Everything shifts with the push
and pull of tides.
Wood, stones, glass get sucked
out, and the waves give back sticks
of smooth-edged driftwood,
pebbles to hold in our hands,
rounded pieces of colored glass.
Like the sea, I want to be open
for the world to pull me in.
What can be made softer
will be revealed
with love and attention.
What cannot be changed,
I will learn to release,
let it sink steadily
to my ocean’s deepest ridges,
where the resilient things live.

(originally published by The Mindful Word)

:: Carolyn Chilton Casas

By Carolyn Chilton Casas

Carolyn Chilton Casas has lived on the Central Coast for 56 years, the perfect landscape for a love of hiking and playing beach volleyball. Her poetry has appeared in Amethyst Review, Energy Magazine, and One Earth Sangha among other places, and in anthologies including "The Wonder of Small Things: Poems of Peace and Renewal," "Thin Spaces & Sacred Spaces," and "Women in a Golden State." She is a practicing Reiki Master and teacher who explores ways of healing in articles she writes for wellness magazines in several countries. More of her work can be found on Instagram and Facebook, at www.carolynchiltoncasas.com, and in her newest collection of poetry, “Under the Same Sky.”