poetry – Page 3 – Jane Tawel

Child’s Play Prayer

by Jane Tawel

Unsplash: Omer Haktan Bulut, Photographer

Child’s Play Prayer

By Jane Tawel

January 18, 2025

Hi.

I don’t understand You,

and that’s okay,

but I know You are my Parent.

I knew You when I

was in Your Womb, Mommy.

I knew You from the first day

You held my weak and wandering

eyes in Your loving gaze,

caressing me with Your thoughts.

I know how strong You are, Daddy,

because time and time again,

no matter how big I have grown,

You have lifted me up

on Your strong shoulders,

and held me in your strong hands.

Forgive me for growing up

to think I had to earn your love.

Forgive me for thinking You could

ever love me less if You also

loved my brothers and sisters

just as much as You love me.

Forgive me for thinking

I could ever put Your Love aside

like a memento from the Past,

store it in a little box,

shelving with other books

I might take down and read sometimes.

Your Love is not a once upon a time thing.

Your Love is not one thing at all.

Your Love is One —

not You. not Me.

I am Yours, and You are Mine.

Mommy. Daddy. Creator. Love.

You, Parent-Creator,

are higher than my highest thoughts,

and lower than my deepest desires.

Release me from want —

from needing

from needing or pretending

to be an adult around You —

an adult full of doing and thinking,

not trusting and resting

at peace

at home

in Your Love.

Help me flunk my test today,

so I will relearn how to go out and play.

Let me be again

Be… again…

Your dearly beloved

Child.

Amen.

Right Now, Right Here

Right Now, Right Here

By Jane Tawel

January 2, 2025

So full of grief for moments past

So anxious for next moment

So bitter that this life won’t last

So rife with pain and mindless foment.

I wander blindly, thought to thought

Not seeing, hearing, tasting.

I miss what Is for what is Not

While precious Nows go wasting.

This morning as I woke — my dream

did linger in my consciousness

And for a moment, it did seem

I could escape this awful mess

of all the negativity that I allowed to fester,

and so, I set my mind to be an open-minded quester.

I realized what I called my life,

was really just a reverie,

but I had wasted so much time

in future fears and burdening memory.

I vowed this day to change the way

that I would think, and act, and live in

this precious moment — just that — no more.

No future fears — the past forgiven.

This Now, I will embrace, explore

with senses full, mean thoughts all emptied,

and previous ghosts of hopeless frenzy

I banish now from my True Being.

I’ll breathe. Take steps. True Self. Vast. Freeing.

As Shakespeare said: “Life’s what we’re dreaming.”

The Wise One said: “All comes in season.

As Jesus said, “No need to worry.”

And Buddha said, “Please stop your hurry.”

Hello, sweet Now,

I greet You anew.

The Whys and Hows,

I’ll leave to You.

My life is just Right Now, Right Here —

This moment, — Precious, Treasured, Dear.

I open to the glory of

My Self as just a story of

a birth, a life, a death — and then?

One moment more — I wake — reborn again.

This Perfect Gift

by Jane Tawel

This Perfect Gift

By Jane Tawel

December 19, 2024

When I was born,

Someone gave me a beautiful container.

It was perfect, just as it was.

People marveled over it –

“How lovely”, they said.

Right from the beginning,

I knew, without knowing,

that this container was a marvel,

an endless delight, to explore,

to caress, to wonder at.

And everyone agreed.

I enjoyed endless hours

playing with my container,

just hanging out and being

with my container.

Even so young, I knew

that to care for this container —

this vessel of perfect form and function,

this earthy, natural, but divine mystery —

was a responsibility and a gift.

Perfectly formed but oh, so fragile,

the container got its first ding

at two years old,

when it fell against a coffee table.

“Just a little scratch,” they said,

“no need to worry”.

But everyone did begin to worry then.

And suddenly it was very important

to protect my container from any more hurts.

And the container

began to be kept a bit apart from me.

The distance between myself

and my container would keep it safe.

When I started school

was the first time I realized

that not everyone knew

how beautiful my container was.

Not everyone treasured it as I did,

So, I began to hide my container,

wrapping it up tightly

concealing its gorgeous curves,

masking its earthy smells,

painting over my container’s natural colors.

I wanted my container to look like everyone else —

No, better than everyone else.

Because I was told that all containers

were in some sort of contest,

and that the only thing one’s container

was good for,

was being more beautiful, or stronger,

or thinner or sexier or faster

than everyone else’s container.

When I got a job

and became an adult,

I often lost track of what I did with my container,

I was so busy.

The container was used

when it had a purpose.

And the life of the mind

which became all of me…

Well,

that is so important, isn’t it?

One day I had a child,

and Someone gave her

a beautiful container.

