here, this path you may dare navigate, then by chance grant bare fallow reach

face to face, sacred poem dares

dare you risk your wooden boat past certain seas, not knowing what comes next beneath your furrowed gaze, new Worlds or the edge of Everything?
maybe words unshaped by wind and risk.   maybe meanings unlike meant yesterday?   does your voice pronounce unkempt reason here?
 
 
you don’t know what you don’t know.    poems are bigger than.
 
 
            by nose or tail as is your like, so engage (another) self.

go.   sit outdoors, blindfolded.   for a time listen, feel, taste the air.
then, unmasked, write what landed on you.

close your eyes.   draw a circle with your pen.   is it round?   does it connect?
now put three words inside.   then one more, a cousin, outside the line.

rub hands together like starting a fire.   by your hands, give that heat to your face your eyes your ears.   write how that arrives and leaves.

meditate on a single breath.   now, write that.

small mirror in hand, write only what you see behind yourself.   dare you also walk that path?

make your space too dark to see.   now write.   worry not about following lines, rather how do the words want to shape themselves.

observe a garden bird for so long as it wants to be seen.   disinterest disallowed.   what difference betwixt flight and land?   say what you see.

write a poem left-handed – or whichsoever is reversed.   give attention to how thoughts ride and reside with the words given onto the page.   what difference granted space?
 
 
            let sleeping dogs lie.
 
 
 
what makes them sacred?   your heart & hand, your fingers like morning bells.

this is how you learn to play the violin.