poetry – Jane Tawel

Pulling the Flesh Apart

Pulling the Flesh Apart

By Jane Tawel

May 26, 2026

Let us pull it apart — bit by bit.

Lay the body of our transitory knowledge

on The Surgeon’s board.

True, the words became flesh;

but this stuff — this meat —

must be bound on the rack,

pulled out like taffy,

’til our bones bend and crack.

Words should be tortured,

eviscerating the bowels we call facts.

Our gut tells us something

is Realer than real —

Deeper than definitions,

Truer than the skeletons of

Only what we can see and taste and touch –

Oh! We are meant to touch the very Being —

We are meant to be stretched into smallness

Split into Wholeness,

and cured unto death.

Only oxymorons, symbols, metaphors and myths —

Only songs and pictures —

Only stories of salve — ations,

Only tales of trudging the long road toward home,

Only legends of those who die for Love,

Only these are meant to live forever.

Oh, we must lay our small selves on the Cross.

We must die to the language of our answers

And float in the ocean of our questions.

How mysterious is the human hand!

How awe-inspiring the body’s eye!

And what beyond what I am called to name,

Can I sense beyond my wonderous senses —

Moves and lives in the being I call “myself”?

There is Some-thing, Some-One, Some-Life/Self —

Who is beyond all language —

beyond all materials and all body,

beyond the mind’s best truest truths.

There is a Word the mind knows not.

A Name. A Life. A Presence.

The Word that sweetly sings to us

to be let in the cages of our heads and hearts,

and once, when homing there,

flutters like a small bird,

Singing songs of wordless Love and Life,

in flight and free within the Heart —

Though not a “thing”, a word must do —

Beyond, above, deeper, wider, purer, timeless —

Some thing — visceral —

Some thing — that moves and breathes and has its being

Some thing — despite all longing, we can not name —

from a heart that no longer beats

but Swells –

Cresting until it bursts through

the walls of this poor substance

that I call, “myself”.

The Soul — burst asunder into

pieces of The Whole.

No longer words on paper

But The Word made flesh in us,

a Picture worth an Eternity of words.

No longer flesh and blood,

But Bread and Wine.

Given, so all may have Life,

And Life Abundant.

Life granted, beyond syllables.

Life, lived beyond flesh.

Life, here and now

in the Stillness

here beyond death.

The First Steps and The Last

The First Steps and The Last

By Jane Tawel

The first steps are the hardest;

I really don’t want to run this race.

My breath struggles at the start

and every aspiration

becomes the hardest to catch.

The last mile that I run

(and this is all by choice, mind you)

is pretty darn hard too –

Maybe I could just walk it?

Or crawl?

Or quit?

I wonder if the last lap of this race

I’ve called my Life,

will be as hard for me

as my first lap?

Birthed into struggle

from the womb of the bed I’ve made,

will I run well the race towards Death?

Or will my passing on The Path

be the painful struggle

the agonizing effort to breathe

a battle waged as all the last steps

of the last journey I make towards Home?

Or will Life’s Finish Line instead

be the first lap

of the next journey which

will no longer be any kind of race at all.

Will that final step

always be a breathing into

a beginning —

effortless, weightless, sweat-less-

cleaned from the placenta of Death

into the Quest beyond questions,

Stilled and Resting, Peaceful, Floating

Reborn, restarted, re-breathed,

Dancing forward

into New Life?

Some Days I Just Don’t, But I Do

Some Days I Just Don’t, But I Do

By Jane Tawel

April 11, 2026

I guess it’s not fair

to say I don’t care

but somedays there are times

when I don’t.

Don’t wanna’ keep fighting

Don’t wanna’ keep hoping

Don’t want more nail-biting

Or dreaming or moping.

I’m barely now coping

So, forgive me for writing

this doggerel dressed up like a poem.

I may be quite small —

just a gnat, or a flea

on the tail of the dog-eating-dog lives we lead.

But I think even small things should matter —

Don’t you?

I think children and tadpoles

And flowers and bees,

And fire-flies and moon-beams

And seashells and seeds —

All matter should matter — and all that’s beyond —

All life’s matter should matter to me.

There are some times I should

just breathe deeply, just be.

But at junctures of fear, doubt, or faith,

there’s a Voice that will whisper,

there’s a choice to be made:

Should I speak up with courage?