And I wish I could say

that it changed how I felt

about my own lost love of

my container, but…

It didn’t.

And though I marveled

at the perfection of my child’s

own beautiful, perfect container,

and though I tried all her life,

to explain how perfect her container was,

how she could be proud of it,

and how she should love it with all her heart

as the perfect divinely inspired gift that it was —

Instead…

she saw how I felt about my own container.

She saw and heard and took into herself,

all my fears and insecurities and ignorance

about our containers.

I am still so sad about that.

I am trying to forgive myself.

I wish my ignorance could be our bliss,

But I am just sad,

Because we really did have,

Do have,

Still have,

these perfect, beautiful containers –

these gifts.

Now I am old,

And I look at this old container —

so beaten up and beaten down

so marred and scratched and worn —

And yet — I see,

it is still so perfect —

a treasure.

And every day I am more and more aware

of what a gift we are given when

we are born and given our containers.

We come to life

with a perfect vessel,

formed in the forges of unseen Gods.

We are given all we need

as we carry our containers for a short time;

Carrying on caring for ourselves,

Carrying on caring for others,

Carrying on caring for our Mother Earth,

Carrying on and carried in a perfect container.

And now that I am old,

I am once again struck by the

Mystery of my container.

And then one day,

Sooner, but hopefully later,

I will no longer have this container.

It will be gone, returned to dust

as all temporal things must do.

And when my vessel is gone,

Alas!

Forgive!

Acceptance!

Love!

Oh, what will I do,

when this container is no more?

What will I do?

Ah –

That is the is greatest mystery of all.

A Word in a Stroke of Luck

A Word in a Stroke of Luck

By Jane Tawel

December 7, 2024

I shall call You, “Good”.

You are My Good.

You mean ALL for The Good.

I shall call upon You in the night,

“Oh, My Good!”

“Help us, Dear Good”.

I will meditate

on the World’s Beauty of Good.

I will stand in awe

in the World’s Mystery of Good.

I will put my trust in the power of Good.

For You, are a Good, Good, Good-ness.

I will love You, Oh, my Good;

and have faith that Good-ness

will not only follow me and mine

All the days of this lifetime,

but that I shall dwell in the House of Good

Forever and ever.

Amen.

Words are funny, shallow, flitting things.

Poor words, they try so hard.

And though they fail again and again,

we pick them back up, dust them off, and try once more

to use them to explain,

to use words to understand,

to take words and try to

put an outer shell to what is inside of us –

What is Inside of All.

Poor Words! How exhausted they must be!

They beg us to give them a rest.

But instead, we invent algorithms

to create more and more words

again and again and again

done by computers so words

have less meaning than even the

words of a worm might have.

We think in constant gales of words

Ghosts of words of past and future

Words with no meaning at all.

So, we never have to be still.

And the Silence will never touch us

surrounded by,

hunkered down,

lost and alone

in our fortresses of words.

Oh, Poor Words!

Words swim upstream —

light, floating inconsequentially

in the Ocean of True Truth,

in the Ocean of Unspoken Meaning beyond Meaning.

And there they go again!

Lost. Irretrievable. Unspoken. Too late. Too soon.

We only shut up when we’re dead.

What a Stroke of Luck for me!

For this morning,

as I grumbled over Past and Future,

A mind consumed in a mire of useless wording,

I happened to be writing something on a page,

And carelessly my mind glitched

on spelling, “God”.

And accidentally adding another “o” —

A Stroke of Luck in One Small Stroke!

And Oh, my Soul!

Oh, Joy!

I happened to have slipped upon

a banana peel of misspelling

and landed in a Heaven of New Insight!

With my one small stroke of pen,

with one tiny letter,

with one mistake (I thought) —

I have thrown out a buoy into the

Raging Tides of Time and Space.

And now I think I may make it

to The Shore.

Yes, you may laugh

Or shake your head at me

Or frown at my naivety or lack of theory,

And you may still cling to what you need to believe

about a God you want to call your own,

whose name has been taken in vain so many times

that it has lost all meaning.

But for me –

that one change, that “O”,

has quite suddenly!

made all the difference to me.

Oh, My Good!

I praise You for the Word,

for one small word to

change my angers and my fears into

a fledgling, hoping love of You.

Thank you for all my broken words,

that like a child with chalk in hand

search for You with fleeting strokes

on the sidewalks of this Life.

Thank you for one small circle

to begin to shape

the circle of this Life

of one small soul,

for All.

Today may I Be.

Still.

And Know.

That You.

Are.

GOOD.

Wilderness

Wilderness

By Jane Tawel

November 26, 2024

In a certain moment,

a peace comes over me,

unasked for,

Gift.

And I am glad to be in the Wilderness

with You.

