Poem: Life Dreams

And so it seems that all my dreams come tumbling in the quiet;

And yet I rarely allow the quiet.

Full up with life, full up with daily noise, my dreams elude me.

The holy finds no place to settle in the buzz.

The blue sky, the brown dirt, the gray stones have no place to nestle within my inner eye.

The sounds of the rustling leaves, the cricket, the thud of the acorn as it hits the soft dirt can find no home in my inner ear.

The wafting of ripe strawberries, the pines, the cut grass are unable to entice a deep breath in.

The splintering wooden table, the smoothness of the paper, the intrusion of the metal pen between my fingers, all indistinguishably lost in the muddle.

Only in the quiet, only in the stillness can the holy set forth an explosion of awareness, attention to beauty, distinction of detail, the tumbling forth of my dreams.

[I wrote this poem while deep into the analysis phase of my doctoral research - a testament to the impact of my learning from the wise participants who took part in the study]