My heart is like the onion’s skin shedding layers with the breaking. My heart is pressed as the garlic bulb until it releases its scent. Yes, my heart is a growing thing that pushes beyond its restraints. The shell must give yet a thousand times for this heart to expand. Ana Lisa de Jong Living … More A Poem: This Heart

You show us how to recommit each morning the sun rises. We see how its rays chase the shadows of the night until they’ve backed down. Retreated into the depths of the foliage. You show us how to recommit each morning the dawn crests. How the blue reminds us that dark is not the default. … More A Poem: Commitment

What matters is that we find the heart in the matter. The seed in the branch, the grain in the wood, the flower in the weed. What matters is the kernel of truth, beautiful acorn in which a tree is contained. Inestimable thing which we carry around, without which we see nothing else. Yes, this … More A Poem: What Matters

Will you look? Really look. Will you look past your lens and its leaning towards a certain perspective. Remembering we are all short or long-sighted. Instead will you have eyes to see? Which may in some respects mean looking blind. And will you look blind then until your eyes adjust. Will you look, really look … More A Poem: Eyes to See

Why is it when silence falls and the house is quiet I cannot look at my long lists though the tasks stack upon themselves. Why, when I have so much planned to achieve, do I find myself measuring time by contemplating the way light hits the trees as the day rises. By how the clouds … More A Poem: Quiet