I was part and particle

of the masses and

Mass hysteria

of all that thinks

it knows and is.

The noise filled me

but never fulfilled its promises.

But now that I, alone, do wander

through this path-y, spiraling Life,

and wonder through

this endless, fleeting Time,

I know the Mountain never speaks,

except within my aching, still-born heart.

All is Love. All is Now.

by Jane Tawel

All is Love. All is Now

By Jane Tawel

November 7, 2024

I wanted to write about woe and grief

but decided to sit here and breathe.

I wanted to share how angry I am,

to know this is how the end begins,

rotting by choice from within.

But I looked to the words

and the life of The Man

to Whom, as a child I had taken a vow,

and I realized His message was all about Love

and all about loving The Now.

I feared the destruction, so long underway

of the feminine Sacred of All.

And the Past and the Future

merged bleakly in me —

a trajectory strong since The Fall.

But I looked at my hands,

writing words on this page,

and I heard that Still Voice

Whispering, Age after Age:

“Just be present and Breathe.

Beingness.

Just Be Still.

Know The Moment —

that’s all that you need.

Be Just You.

Be True You.

Just right Now —

you’ll know how.

Find The Why.

To self, die.

You are Buddha.

You are Christ.

You’re The Way and The Life.

You’re the Voice.

You are Love.

Only you.

Only Be.

Only now.

Only choice is to Love.

Only Love.

Only Now.

Love is All.

Now is All.

All is Love.

All is Now.”

A Prayer

by Jane Tawel

A Prayer

By Jane Tawel

September 27, 2024

I pray that mine will learn True Love.

I pray that mine will find The Way.

I pray for safety for each one,

and that sufficient is the day.

I pray for each that has been given

into my weak and feeble hands,

and then I pray for all the planet

in my own place and distant lands.

I pray at last for my own soul

that grace and love will set it free;

and that my heart and mind and will

may find its peace and home in Thee.

Poems on Not Growing Old– But Aging

by Jane Tawel

Poems on Not Growing Old — But Aging

by Jane Tawel

(Family)

Poems on Not Growing Old — but Aging

Shall we age, but not grow old?

Poem 1

By Jane Tawel

August 13, 2024

Shall we age, but not grow old?

Figures of speech,

becoming

more important than keeping our figures.

Old happens.

Aging, like good wine,

good cheese,

and good life,

old is not, but

aging is a choice.

(us)

How We Go Through Life at Our Age

Poem 2

By Jane Tawel

August 12, 2024

We shall go through life as guests now.

Not always honored,

often merely put up with.

We are invited as a duty,

as the rather tattered

Shattered

Battered

Pieces of what used to be.

Do we still seem Whole to you?

I doubt we ever did.

But now the part we played

is a piece of the past

and it doesn’t hold up under scrutiny.

Oh, I understand –I was once young too,

Believe it or not.

No, it doesn’t do

for the young to look too closely

at our wrinkled hands and brows,

our sagging guts and breasts,

our lack of hair, and lack of –

of —

of….

oh, what is that darn word I was searching for?

Oh, if only you could see beyond

what you think of as lack,

to the wealth we hide in back

of our front-facing old shells,

and see to the inside,

our true selves.

Minds slower but fuller,

bodies weaker, but battle-scarred,

hearts congested with so much love

that eventually they break.

Don’t let the doctors fool you

with the scientific diagnosis.

In the end,

our hearts break from carrying

So much love.

Oh, So.

Much.

Love.

And we will agree to attend

to you and your events,

only because we keep hoping

against hope

that the treasure we could bestow,

the wisdom path we could show you

will at some time

some where

some how

be enough,

be enough —

for those of you we so love.

We only want to help.

Yes!

We have always loved you

More than you could know,

More than all the leaves on all the trees,

More than all the stars in all the skies,

More than all the wishes on all the birthday candles,

More than all the babies born and all the graves filled,

More than Time itself,

Yes! Forever and a day.

Oh,

More than all of all of everything –

have we loved you —

More than our own lives —

And, we could hoping

that we here and now

will break through! —

to you, my dearest dears.

Oh, we could, old as we are,

Raise you up — help you rise above

the sick darkness of the Times

and the viral condescension of youth

and the aching, longing of dreams still incubating

in your dear, dear hearts –

we hope to show, to share,

the strength, the care,

that only age can bring

and you will see at last,

we will shine!

We gift to you, if you can take it —

The gift of age

Shining through and upon and in —

Searing light

Light of Seers.

We give our attention

to the minutiae of you,

and to the essential essence of you as well.

Because there is nothing we love so well as you.

And what the hell,

We show up,

with hearts aching

and minds breaking

Because we,

who have lived so long,

are really still just children,

and we ache to be loved

not as we were,

not as one day we might be,

(or rather when we might not be),

But just as you do,

We long to be loved

just as we are.

