Category: parenting

don’t borrow trouble

On By Amrita Skye BlaineIn awe, Daily reminders, feelings, mind, Musings, Non-duality, nonduality, notes from self, parenting, Poetry, spirituality, suffering4 Comments

don’t borrow trouble

it’s an old saying,
don’t borrow trouble
I used to lie awake
and imagine dire
scenes—my son
in bullies’ hands
or worse—as though
the very picturing
could ward them off

it doesn’t save
us or them, this
perseveration,
it never quite happens
as I picture—
so why conjure
fifty ways your child
might come to sorrow
and all the suffering
that brings to you

instead, slip outside
tip your head until,
in the chill, dense dark,
you find the Milky Way—
imagine, just imagine!
how minuscule we are
soak that in until it fills
your bones—then

carry that enormity
back to bed
snuggle in the warmth
and drift to sleep

2023 ©Amrita Skye Blaine
I’m writing a poem a day. These are drafts—not final versions.

shearing

On By Amrita Skye BlaineIn awe, children, Daily reminders, heart, joy, kindness, memoir, Musings, Non-duality, nonduality, parenting, Poetry, stories1 Comment

shearing

1995

the snips and burr
when she sheared
his mane, curls
wanting to dread,
he surfaced
wide-eyed
from all that hair—
it lay in heaps
at his feet

staring at the piles
his teenage angst
washed away
he said to me,
I want the birds
to have it to keep
their babies warm

hung in clumps
on the fence, we
watched it bleach
from mahogany,
blaze red
to almost pink,
and wondered

four years later,
the corvid nest
tumbled from a fir—
the boy, now man
pointed, look!
threaded through
the sticks
lining the lair
his hair

2023 ©Amrita Skye Blaine
I’m writing a poem a day. These are drafts—not final versions.

cracks where the light comes through

On By Amrita Skye BlaineIn children, light, Musings, parenting, PoetryLeave a comment

cracks where the light comes through
1976

his heart formed
differently
not quite right
but when I queried
a sage, her words—
his heart couldn’t
contain the radiance
it needed cracks where
the light comes through

his heart is kintsugi—
broken and skillfully
repaired—patched here
sewn there by a humble
and adept healer
a rare find—
but what have we done
how will the light get out?

—thank you to Susan Adelle for the title phrase

2022 ©Amrita Skye Blaine
Disclaimer: These are drafts—not final versions.

stone in a backpack of boulders

On By Amrita Skye BlaineIn Awakening, children, Daily reminders, death, feelings, memoir, Musings, Non-duality, nonduality, notes to self, pain, parenting, Poetry, spirituality, suffering, Truth4 Comments

stone in a backpack of boulders

note to self

the backpack load
unbearable unwearable
too heavy
digs ruts in our shoulders
yet we must heft it
and now,
another stone
a huge one

a school we never heard of
filled with young children who
have lost buddies they played tag,
hung upside down on bars
and now are forever gone
they’ll face enduring night frights
stained with crimson—
how will they recover?

when will we ken
the fatal disease of
separation? without
the resonance of interbeing,
how linked we are,
every one of us, no exceptions,
this will happen again
and again and again

2022 ©Amrita Skye Blaine
I’m writing a poem a day. These are drafts—they may never turn into anything more or they might flower.

hot tub epiphany–parenting

On By Amrita Skye BlaineIn Daily reminders, Musings, parenting, Surrender3 Comments

Iman big eyesThe price of manifestation in this one-song-uni-verse is a wild, open, chaotic stew, where every thing and all things erupt.

The suffering my adult son is experiencing–all mothers carry this: “the mother gene,” with a scouring empathy for our offspring. If we allow, it burnishes us empty.

I bear suffering differently, now–as everymother, shouldering this particular flavor of stew.

It is not personal.

The only way, is through. All that is required is noticing, which by its very nature, is infinitely compassionate and eternally loving. No longer diving into the painful soup with him does not make me a bad mother. I’m a better mother for not doing so. I’m here, available, filled with love for my son-who-is my-very-own-self.

He knows my cell number.

© Amrita Skye Blaine, 2016
I took this snapshot about forty years ago.