BODYPSALMS

What ever happened
to the sheer delight of
p l a y i n g
where your fingers and feet
touch the earth
and you play in the mud
let sand run through your palms
and sea, salt and dirt glide
on the edge of your skin

remember the joy of
rinsing your hair in the rain
and running through an open field
and dancing on the shores
of the body of water
you knew as a child

Why does Jesus say
you must be like a child
to come into the kin(g)dom of heaven
fresh and fragrant
is the place
to play and pray
in dusk and dawn

Now is the season
to call back your heart
to live with lightness
and cherish the chance
to take back what you deeply know
find the joy in movements
which sweep your being
into first utterance

the sound of words falling from breath
the touch of wet sand on arms
the scent of sky
the dance of wind

Reinhabit
the ecstatic pause
where play takes up its vital cause
and you answer
YES!

You are living an accelerated pace
where there are as many arts-based ways
of expression and research as there are art forms
and emphasis is increasingly on survival
in this strange, complex, wondrous and complicated
organism called higher institutions
budget cuts are happening at every turn of life
and competition is brimming at the helm of this journey
marked by a plan to dance through one hoop or another

It is time to return to your first loves –
where curiosity and wonder
color, texture, sound, movement and voice
nurture your very essence
and it is your deep beautiful life
which is your re/search
life and art, art and life
are a glorious partnership
and let paradox and mystery find their way to your inquiry
trusting the place of surprise in this path of bridging worlds.

Take other ingredients on
this road of bringing your
artist, performer, poet, researcher, educator
ones which don’t have
the weight of fundable options
but will give you gravity and levity.

Take the sweet silence of solitude
the ability to taste beauty
in the winds and hues of the natural world
allow for the ecology of your own soul
and befriend your own body
trust the inward place
which fuels you in
artmaking  & scholarship

Live your own precious life
as no one else can.

You know what you know
what is it that you don’t know
the delicious place of unforeseen
this is the call to living as in improvisation

you may yearn for a sense of security
the familiarity of what is known
but it is the unfamiliar which
holds the exotic
you don’t have to travel
to a tropical climate
or leave the country

the unknown is a bed of petals
anticipating your arrival
waiting for your agreement
to make peace with the unpredictable
asking you to soften
into a different destination

you have departed from the known
and you are on the runway of new starts
here are no forgotten wings
only material to glide

this is the province of trust
s i m p l y
s e r e n e l y
s o f t l y
s e n s u o u s l y
a riot of color
for the life you are living
and who you are becoming.