Should I fight, quit, or flee?

So, I live in the question —

in this Time, in this Place,

Will I be or not be

one who makes a small difference?

Will I trust even small acts of love

will deliver us?

Will I choose to be kind?

Will I show love and grace?

Will I seek truth and justice?

Will I leave a wee trace?

Will I follow the way

of the sages now past

and of Good people I know

who stand tall and speak out?

No — there is no foreseeing

what the future will hold;

But I choose to stoke embers

of hope in my soul

for the Life that is Freeing

for the Life that’s eternal

for the Earth, our maternal, dear home;

for humanity’s spark

for Light conquering the dark,

for Divinity’s Known and Unknown.

Somedays I think maybe

I can’t make a difference.

Somedays I think maybe

There isn’t much hope.

But I’ll do the good do’s,

What I can — just my part —

And I won’t do the don’t’s and the do-nots.

And when fears try to stop me,

And doubt quells my heart,

And I struggle with why, how, or whether —

Then I’ll look for a friend

And I’ll look for a hand

and I’ll whisper: “let’s do it together”.

Hope’s Plucked Feathers and Bits of Light

Hope’s Plucked Feathers and Bits of Light

By Jane Tawel

Thoughts and riffing on Emily Dickinson’s poem, “hope is the thing with feathers” and meditation on the quality of our Light.

The feathers of hope seem plucked to the skin.

The chill seas have plasticized Beauty.

The soul is not perched but in free-fall it seems.

And the sweet tunes are perniciously wordy.

We are abashed with fire and ash

Hearts sore from flight from Power’s storms

Frigidity of soul-less gales

Compassion’s hands, hard to keep warm.

I am this one small speck of dust

Blown by the Wind of time and place.

But even bits of dust can shine

Reflecting Light’s Eternal Flame.

The shore seems further now than then

And like a bird in flight, I long for rest.

My heart is fluttering, fearful, tense,

and all the raging makes no sense

When all we little creatures want

The same –

safe-keeping, seeds, clean air, warm nests.

Hope flies again in fleeting moments

when the clouds clear from my mind.

And through the dark and thundering storms

I sometimes glimpse the Rainbow’s Light beyond.

I think She meant when once she said,

“Hope is the thing with feathers” —

It’s not a thing that I can know.

For who can understand a bird?

A bird still awes me — Creation’s Wonder —

And maybe just as wonderous, so is Hope.

We can not understand or cage

this marvelous grace of hopefulness.

Just as I can not make The Light,

but only clear my soul for His Reflection.

There’s nothing I can give to Hope,

“It asks no crumb from me”.

But even in extremities,

crumbs from Life’s Bounteous Tables can be sweeped

into our waiting, emptied bowls.

And as Our Mother felt Her womb-child leap,

Hope perches — fluttering, moving —

Waiting to be born to Life,

once more today within our souls.

Nature Has No Kingdoms

https://unsplash.com/photos/sun-light-passing-through-green-leafed-tree-EwKXn5CapA4

Nature Has No Kingdoms

By Jane Tawel

February 22, 2026

Nature has no kingdoms.

No names, but what we give them.

No fame, but when we use them.

No needs but those we rape from them.

The fish and trees and God-created birds and bees,

are at the mercy of man’s own ego-needs.

Creation can’t fight back at us

because a Mother’s love can not destroy her child.

She must look on with helpless care,

as her human children hack her limbs

and nuke her beating heart

into a burning cess pool —

once burning deep with Love —

now shallow, broiling,

heart still aflame

in Nature’s dying throes.

Nature loves its anonymity,

its secrets and Its secret stores

of pleasure, beauty, and divine intentions.

Nature loves a vacuum — of human willfulness.

But otherwise, It thrives and strives

and circling, circling, circling

treasuring moments,

Creation throbs

with Holy Love and Life.

Why do the people again and again —

throughout our shallow, fleeting things

that we call history and our place and time —

Cry and demand the rule and greed of kings?

What does a small man need to need a king?

We circle and circle and circle the years;

we circle and circle and circle the drain;

and ever and always again and again

we forget our faith and place our fears

in the hands of the tyrants and idolatrous gods

in this man-made valley of unnatural tears.

