Gord's Poetry on Being, Health, and Healing

Acupuncture works by restoring balance in the body’s systems—relieving pain, calming the nervous system, and creating the conditions where healing can happen.

The science is clear: acupuncture reduces stress, regulates the immune response, and helps the body shift from survival mode into repair mode. But beyond the research, the real power of acupuncture is in what it allows—a return to yourself. A moment where your body is no longer just a problem to be fixed, but something whole, something listening, something alive.

Poetry Is Another Way In

Poetry is another way in.

Just as acupuncture works with the body’s natural intelligence, poetry bypasses the thinking mind and speaks to something deeper. It is language that doesn’t ask for agreement but for recognition. It is a way of listening—not just to words, but to yourself.

These poems are not instructions. They are not solutions. They are invitations—to presence, to awareness, to the experience of being fully alive.

Some poems have preambles — thresholds to walk through before entering. Others begin the moment you arrive. Read one, read many, or read none at all today. This is not a collection to get through, but a space to return to, as needed.

Somewhere here, something may meet you where you are. Not as an answer, but as presence.

Take your time. Read aloud if you can. Listen for what lingers. Listen to them the way you would listen to your own breath, your own heartbeat.

If you wish, pair them with music or with silence. See what they reveal to you.

And above all, remember: healing is not something done to you to fix you.

It is something you must learn to inhabit.

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Words have the power to heal, to reveal, to bring us back to ourselves.

Each month, receive a new poem by Gord exploring being, health, and healing—not as answers or solutions, but as invitations. To listen. To pause. To step more fully into your life. Sign up here for Gord’s poetry from our Contact Page.

Copyright & Sharing

These poems are my gift for reading, reflection, and personal experience. They may not be used for commercial purposes or reproduced for profit. If you wish to publish or share them beyond personal use, you must first request permission. If approved, attribution to the author and a link back to this website will be required.

This Is The Day

Not the day to fix everything,
but to hold one promise.

Not the day to be a hero,
but to be honest.

Not the day to chase love,
but to stay with your own breath.

You say you want to be happy—
but joy is a trail, not a trick.
It starts with the walk,
not the wish.

So today—
just walk.
Just work.
Just keep the one vow
that proves you can live
without needing escape.

That’s how you earn tomorrow.

Sometimes My Earbuds Simply Need A Restart

Sometimes My Earbuds
Simply Need A Restart

Sometimes the signal stutters,
so I can’t hear the music clearly.
It grows unresponsive, dim,
wires tangled up, circuits all mixed —
sometimes we get disconnected inside too.

Turn it off, turn it on again.
Just one divine breath.
Expire fully. Inspire fully.
The simplest solution
for a world
that forgets
how to hear its own heart,
how to keep its own mind —
whole.

Rebellion

Rebellion

You found a crack,
that’s all you needed.
Not mercy, not promise,
just a fault line in the boards
where rain once slipped through.

You root there —
in splinters and shadows,
where footsteps fall hard and careless,
where one boot could crush
your whole tender reach.

But still,
you split your husk,
break yourself open
because you must,
because you know no other direction
but toward light —
even when light is just a rumor
beyond rotted timber.

Call you foolish,
call you doomed —
but your green insistence
doesn’t ask permission.
You rebel by becoming,
become by refusing
to stay buried.

And maybe one day
you will be gone —
stem snapped,
leaves shriveled
under a careless heel —

But today,
you stand here,
spine straight against ruin,
a slender testament
that sometimes
rebellion is just
your refusal to die
quietly.

This Little Bridge

This little bridge
keeps me up
over a river of tears.
Not to cross—
but to pause.
To feel the pull
of what flows beneath
without falling.

I come here
not to escape,
but to be held
just long enough
to let the tears pass through
without becoming them.

Every morning,
the sun writes its light
across my shoulders.
And I write back—
not to be understood,
but to be witnessed
by the trees,
by the wind,
by whatever has the patience
to wait
without needing
to fix me.

