A Scream of Swifts

May 17, 2023May 18, 2023 / Chloe Kyle / Leave a comment

Some days I feel stuck, rooted to the ground,

Both feet ensconced in wellies sucked into squelching mud,

My mind heavy and slow, absorbed in the mundane,

My heart weighed down with grief and sorrow,

My soul unable to lift myself out of the muck and mire.

^Danshutter

Today this gloom is broken by a rush of displaced air,

As a scream of Swifts glides through the sky.

Their piercing calls demand attention.

Black crescent-shaped silhouettes arc and dive overhead,

Their aerial gymnastics a display of vibrant ease and grace.

How is it these intrepid voyagers from far off shores,

Sleep, eat, bathe and mate on the wing,

Replacing the vulnerability of being grounded,

With a life of perpetual motion.

Adapting and pivoting with the natural dynamics of nature?

Could I too, raise my awareness sky high,

Keep it aloft in the realms of the divine,

Withstand the inevitable battering by winds of change,

Downpours of perceived misfortune, storms of anger or grief,

And rise above it all again and again in a never-ending spiral of grace?

I reach up to the kernel of divinity within,

Draw from it the faith, truth and love,

That bring joy and reverence to the way ahead,

And pull my wellies out from the mud.

Comments welcome

A Prelude to Spring

March 26, 2023 / Chloe Kyle / 4 Comments

As the snowdrops, crocuses and daffodils begin to shoot,

I wonder at the journey they’ve taken,

The months of stillness under the cold, dark winter soil,

Safe in their protective bulbs.

The multitude of worms and bugs moving the earth,

The rainwater and snow melt seeping down,

To nurture the seeds, soften their shells,

Nature’s unseen orchestra in action—a prelude to spring.

At times, I too, sit in glacial, bleak darkness,

Entrapped by long-held barriers of protection—

Fear, anger, judgement, undue attachments—

Binding my light, suffocating my soul.

Until I heed the whisper of Grace within,

To surrender to this uncomfortable unwrapping,

Allow His warm rays of Love to soften my hard edges,

Shower every defensive fibre with truth and clarity.

For this, Grace murmurs, is a sacred inner process.

A peeling away of long-held layers of attitudes and beliefs,

To reveal the divine root of essence,

Become the magnificent truth which I am.

I break free from the shackles of winter hibernation,

Rise up in Love through the rich soil of life,

Pierce through great clods of illusion,

Into the clear air of a bright new day.

Vibrant shoots of green pierce through the earth,

Survive onslaughts of frost, wind and rain.

Lithe stems grow up to the light, strong and true.

Jubilant flowers of white, purple, yellow begin to open.

I look down at my feet in the late winter snow,

Tilt my head up to the first rays of spring sun,

Feel the kiss of Grace on my forehead,

Ripples of Love vibrating through my Being.

A glorious awakening: radiant buds of eternal joy.

Comments most welcome

A Practice in Liberation

March 4, 2023March 6, 2023 / Chloe Kyle / 6 Comments

I know how the darkness beckons you sometimes,
How you turn your back on the light.
I know how you walk down paths you know you shouldn't,
How you lose yourself in labyrinths of grief and despair.
I know you see your well-trodden habits and want to change them,
How you're done with reliving these painful patterns,
How you're oh so weary of your worn-out ways of being.

I know you feel empty at times, like you exist in a void,
With life twirling around you, always just out of reach.
I know you wallow too long in pools of fear and shame,
Stuck in the abyss between who you currently think you are,
And the deeper truth of whom you know yourself to be.
I know there are parts of you that you don't love,
That have plundered your joy as you exiled them away.

I know too that you've felt the kiss of Grace ignite inside you,
How you've soaked in the abundance of trust and love that reside within,
I know you can believe yourself full, rise-up out of this darkness,
For you are not flawed, damaged or failing in feeling this pain.
When fear debilitates, loneliness blinds, despair dampens,
You are being blessed with a divine invitation to love Grace more,
To replace self-judgement with His most gentle and loving embrace.

Welcome these dark, banished corners of yourself,
Listen, comfort, forgive, re-member and restore His love within,
Feel how this awakens all the cells in your body as they vibrate in jubilation and awe,
So you can dance more gracefully and play more joyfully with all the richness of life.
The dark, the light; the fear, the courage; the resistance, the acceptance-
Rise above all of it, a taste of heaven as you regain your divinity,
Where the shadows pulling at your feet, are mere tickles at your toes.

Dearest One, everything is just fine. It's all a practice in liberation.

Comments most welcome.

This Great Unburdening

November 15, 2022 / Chloe Kyle / 2 Comments

This great unburdening of the clouds,
As they release their torrents of rain,
This mass disencumbering of the trees,
As they shed their myriad leaves,
I feel it too. This overwhelming need,
To just let go.

Hold my hand, Beloved, rise up within,
Let this burgeoning river of truth and purity,
Coarse through each cell in my body,
Scour the deep dark trammels of my mind,
Dredging up old sediment, hard held concepts,
To set me free,

The shame, anger, despair, I buried so deep,
My old friend, pain, who clings to me still,
You bring them all up in a holy mess,
Of muddy trenches, and trampled leaves,
A stinking swamp of my own making,
And smile,

Knee deep in muck, I see the part I play,
Within the grit and grime of each experience,
It weighs heavy on my being,
A dark storm cloud, full to bursting,
With bounteous drops,
Of understanding.

An Autumn tree laden with glorious leaves,
A kaleidoscope of realisations,
Awaiting liberation.
I hold your gaze and the flood gates open,
The raw power of your Radiance,
Surges through every fibre of my being,

Emptying me out of everything,
I thought to be true,
A tree stripped bare for winter,
The vast calm openness of the sky after a storm.
Filling me up with light and clarity,
You whisper: All is for Love.

