happy birthday to me, to you, and the world

i'm getting my february blog posts started off right, with poetry. i've had in mind for days to post the two poems i just posted, and finally have a few moments to do just that...

this past weekend i celebrated my 56th birthday with friends. we stayed in cabins at buescher state park. linda decorated our cabin beautifully with colorful pareos, an altar, a lamp brought from home. she brought her new macbook. i gave her CDs to expand her music and spoken poetry collection with; we had a lot of fun with the built-in camera and photo software, making some cool photos of ourselves, such as the four goddesses, janus, holding the earth in her hands, burning man, etc. thank you linda!

katie made me a gluten-free birthday cake! this is the first time in years that i've had birthday cake. it's not quite the texture of wheat flour cake, but still very appreciated. katie gave me a gift of a new way of practicing states of attention, with an expansion of kinesthetic states. she gave me a card with bamboo on the cover and a rumi poem inside, which i'll post separately. she also brought a rumi book and read aloud from it. we passed the book around, taking turns reading aloud. when rumi comes to your birthday party, you know it's gonna be wonderful! also when katie comes, because she brought rumi. thank you katie!

keith brought both his accordion and his pennywhistle. we played together on our pennywhistles. he's much more experienced than i, and he's such a good teacher. i feel inspired to learn more, especially the plaintive songs that i love. keith also gave me the most exquisite card of a doorway, an apocheta as we call it, an opening, with a david whyte poem inside. i will post that poem separately. it deserves its own space. keith is a wonderful storyteller. he brought a book of native american stories and read one aloud from the native hawaiians, apt since so many of us have been to maui together. thank you keith!

kathleen came out saturday evening, surprising me, because i thought she wasn't coming. she regaled us with stories of pursuing her path and shared her clear presence with us. she and i laid on the deck on sleeping bags sunday morning and caught up with each other. thank you kathleen!

these paragraphs and my thanks can hardly convey the depths of my experience of sharing the weekend with these friends in a setting of trees, lake, sky, bare branches, as we talked story, laughed, cooked, ate, walked, hugged.

i am blessed.