READ A FRIEND’S HEART #146
January 8th, 2015

Greetings in the new year!

The excitement, tumult and travel of the holidays and year’s end subside, and we lean in to the delicious opportunities and work before us. Are you eager to deepen your relationships? Will you visit places you’ve yearned for, inner and outer places that call to you? Will you launch a new project long in the making, or step up to the challenge of a brilliant new idea? Are you saying goodbye to old patterns or departed comrades? Will you recommit to your health and charity? Will you see clearly what lies ahead and all around you? What signature will you affix to the 2015 pages before you?

If you’re at all like me (and we’re all like each other in so many ways), you’ll be paying special attention to those stories you need to make sense of; you’ll be mending fences, opening doors and windows. Perhaps you’ll declare, ‘I am here. Engage with me. Call me to serve. I am ready.’ Or you may burrow deep into a winter of intense retrospection. It is all to the good. Be where you are. Be your best self.

Here is a poem I wrote for the journey.

I am 70 percent darkness
I am unknown to myself

We should shake hands
And introduce ourselves

All alone we should look
In a mirror and say I know you now

Nobody listens I know
It all moves so fast as it stands stock-still

Nobody listens and nobody hears
So today I say I’ll try hard to listen I’ll hear

What you’re saying on the other side of the room
On the other side of the planet

Who and what you are is what I am Can you feel that
We’re all so fast and silent We miss everything

But I have a voice and I will cast it
Into the lakes and oceans and rivers

I will send it into the trees and mountains
As I was taught by my ghostly brothers and sisters

I will sing it on your breast and down your spine
And touch my lips to your feet

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CORE STORIES PROGRAM

MY Core Stories Program guides you through your ten essential core stories. You’ll unlock them, unblock them, engage them and learn to work with them in your daily life.

Join me! Tap into your core stories. Celebrate and explore what makes you unique. Come with me on a journey of narrative healing through meditation, journaling, poetry and lively one-on-one conversations.

This journey heals old wounds, clear obstacles that hold you back and usher you into your creative, unique power.

For ten weeks, I’ll work with you to open up the core stories of your life. Each segment will heal, empower and enrich you in your spiritual quest, your job performance and your relationships.

Would you like to come along on this journey? Then email me at rmcdowell@mind.net, or poetrymentor@mac.com to sign up. The one-time cost for this Core Stories Program is $297.00.

As a bonus, I’ll send each participant, each co-creator, a PDF of five Poetry Talks, personal essays on the wisdom of poems through the ages.

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NEW BOOK PUBLICATION

My fourth full-length collection of poetry, The World Next To This One, has been published by The Salmon Publishing Company in Ireland and is now available. http://www.salmonpoetry.com/details.php?ID=328&a=257 Order direct from Salmon Publishing, Orders over 20 Euro are shipped free worldwide! Please help us spread the word.

“Robert McDowell’s powerful narrative poems are among the best written over the last fifty years. His para-poems here extend the prose poem form with incisive, probing clarity and startling wit.”
–Ai, National Book Award, Poetry
Thank you again for your work, your interest and support.
Robert
Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/McDowellRobert