On Deciding to Be a Reiki Master

I got up early
just before dawn;

turned the volume loud,

put the music on.

"Amazing Grace!"

All on my own, 

I danced and sang

to the rising sun.

Although from birth

we wake to fear,
finding my path
brought a joyous morn —

A flood to drown

fear of pain, fear of death.


P.S. This happened in 1988. I have been a Reiki Master since 1992.

Submitted for Poetic Asides bref double challenge and to dVerse's 
Those Pesky Questions: Describe a morning you woke without fear.

This Sunday

I sat in the sun with my friends
late afternoon, eating Tim Tams
after the Reiki class and the photos,
listening to Brad read poems —
warm, and reluctant to move.

This day was sacred to Brigid
Goddess of healing and poetry;
it was also National Tree Day
and all the way there we kept admiring
the tall trees along the road.

Our friends’ pet bird died this morning;
they were sad when we arrived
and will weep once more now we’ve gone.
Sometimes death is the ultimate healer
but we do not like to think so.

And yet today was a happy day
of laughter as well as tears,
a day of feasting and music
as these new friendships deepened.
All we love dies, and lives.


8 Days of Happiness: 8 / Six Sentences

Teaching Reiki

The fullness of today
wants quiet contemplation,
not a poem. I have never
been able to write what Reiki is,
and the contentment is so complete
I just want to hug it.

I could talk of my three students:
the man full of bounce and joy
whose energy expanded rapidly
so that after the second attunement
he felt it burn; the girl slim and delicate
whose touch was cool like silk;
and the woman of steady warmth
whose crown opened like a lotus blossom.

I could say that this
is the weekend of Imbolc,
and I am teaching three witches.
It’s a time for purification
and new beginnings, a time
of gradually increasing light.

Instead, I’ll go to bed
now that I have put together
their folders of notes
and printed and signed and stamped
their certificates, ready for tomorrow —
to dream, perhaps, of wordless love
or messages conveyed by touch,
smiling as I sleep.


8 Days of Happiness: 7 / Six Sentences