(Run Happy)

This is the Fun Part

Poem 3 — A Haiku

By Jane Tawel, August 13, 2024

This is so much fun.

Free to be you and me.

Getting old is great.

Morning Promises

Morning Promises

By Jane Tawel, July 28, 2024

****

Gorgeous delight,

this Morning, fresh and new.

I put up a good fight against Your hopeful face,

But why did I ever doubt You?

You have come, not on soft, pitter-patter feet

as once you did when youth was cleanly cleaved

along the lines of good and bad

along the fenceposts of win or fail

when all the dreams we ever had were moored

along the shores of youth’s grim holy grails.

No, your arrival seems to come without my choosing.

And I fight your crashing cymbals waking me from

restless, aching sleep.

The morning light begins to seep like opening wounds

and stirs the ancient fears that all must keep

as close as terminal denial could ever be.

And yet — perhaps to dream — ah, there’s the rub! —

to sleep is but to die a small, white-noise-ed death.

But — Ah, Good Grief! Dear Morning!

With Your quickening breath,

I wake, perhaps to dream,

perhaps to simply welcome one more cup

of coffee, tea, or toasted bread with honey.

Oh, Gorgeous Delight!

Another day is welcome, I’ll admit

And as I sit, I sip anew this life,

this breath,

this dawn lovely.

I wake to dreams that circle round

The Past, The Present, Perhaps… Infinity…

Ah, Dearest Daybreak, Welcome here!

My soul awakes to deeply drink

and dream with open eyes

the peace, the hope, the joy of

All.

With Love embracing,

I face this glorious day,

And forward-backward, onward facing

I open heart and mind

to Be

at One

with You and me

and just, perhaps, a little bit

to glimpse this Morning’s hinting promises

of Genesis Eternity.

Let Me Take Your Sorrow

Let Me Take Your Sorrow

By Jane Tawel

June 6, 2024

Let me take your sorrow,

if only for an hour

For I am old, not like you;

no longer armored with pangs of youth.

Let me take the tears you ache too much to shed.

And I will let grief flow through me

as your fast stream flows free,

flows free through my slow-moving sea.

Let me take your anger

until you need it again.

Let me take its energy

and keep it safe from misspent deeds.

And when you’ve rested and had some play,

I’ll give it back again.

Then you may lead the charge

to change the world once more.

Then you may slam the doors

on past and future visions of hate.

And in the house of my own self,

I’ll shut the gate on letting loose

the rage on life’s injustices.

Your anger’s safe with me

until you know its rightful cause,

until you know your strength.

Let me take your fears.

For I am old (though not an elder).

(Elders are wise and I am only willing.)

And though I’m still afraid to fall;

I’m more afraid to see you tumble down too far.

I’m not afraid to stay down there.

It’s often peaceful in the depths.

I’ve loaded up a life with care

and carefully, I throw old baggage out.

And piece by piece, what’s left of me,

must t’wards the end, walk fearlessly.

The greatest fear of all draws near.

And nearer, nearer does Death come.

I have nothing here worth fearing,

Except the nearing end of all the life!

Of All The Life and All The Love!

So let me hold each of your fears.

I’ll hold them close, while we sing lullabies.

I’ll wipe your fears away like baby’s tears,

cradling your fears within my ample heart.

Go! –live your life!- not fearless- No!

For fears protect and fears can guide,

but I will gently rock them,

so you may pick them up again,

when they’ve become at least more stilled.

And when your fears grow quieter,

then you will find their shadow strength.

Yes, you will find the strength in fear.

Yes, you will find dark’s might.

And even Life-Death’s greatest fear,

the fear of endless night,

will be the greatest strength of all,

the strength of how to live each moment, right.

Oh, let me take your sorrow,

your anger and your fears.

I’ll take them all for hours,

for days, and months, and years.

Oh, let me take your tears and grief,

and let me take your rages.

And like a tree with many leaves,

and like a book with endless pages,

you’ll shed the dead;

write more beginnings;

and I’ll keep listening,

keep being willing

to take your pain for just awhile

that your soul can recover.

And even when this life of mine,

has passed away and seems all over,

I’ll still be there beside you.

I trust somewhere,

somehow,

some days,

my spirit will reach out to yours.

For Love will always find a way.

And I will take your sorrow,

and I will take your anger,

and I will take your fears;

and fly them far away with me.

And fly them far away.

And you, oh, little, precious bird,

will live to fly –

will climb as high as you want to climb.

And you will know that suffering,

is yet a strength along The Way.

And you will rise, and fall and rise again,

to live this precious moment,

to love this precious day.

by Jane Tawel

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Poems on Not Growing Old — But Aging

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