of my glasses and tried not to laugh
and shake them off.

5. M. loved me.

6. I loved M.

7. He sits shuffling the paper open to a new page. I write, laptop
warming knees, sitting in the big green chair.

8. Last night at Aireal's party, a boy passed out in the big green chair.

9. We stayed up till 2:30 am, standing in a group playing guitars, I held
the microphone. Bo sang with his heart. My eyes teared a little thinking
of the funeral he went to yesterday.

Saturday, February 13, 2010

Twitter Poems

2/12/10

Gray cloud spills a black suit onto pavement in slow hiccups, erases
cedar's fluid sweet heads with only thumbs, mirrors and lights.

2/12/10

Henry and Alice, cadavers, spend Valentine's Day cutting lace doilies and red construction paper, fingerbones clacking happily in scissors.

2/9/10

Seven,
I'm telling you,seven hawks gazed in meditation, the hunter's silence,
down into fields or the ditches, good omens swift we sped past





flashlight mind collection


http://twitter.com/floodwaterpress







c2010 TLStokes (all rights reserved)

Saturday, February 6, 2010

after Keats




Aloft and silent,
they must be stars with crystal heads
turning in stillness
above our burning
and our love,

no words or utterance
can show this feeling,
how tender the sparse life
ended,

whose words, young
and hardly tried
do still live among us.

I too love the young man,
though tragically lost
amid his own heart's theft

willingly given,
a woman washed by grief
reminds my own treasured losses

and here we sit holding ourselves
in the words of a passionate
spirit, young and not knowing

his fame. Old treatments and cold
sped him off from our world
yet not so far

nor unlit,
to be forgotten.






c2010 T.L. Stokes