This Sacred Road

May 31, 2022 / Chloe Kyle / 2 Comments

On this path of living my truth,
I bump into all the times I’ve been untrue:
The job endured because I felt I should,
The countless times I’ve said yes to please another,
When every cell in my body was screaming no.

The relationship severed and lost,
Because I lacked the courage to speak up,
Or spoke too freely, without discernment,
Of import, of kindness, of truth.
Each misstep, a bruise, a welt, a cut I carry still.

The heavy sandbags of grief, shame and despair,
The concepts I hold, built on values of family, society,
Of how life should be, form solid walls, 
A prison cell around my true self.
They bar my freedom, block my light.

I touch these tender purple lesions,
Soft abrasions, rubbed raw through time,
Deep gashes still bleeding hurt,
Untended wounds, too painful to clean,
And hold each one up to His loving gaze.

I thank each blunder for the blessing it bears,
The insight, the wisdom, the truth of what I am not.
The barricades begin to dissolve,
The bleeding stems, aches recede, and wounds start to heal,
Each scar a testament to this sacred road travelled.

If this post resonated with you, I’d love to hear, do comment.

A Murmuration

December 12, 2021December 15, 2021 / Chloe Kyle / 3 Comments

As daylight fades, and thick grey clouds descend,

A handful of starlings swoop and twist

In perfect unison, a shape-shifting silhouette,

Against the burnished sunset sky.

^{Marshall Baron}

In reciprocation to this flight of freedom, of joy,

More starlings gather and soar and dive,

An intricately coordinated pattern, a collective dance,

To fend off foe, defy the elements through exultant grace.

And I ask myself, is it like those whispers of clarity,

That fly into our awareness and demand,

That every cell inside wakes up and heeds the call,

To pursue our deepest truth?

Energy gathers, uprises to break free, from the binds of,

Overwhelming grief, crushing despair, or not feeling enough.

It fends off each unjust thought that cuts us down or puffs us up,

Discards all unworthy concepts that weigh less than true.

We parry and spar until this struggle becomes a dance.

We rise in Grace, then plunge to cleanse the depths of our beings,

To soar again with an ever-increasing momentum,

Of purity, of purpose, of lightness, in Love.

Hundreds of tiny beating wings rise up,

Emblazoned against the pink, orange, and golden hues of dusk,

Then plummet, invisible against the rippling green sea,

To swoop and rise again in a breath-stealing wonder.

A murmur, a wave, of sound, of dance, of song,

Gloriously pulsates in mesmerising harmony,

Lighting up the sky within, in a spectacle of rapture,

Before going home to roost.

If these words resonate with you, feel free to comment.

Small Talk

November 6, 2019November 7, 2019 / Chloe Kyle / 5 Comments

My neighbour drones on and on,

Swarming my being,

With his relentless plan of attack,

Against the box tree moth.

Shutterstock

A woman releases a torrent of gossip,

Drowning me in needless babble,

About people I barely know.

This small talk is not for me.

I want to see the depth in you,

And let that spark the depth in me.

Go oyster diving together,

For that rare pearl of truth.

But then I see before I dive,

I first must learn to swim.

To search for precious pebbles in the shallows,

To seek and see the glimmer in the trite.

And practice being a mirror, to reflect that glimmer,

Imagine it a glow, and so it becomes.

As when I connect with my inner Beloved,

My flickering candle grows into a roaring flame.

And so He shows me that the world is banal,

When it confines one’s point of view.

Its richness only truly vibrant,

When viewed from the magnitude of His divine lens.

Thus I surrender, relinquish all,

Angst, hopes, thoughts and desires,

To my Beloved within.

So He can clear the grime that blocks my view.

And through the agony of this cleansing,

My flame burns brighter, my mirror shinier,

To reflect a deeper Love and Truth within,

That shower sparks of effervescent joy.

Small talk is now for me,

The ‘talk’ could be a glance, a touch or smile.

For every action, word and thought,

Holds the potential to ignite a deeper sense of being.

Emergence

July 22, 2019 / Chloe Kyle / 1 Comment

The acorn, locked in its hard encasement,

Pushes down roots holding it fast,

To the dark dirt of the earth.

In blind effort it forges strong foundations.

shutterstock_597295049

Image: Bildagentur Zoonar GmbH

The caterpillar, ensnared in its chrysalis,

Constrained, contained, yet of its own making.

The guise of outer stillness belies the inner metamorphosis,

A deep surrender to the unknown to come.

The chick, locked inside its hard eggshell,

Dark, safe, secure and warm,

Outgrows the comfort of its entrapment.

The strength to break free wells up from within.

Urged on by the warm glow of the sun,

A vibrant green shoot pushes up into daylight.

Through resistance it finds its strength,

A journey of becoming a magnificent oak.

Stretching its wings against the wet chrysalis,

A startling azure blue butterfly takes flight.

A new lightness and grace to its being,

As it glides and flutters across the spring sky.

The soft tap of the chick on its shell,

Becomes more forceful, more pointed,

Until it bursts out of its former refuge,

With the courage to face a brand-new world.

Ready to leave the blind comfort of the known,

I learn to spar more playfully with my limitations,

As I challenge the very fabric of my conceptions,

And surrender ever deeper to each resistance.

I step out of the carnage of my own making,

And dance and twirl in the fields of creation,

Unfolding inwards to the wisdom, power and love of my Beloved,

I grow my wings and begin to soar.

Grace And Flow

breaking free