Oh, small and longing human,

rest your eyes on the greens of the hills,

arouse your awakening in the blues of deep waters,

feel the soft earth beneath your bare feet,

listen to birdsong and small things in the night

let all Creation restore you to your true nature.

Creation is God’s first and only trusty scripture.

You have no need of earthly kings,

for there is One Whose Kingdom comes —

tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

and today —

in Father, Heir, and Spirit –

and in this Earth, our Mother and our Home.

Here and Now. Be still and know.

We live and move and have our being,

here, where meaning pulses, and souls long,

heart to heart, twinkling-stars to songful-dawn.

In small-ish things, great Mystery lives.

The Tree of Life takes root and grows

above and through and in us all.

We need no one with clay-shod feet

to give us faith in what we can not speak.

Nature needs no idols.

Like Her, we worship best

in love of Known-Unknown.

Like Her, we worship best

when all are free, and all are One.

Creation — moving, growing, groaning —

Creates and recreates a Holy Throne.

Like leaves that fall and mulch the earth,

We only rise to glory who die to find rebirth.

Mires and Wires

Mires and Wires

By Jane Tawel

February 17, 2026

Some of us dig in.

We dig, dig, dig down

into the sands

of our times,

into the tidepools

of our minds,

into the sucking mire.

We are seldom able to fly,

but like birds on a wire,

we are called to balance —

precariously, it is true —

but trusting

that not one of us can fall

without the Weeping of the World.

Here, where some of us have landed,

poised with wings tucked tight,

there is no room to gather

that which cannot be eaten today.

But those who choose to dig holes

like moles and augers in the land,

store up their treasures

leaving their names on the inverted pyramids

sinking into famed obscurity

and drowning in the solidity

of their false hopes.

Poor creatures —

so richly mistaken

and shaken to the core

by the fears of their impermanence.

I have dug myself plenty of holes.

But now I place my own small hope

on small movements of mine

fluttering, hopping at times from foot to foot,

attempting to share in the tight-rope act

of small beings barely balanced

in this singular time and place.

And like a small brown wren

I wonder how or when

in what future unknown space

will we, little birds —

(being now so often trapped and caught,

and bought — a dozen for a penny) —

will we at last be gathered

like chicks to Our Mother’s breast?

Here on this unsteady string of life,

we long for The Nest

and for the rest we once knew,

and yearn to know again

covered by The Father’s Mighty Wings of Refuge.

It will not be by digging in

like a burrowing beast,

mistaking flowers for tares,

that I will find peace.

Nor will we know the love we seek

by running like lemmings or hares,

after any crown or prize

that we may chase.

We fledglings live encased

and see only through the cracks

of our embracing shells.

But incubating here

we wait to rise in glory.

It is still the same old story:

Only by falling and falling

and failing and flailing

into grace after Grace

will we learn to fly.

And someday, we will see The Face

of the One Who has kept us

hanging here in the balance

between life and death

where the faith of small birds

finds hope.

By dust we were created

and to dust we shall return.

But The Wind blows where it will,

and some will spread their wings to catch it

and will rise in flocked flight.

Seemingly Endless Night

Seemingly Endless Night

By Jane Tawel

February 11, 2026

This morning the darkness clung to the earth

like a shroud.

Shrouded myself

in a bathrobe, tattered and greyed,

I had welcomed the rain

and embraced the night’s sweet repose

listening to welcome-water in a dry land.

But the dawn didn’t come on schedule

and as I sat in habits

of coffee drunk and ideas thunk,

I began to despair

at this seemingly endless night.

Perhaps we had finally, inevitably

used-up all the light?

The horizon is still,

and stilly pitchy

like an upturned bowl

filled with dead ravens;

a sky darkened,

deep as the deepest

cavern of coal

starless, and moonless

and sunless.

And the neighbors’ windows

are shuttered and closed against me,

soot-covered

from fires in hearths

and fires in bellies

lonesome and long-extinguished.

What if the sun never rises again?

I imagine the deaths

of plants

and trees

and children

and you and me.

How frail we are

spending decades

never imagining our death.

Unless a seed is planted

in the dark earth and it dies,

the plant cannot flower and live.

Dark and Light —

The paradox

of Death and Life —

we balance quite precariously here.

Ah, World,

Ah, Beautiful World,

Forgive me for

my constitutional complacency.

