Start with centring and feeling. Standing, balanced, feeling oneself there.

It is to this rhythm of stillness that life always returns:

Angel's wings is a movement that starts with the hands at the side. Then you imagine invisible threads pulling them heavenwards, with the fingers stretched out to your full width, tingling with the joy of being. The fingers touch above the head. Then the arms fall, gently, back to your sides.

Tonight I will have a dream - to wish you
The power of dance through all your years.
Dancing, dancing, living dancing,
Leaping joy and cleansing tears.

From your sleep you will wake to dancing,
Exploring the world with fingers and toes.
Dancing, dancing, living dancing,
Soft and precise dawn's rhythm goes.

Through your limbs will run day's movement,
Weak as with age or strong as a child.
Dancing, dancing, living dancing,
Sometime sluggish, sometimes wild.

On the floor, your bare feet falling
Greet with their rhythm the loving earth.
Dancing, dancing, living dancing,
Feel in your steps the world's rebirth.

Pausing in the new day's movement,
Centre your body to the world and to you.
Dancing, dancing, living dancing,
Balance the forces running through.

Like wings around your centre moving
Fingers stretched, arms sweep to greet the sky.
Dancing, dancing, living dancing,
Through sorrow or joy you fly.

Palm to palm, another's hands feeling:
In love and struggle your day will run.
Dancing, dancing, living dancing,
With friend, or colleague, stranger or son.

Through the world you will walk with a rhythm
On chequered pavement or lanes beneath trees.
Dancing, dancing, living dancing,
Swinging your arms and bending your knees.

Yours is life's energy, moving each muscle
Back, shoulder, elbow, wrist, palm and knuckle.
Dancing, dancing, living dancing,
Sinew's and bones to your moving buckle.

Then with the slinkiest, gentlest dancing,
To sleep, with the rhythm of breathing glide.
With dancing, dancing, living dancing,
Through dreaming fantasies to ride.

Centring

Go to bed
For inner rest.
Plump my pillow
As a friendly breast.
Pretend my sheet
Is eternity
Lovingly holding
On to me.
Hand to chest,
Living desire,
Think that my heart
Sets life on fire.
Fingers on forehead,
Breath on palm.
Into life's centre.
Warm and calm.

Psalm 23

Under layers of darkness
I will not panic.
I will hold onto the warm bit within,
And take the hand of friendship
Reaching out to me.

Gossamer sails

My fairy ship sets sail
On the journey of inner knowledge;
Sailing into the sea:
The sea that's the centre of me.
So excited, on the deck we gossip:
What will we see, sailing to me?
Already we feel the waves's beat
And the wind moan in coastal caves,
How will it be, under gossamer sails,
Sailing me free, on the open waves?

Funeral dance   

Cease weeping
and come dance with me.
The dead and living
move together
in this funeral dance:
Our vital spark glowing
in palpitations
of your heart

Your heart still beats today:
Grieve (as you will) - but dance.
Dead friends go not away.
Your heart thunders the rhythm
where they stay

The face

I have some friends who have flown, higher than sky,
Faster than space, into the face of God.
We call it dead. But this is also flying in God's face:
We call it living, breathing, being.

Grieving is seeking the face that has flown.
We look to clouds and trace that face in stars.
It is we who have died, until, touching a face within,
We find all living, breathing being, is now, our own.