Collage and writing done during girls camp 2011 – swb

I’m having fun posting fast-writes from my various writing circles – core semester groups, weekly prison groups, young women’s groups – and hope these quickly-penned poems will touch you in some way. Do let me know what you think!

In the early morning glow of just-dawn
deep canyons emerge dark
into new day, cavernous black depths
filled with nothing but fear
of the unknown to come;

into that void I step, bare of foot
without vision, but with trust
that deep inside the fallow land
new possibility will sprout,
a frond of hope greening the landscape anew

as my spirit animals witness
this step into the new:
the black wolf silent
in winter’s snow-filled crevasses;
the lioness ever-vigilant, watching
intent and intentional as I move toward
the deep; sea turtle oblivious
that she floats in dark air
swims toward  me reassuring
and steady as is her wont.

Risk taking makes me feel alive.
I love this feeling of stepping off cliff
into warm colors of emergent dawn, trusting
new depths to unfold themselves
within and beneath.

I need not know what I am doing,
only that I move from confidence, love,
with passion for what I do, stepping
into dark its own rewards.

–  swb