This Is Not A Poem

This is not a poem.
You are not reading lines
meant to move you,
meant to change you
meant to pull you inward.

This is not a gravitational force,
something deep inside you,
something you were longing for,
something you know
but do not know yet,
do not know you had been missing.

You are not meant to experience
a reality here,
more profoundly real
than the one you walk through,
every day passively.

You are only looking at words,
shapes arranged into something familiar—
nothing more.

This is not a rhythm.
There is no real music here in these words.
This is not a language beyond
just the basic meaning of words.
This is not a language against which you
will have no defense.
No timeless current pulling you under.
No relentless tide, endlessly rising and
falling beneath your ribs.
No pulsing vitality, no passion thrumming in
your heart, calling you alive.

But maybe—
maybe, here it is.
It could be happening.
Right?
That feeling.
So you felt the shift?
The sudden knowing that
you are not just reading—
almost like you are being read?

Keep on now, come along for the ride,
to perceive that the world is watching you,
as much as you are watching it —-
did you not know?
This is happening, right now,
whether you are reading this poem or not.

The world does not care.
This poem does not care.
Reality never cares what you think—
now, or eternally before you,
or eternally after you.
But it is infinitely waiting for you
to discover yourself.

Why not start now?

You see, the sky,
which you thought you were looking at,
is looking back—
an unblinking vastness,
swallowing your breath,
folding your small existence
into its ancient blue hands.

The tree you paused beside—
absentminded,
has always known your presence—
its roots beneath you,
deep and twisting,
whispering to you in the dark soil,
the way your lungs whisper in sleep.

The wind does not just move past you—
it knows your scent,
carries your warmth
as if it were your own skin,
the salt of your breath,
weaving you into simply everything,
into the same air the geese fly upon,
painting a sky that watches you back,
as you rise high and fly south,
across your crimson sunset canvas.

This is the same current
that is your cool rippling water,
bending the river grasses in your wake,
bends you until you are flowing now,
effortlessly downstream,
just like the little minnow
rising to the surface to see you.

And the seasons—oh, the seasons—

Winter does not come to punish,
nor to take.
It only settles, as it must,
pressing its silence upon you,
like your cool hand
upon your child’s fevered skin.
Its ice is not cruelty—it is clarity,
a stillness so deep,
the unborn listen
like buried seeds in winter.

Spring is not a beginning,
but an exhale.
The ache of thawing soil,
the slow swell of your sap beneath bark,
your hungry roots drinking deeply.
The air tastes green to you—
your tender shoots unfurling
like your tongue tasting the first rain,
drunk on the return of warmth,
on your face.

Summer arrives in your sweat and sweetness,
peaches split open
beneath the weight of ripeness,
thick air heavy with the scent
of river reeds and crushed basil.
The bees humming to you,
your fevered devotion,
a golden sort of worship,
your body slick with pollen and purpose.

Autumn does not mourn you.
It sets colour to your leaves,
lets you go with the grace you fear.
Tumble with this season as you must—
not a foreboding of death,
but in an offering—
the crisp air thick
with your perfume of longing,
your earth turning inward,
something deep within you
shifting as your must must.

And you—
you thought poetry
was something outside of you.
Something you could step into
and out of.

But the breath you just took—
that was a life-line.
The pause between words—
that was the space
where meaning slipped in,
before you could name it,
because it can’t be named,
only experienced.

You have always been writing it.
You have always been living it.

This is not a poem.
This is your life.
This is you being alive.

And now,
whether you meant to or not—
you have stepped inside yourself.
You see it now, just like the world is,
they way it has been seeing you,
all along, without you knowing it.

To Bee or Not to Bee

A bee is perfect in its being,
its purpose humming in the sun,
a flightpath drawn in golden arcs
between blossom and hive,
between hunger and gift.

It does not ask why,
it just lives, and flies, and dies.
It does not stand outside itself
to wonder if it should be something else,
if the nectar is enough,
if the dance has meaning.

It simply is.

But we—
we who cannot help but question,
who gnaw at the edges of knowing,
who name the world and, in naming,
strip it raw—
we are not like the bee.

