Cocoa Beans

When the sun rises and beams red on the mountains
I pull the covers up and roll on my stomach groaning.
The sound of water percolating over Brown and squatty, peanut-shaped beans
Has me peeking from under my pillow.
The dark, woodsy smell makes me salivate like a Saint Bernard.
The thought of wrapping my palm around my favorite blue mug from an art studio in Barbados
hot with the dark liquid
Born only from the mixture of South American cocoa and water pulls my feet down the stairs.
Savoring, I breathe in the deep smell.
The mountains rise to greet me through the bay window;
Rabbits bound through my garden flowers and smile;
Sunlight sparkles on the pergola & Japanese lanterns;
Raising my mug, I toast the cocoa and the day.

written at the Crestone Mountain Zen Center
Writing Retreat 2010

A good place

A Poem Written at the Crestone Mountain Zen Center
Writing Retreat 2010

Dammit I’m good. Come hell or high water I’ll believe it.
The place with no sin is not in a Grimms Fairy Tale forest
It is a place I will believe exists.
Where judgment obliterates crappy ideas of self
Where good things wind their way around me like the wind whipping through the weeping willows
Through me, in me.
The sun will beat strong and red on my face until the quiet smile of recognition spreads.
I still feel the stones .. .the little crimes under my feet – the natural, reminder of humanity
And I will release them to the sun and the wind and the mountains.
The two hearts in me will believe.
The one that beats will release its stranglehold of guilt on the one that breaks.
There will be a thunderclap release of lightening
A flash of a better self.
Dammit I’m good. And come hell or high water I will believe it.