Three Cups of Coffee
Three cups of coffee and you start,
just start to wake up,
your brain, frozen pipes and all,
starts to flow,
dangerously so, leaving you
unsure what my flow out
as the ice jam breaks loose.
About this poem
Slow start this morning. But with three cups of coffee in me, I think I’ll make it through the morning.
One Slow Step
One
slow
step
at a time.
Going up.
Going down.
Your choice.
About this poem.
The picture was taken in Munich.
Tom
Christmas List
Just give me a quiet place in the sun,
a place to ponder, or
release the thoughts that plague and pester you.
Give me the time to daydream like a child,
to let the dust settle in my mind
and clarity emerge like a winter ridgeline.
Give me evening with the woman I love
and nothing else to do but dine and talk and love
each other from dusk till dawn.
Give me days without phones, disconnected
from phones and promises,
time to be, and nothing else required.
Give me a good meal, dining that lasts
for hours. A good bottle of wine, red and rich,
fragrant with memories.
Give me the things money cannot buy,
things that are not things. Seashores and mountains,
and vistas of geography and the heart,
warm light at night to read by,
time to reconnect to love and God and more than that,
myself.
About this poem
The older I get, the less I want. But the greedier I get for time and love and the quiet places.
Tom
The First Snow of Spring
It is the first snow of the season,
an inch, no more, just enough
to remind us we are on the cusp of winter.
The corn stalks poke their dry stubs in crisp rows
like so many soldiers waiting for battle.
The wind blows.
It is not a good day for walking.
The wind is cold and the sun is lost behind the clouds.
The snow has turned to a wintry mix
That portends rain, and if not warmth,
at least, less cold, a slow thawing.
Still, it is bitter.
It is not a good day for walking,
but walk you do,
for life has taught you the beauty of hard seasons,
that even in the cold and bitter, life persists,
and underneath the harsh weather, already
life is preparing itself for spring.
About this poem
One of the good things about aging are the lessons of survival and the understanding that we can survive much more than we believe we can. Spring is often closer than we think.
The picture was taken last winter, not far from here, in West Rupert, Vermont.
Tom
The Lies We Tell Ourselves.
The lies you tell yourself surround you like a shroud.
They haunt you in the night.
They poison you each false truth a corruption,
a chain, leg irons destined to lock you forever in the dark
that keep you from seeing your own beauty.
They are thieves in the night,
emboldened by your self-induced blindness,
they leave you alone, unable to see the way out
or those that love you,
those who see what you do not and love you
not despite, but because of who you are.
About this poem
One of the things I have learned in the past few years as I have worked as a “life coach” (I hate that phrase, but I don’t have a better one.) is almost always a series of false beliefs, mostly about ourselves. Unveil those beliefs and replace them with reality, and most of us can have what we want, and finally come to understand just how lovable and wonderful we are. Sounds simple, but it’s work.
Work well worth it.
Tom
Do
Push.
Do.
Act.
It matters less what you do,
than you do.
It matters less what you do
than you consistently do.
The enemy is inaction.
Surrendering to rumination.
to the lie that you can’t
or that you are not good enough,
smart enough,
whatever enough.
to become what you wish to be.
All that stuff is a lie.
Do the work, day after day,
a thing not romantic,
but effective,
and worry less about results
than progress,
than trajectory,
Most fo the things you worry about
are superfluous.
Most will never happen.
And the few that do,
you can handle.
So do. Action, they say, trumps anxiety.
And it is true
Most of us do not fail in our doing.
we fail in our refusal to cease fretting
and simply set about the work.
It is simpler than you think.
That is the truth.
Others have blazed the trail.
It’s all there in plain sight
waiting for you to begin
and stay with it.
Push.
Do.
Act.
Your dreams await you,
About this poem
This started out as an essay for my work blog, but it turned into a poem. Not my normal faire here, but who knows, someone might resonate with it.
Tom
Healing Rhythms
It is winter
and the sunlight is cold.
You stand,
bundled and warm enough.
You release yourself,
surrender to the crash of the waves, a mantra
to replace your unruly thoughts
with God’s steady rhythms
that have managed to live far longer
than you.
This is where you find peace,
not the only place, but perhaps the strongest.
Here, all the complexity is hidden
beneath the water’s surface, and you lose yourself, content
to let the waves order your mind
and leave you, for a while at least,
whole.
About this poem
The ocean does something for me. I did not discover this about myself until I was nearly sixty. It calls to me. From time to time, I am able to answer.
The Photograph was take in Newport, RI.
Tom