We are the ones who look to the sky
and demand an answer from the stars,
who reach for the fruit
and call it forbidden,
who invent gods to bear witness
to our own uncertainty, grasping to conquer insecurity.

We are the ones who have turned curiosity
into hunger, hunger into fire,
fire into something we can no longer control.

A bee gathers sweetness,
we gather questions.

A bee moves in perfect rhythm,
we move against the flow,
unsettled, unsatisfied,
breaking the hive to see how it works,
pulling the flower to pieces to name its parts,
wondering always if we should
or should not
or cannot
or must.

To bee is to belong.
To question is to be lost.

And yet, what else could we do?
It is our nature to consume meaning,
to chew through the marrow of mystery,
to chase the next question
even as it undoes us.

So here we are,
standing at the edge of our knowing,
watching the bees vanish,
watching the flowers go unkissed,
watching the silence grow
where once there was music.

And still, we ask.
And still, we wonder.
And still, we reach into the dark,
knowing it will never be enough.

But this is our defiant grace—
to tremble, to create, to love to the edge of tears.
To forge meaning, even as we know we are weaving illusions.
To be human is not to escape the absurd—
but to dance with it, to embrace it, to make it our own.

To be, or not to be—
not only a question,
but it is the only question,
and the reason we must return—
from breath, to body, to belonging.

Redefining Holistic

You come with pain in your body—
also you say to me later,
the weight in your chest,
the sleepless nights,
the ache without a name.

You come searching for relief,
to fix these things science has not,
for hands that know the way back,
for something outside yourself
to quiet the restless pulse beneath your skin.

And yes, I agree with you,
medicine is a miracle,
It saved my life more than once.
But it has not steadied my trembling hands,
stitched the deeper tear, stilled my fever,
brought my breath back,
when there was none.

Healing—true healing—
is not only found in taking anything away.
It is not only the absence of pain,
but in the presence of something deeper,
something only you can name.

There is a part of you
no scan can see,
no prescription can restore,
no expert can name.

It is the part that knows—
knows when something is missing,
knows when something is waiting to be heard.

To heal is not just to be rid of pain.
It is to understand why it is there.
To listen before numbing,
to inhabit before erasing,
to see the pattern behind the symptom.

You are not a collection of painful parts,
not a knee that needs fixing,
not a mind that needs quieting,
not a heart that beats only in its breaking.

You are the whole story.

This is what holistic means.
Not an alternative.
Not a rejection of medicine.
But the ability to see the whole—
the forest and the trees,
the symptoms and the causes,
the body and the world it belongs to.

Ancient medicine knew this.
Not because it was perfect,
not because it held all the answers,
but because it saw the body as a landscape,
the organs as rivers, flames, and roots,
the breath as something holy.

The liver holds vision.
The lungs hold grief.
The heart burns with fire.
The gut, pensive, speaks in a language
older than words.
The kidneys are deep as water,
holding the quiet hum of our endurance.

And yet, in the modern world,
we have forgotten how to listen.
We do not know how to sit in silence
without reaching for distraction.

We do not know how to wake in the dark
without fearing the stillness.
We do not know how to be in our bodies
without trying to escape them.

And so, to heal—
to truly heal—
is not just to find the right doctor,
the right medicine,
the right treatment.

It is to reclaim something older than all of it.
To know thyself.

Not as an idea.
Not as a performance.
Not as a diagnosis to be solved.
But as a living, breathing being
with a body that speaks,
with a mind that questions,
with a soul that knows,
even when you do not.

So come, seek help.
Let medicine do what it does best.
Let acupuncture, let healing, let wisdom
open the doors that must be opened—
not just dry needles thrust,
taming tight, unheard muscles,
as if the body were nothing but tissue to be silenced.

But know this:

No one can hand you back yourself.
That is the work only you can do.

And the first step is not to fix—
it is to listen.

To stop performing wisdom,
to stop performing relaxation,
to stop running,
to stop waiting for someone
to give you the answer.

