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Jack Ridl and his Landscapes of Poetry group offered a Holiday Reading hosted by Jack on December 14th.
The following poems were part of the evening:

Christmas Wishes

What I wish you to receive
is the Permission to be you,
in all your honest wondering:
open to the filling that
will come from finding how to give,
what makes you whole,
unsheathes what lies behind
your armor –
lets you breathe unfettered air.

Confidence to change your mind,
to answer the small quiet call
toward something you have never tried
that keeps the fire in you alive.

Courage to embrace life’s questions
without panicked grasps for answers
to escape the gnaw of waiting
or cocoon known towers of thought.

Reverence for the gift of choices,
and the magnitude of difference
broad perspectives have to offer
us – and all that is unknown.

Wisdom to discern reactions –
from responses – yours and others,’
breaking chains of escalation,
offering forbearing peace.

Eyes that look with Mercy upon
acts of others and your own,
recognizing fear and defense
hide behind our sharp protections,
drawing tight the cords that constrain
kindness, trust, and healing love.

Tender hands cupped close to hold
all the brokenness you find.
And in that sheltered space you offer,
seeds of Strength to root and grow.

Knowledge that you are not yet
the self that you will someday be,
thus placing yourself nearest doorways
that will open toward your dreams.

A strong Yearning to allow
your gifts and talents to lean forward
out of the machine of earnings
into all of who you are.

A Kaleidoscopic Lens
through which to look and see yourself
burst from small comparisons
(you may have claimed to be your own),
then, radiating into brightening
circles of expanding impact,
unleashing an endless offer
to Become who you can be.

A life wide-open to Surprise
at how Great Goodness can arrive
in darkest moments and in light,
in increments and flowing seas.

This is what I wish for you
this Christmas and in each day forward,
all these ways of living Kindly –
all these ways to Give.

And in the words of a dear friend, “Be Gentle with yourself.”

McBride 12-2022

 

What We Know

I hear the traffic I cannot see
100 yards below, on the highway,
look up and see that winds above
are lifting and swaying the limbs of a tree.
But the test of belief
still remains the far island
sprawled and reclining on the horizon,
its bluffs, hills, and flatlands,
and wide stretch of beaches
defined on the map, but revealed
when it chooses.

And there is contentment in finally seeing it
when it presents itself there to be seen,
meanwhile believing it real
in the darkness, like: wind,
truth, intention, love, growth, faith
and time.

Each thing bestowed
for our parsed writhen vision,
our “bringing to being”
of all that we know
or, are willing to see.

McBride 12-2022