And I offer up

a soundless keening

for all who have lived

in Nights that must seem endless.

And I pray as One,

for One and All:

“Let there be Light”.

Today is Eden

or not at all.

Deep Shadows and Pulsing Waves of Light

https://unsplash.com/@photographer_esmihel

Deep Shadows and Pulsing Waves of Light

By Jane Tawel

February 1, 2026

There doesn’t seem much more to say…

But is it because words fail,

or because there is so much to say

that thoughts cascade like raging waters,

tumbling over the rocks of disbelief?

My stony heart creates the stubborn patterns

of fears that justice will never roll down

like waters again.

The riverbeds look so dry,

and how can the tears of the trampled

restore them?

On the long, long journey

back to Home,

We have ambushed ourselves

with the trappings of our ingratitude

and our floods of unchecked greed

are no longer dammed

but damning.

The rivers dry up

with the mud and muck of multitudes

of unheard cries and barren hopes.

The plains are icy —

keeping the healing in check.

Our baptized souls have been

swept clean of the colors of the rainbow

and the Earth is hardening

over the frozen souls.

There is still the Still Small Voice

in the vibrant luminosity

of all who have suffered

at the hands of those so certain

that their worship

of the black and white cartoon characters

have nothing to do

with everyone’s instilled radiance.

We strive to shine

like shimmery dewdrops,

called to reflect

Great Majesty

in all small things.

Only after the storms come

can the Sun create a rainbow.

And so, we continue to dance —

multihued and dappled

deep shadows in the shallows,

and waterfalling, pulsing waves of light.

The Universe conspires

to flood our barren land with Hope,

and flood our waiting hearts

with Love.

Still Small Points of Light

by Jane Tawel

Still Small Points of Light

By Jane Tawel

January 30, 2026

We — the still small points of light.

Seething. Searing. Standing strong.

Oh, the kaleidoscope of multi-hued effervescence.

Spinning. Circling.

Spiraling in supervenient streams of consciousness.

I stand in a silence of admiration

of the phenomenon of dew-drops shining

on leaves on trees.

And a small ant crawls across

my cloudy, reflective windowpane,

And I hold it in universal fragility on one fingertip,

to release it — to crawl or not;

dropped on the grey pavement

of life hopeful once again.

Where are the prophets

of the sand that fills the seas?

Where are the angels that

creep among the weeds and shallow graves?

And if I live or die —

what sense has there been in all that has been

of me and you and those and them?

But here is ever more

and this and that.

And we may not rise

but we may indeed

flow.

The fire-flies’ candescence flickers

and skitters through our nights,

dazzling the darkness.

And in their smallness,

minutely a-glow,

they remind us

that all are gifted

with iotas of the Sun.

We Walk the Trail Together

We Walk the Trail Together

By Jane Tawel

January 7, 2026

Each day before Dawn

I walk the trail with you.

But you keep your eyes averted,

pretending you don’t see me.

Sometimes you talk with someone

who is not there;

but I am passing so close to you,

that I could touch you,

while we are walking the trail together.

Each morning we are there,

individuals in a group of early risers,

early seekers of breaking dawns;

still, you pretend I do not exist.

I used to find it annoying –

I used to think you meant to slight me,

that I was not worthy of your smile

or your cheery hello, like some of us share

in the brisk and pre-sunned morning air.

Now I wonder –

Am I really invisible to you

like angels often are to me?

Do you come on purpose

in the darkling light so

none can see your guilt?

Or has your mind so imprisoned you

that you can not free yourself

to see that which surrounds you

in this precious present Here and Now?

What is it that has frightened you so?

Who hurt you in a way you can’t forget?

How do you return to your own home

still so alone, so alone,

without weeping on the way?

I used to save my smiles for those

who gladly greet me each morning

with the happy knowledge

that we are so very, very privileged

to have another — one more — day;

that Life is very good

when we can — when just because — we all return

to walk the trail together.

But now I smile at you

as big as my small self can smile,

with no expectation that you will smile back

or that you will even raise your eyes

from this hallowed ground

on which you carefully place your next step.

The smile is not only for you,

Oh yes — I smile also for me —

for in The Ground of Being

there is every chance,

an angel you may prove to be.

We are but passing through,

yet someday, all trails

will lead to One Home.

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