"Just Be"

By Claudia Ricci

Just feel your body.
Just feel.
Just breathe.
Just be in motion.
Just beware of your arms and your legs, your fingers and your toes,
your ears and your eyes, your stomach and your brain.
Just be grateful for all the marvelous things your body can do, mysterious things
like thinking, which we can't even explain.

Just be somewhere, somewhere quiet, and let it sink deep within you.
Just be the rain, or the sound of thunder
or the music from a wooden flute.
Just pretend you are sitting in a canyon
under a cornflower blue sky and that flute
music is floating overhead.

Just be sitting in your dinette
sipping a cup of tea watching
the red-headed woodpecker
snapping his beak against
the suet.

Just watch the birds settle and fly,
settle and fly.

Just let your eyes close and
just be glad for the drumming
that is your heart beat.

Just start to see yourself
a new way
apart from anything you
have ever accomplished.

Just sit still and follow
your breath in
and out
and in
and out
for at least half an hour a day.

Just be.


Painting by Claudia Ricci