I fear I won’t get my piece out for today and yet I have particpated more fully, taking a couples classes – one live and two of recorded through that all access. pass

One piece seems too personal to share as a blog post so I am holding on to it. Instead I’ll share this other piece – written and then crafted into a poem. The class was Writing Self-Intimacy – very intriguing to me. Here’s the poem:

Such an interesting question—
how does intimacy ripple?
Something in me doesn’t quite grasp it—
and yet, as I write,
a hush moves through my chest,
a soft bloom of sensation—
could this be the ripple itself?

Inside, it’s all motion:
breath as messenger,
bringing in the new,
carrying out the dissonance—
a surrender to the stirrings
that chaos brings.

When I imagine this inward pulse
moving outward—
it feels like waves,
sometimes gentle, like a whisper across skin,
sometimes wild, like wind tearing through still water.

My relationships feel this—
my dogs know the rhythm.
My wife feels the shifts too,
though fear sometimes stirs in her—
then, I feel the quiet plea
for control, or help,
as if my wave might wash too far.

Community…
That’s more elusive.
Sometimes I skip the people close by,
and instead, let the wave
spill into music, into words, activity
into distant spaces in Zoom windows
where I may be felt,
but not held too tightly.

And maybe that’s why
intimacy in community
can feel like a shore I can see
but haven’t quite reached.