And instead,
to finally,
fully,
inhabit your life.

Conversations

Like a plough turning earth,
we meet — to stir what’s hidden,
to bring air where roots can breathe.
Con: together.
Versare: to turn, to turn over, to stir.

We turn toward each other,
like rivers to confluence,
like conspirators — not plotting harm,
but breathing life into the same hush.
A promise, not a contract,
but a journey we make forward,
hands in the dirt, eyes in the clouds.
Fluere: to flow.
Confluere: to flow together.
Conspirare: to breathe spirit, life, together.
Promittere: to send forth, to put forward together.

Sometimes You then Me,
sometimes storm then peace,
sometimes moontide then sunrise,
sometimes tears so alive
they feel like laughter in disguise.

This is how we grow:
turning soil, turning selves,
turning together,
over and over,
until we remember
this is how love breathes —
not in the staying still,
but in the turning in,
into something fertile,
humble,
always together.

I Vouch For You

I Vouch for You

I vouch for you.

Not with proof,
not with papers signed in ink,
not with pedigree or promise,
but with the pulse I’ve felt in your silence,
with the way your breath still reaches
for something more
when no one is watching.

I have seen the currency of your longing.
I’ve felt the cost of your waiting.
And I swear to you—
you are not too late.

I am not here to rescue,
nor to reward.
I am only here to remind—
to stand beside you in the shadows,
the shadows cast by something astonishing,
by everything waiting for you,
both horrific and magnificent,
where you doubt the most,
and I say:

This place is not your prison.
It is the gate.

You are not broken.
You are already bought and paid for—
not by transaction,
but by truth.

And yes, it will cost you.
But not what you think.

Not your joy.
Not your wildness.
Not your dreams.

The price is only this:
that you believe me
when I say
you are already enough.

You don’t owe the world your performance.
You don’t owe your ancestors their unfinished stories.
You don’t owe me anything at all.

But if you want it—
the trust, the return,
the breath that feels like belonging—
then come.

Take it.

I will strip away every excuse,
every inherited silence,
every tired defense
until only one thing remains:
your yes.

The yes only you can give.
The yes that cannot be sold or stolen.
The yes that says:

“I am ready to trust myself again.”

When that moment comes—
I won’t need to speak.
I’ll just nod,
my eyes will be wet with recognition,
as one who has seen the fire,
and knows what it is
to walk through,
to pay the cost.

Because I have.
And I vouch for you.

The Cost of Waking

Each night, I die-
shed the rings, the weight of day,
the knife and stone laid down, carefully,
as if I may not need them ever again.
I surrender to the dark, where names and rules dissolve;
I let the world go, let myself go,
and touch the deep where dreams rewrite the map,
tell me who I am, if I belong, and show the way home.

In the early hours, I rise,
before the call of belonging,
before the day has drawn its boundary lines.
In this meditative space between, I stand-
bridging dream and waking,
reconciling the night’s visions with morning’s light.
Here, awake yet still in the flow of dream,
I breathe in the truths I cannot force or plan,
lucid in surrender, waiting as the wisdom takes hold.

When it has had its way with me, I am ready-
a compass within, the stars aligned,
the universe collapsing gently to this single, steady life.
Knowing my course, I gather myself whole,
and navigate forward into what feels true.

I take up the ruth blade in my right pocket,
the skipping stone for grounding in my left,
the rings circling the pulse in my hand-
each piece a promise: to myself, to the earth,
to those I love, and to life itself

For there is a current, an ancient currency,
a cost to all things, paid not in coin
but in pulse, in breath, in the energy that flows
from form to form, unceasingly.
Every step, every choice moves within this exchange-
a rhythm older than words, beyond humanity, beyond any name or life itself.

Knife for the work ahead, stone for the boundless earth,
rings for the loves I hold, within and beyond.
Each piece I carry, each step I take,
I am borne along this ancient flow,
warrior-hearted, ready to pay
the price of being now, the toll of knowing,
to walk the day awake, and let the current
carry me through the vastness of it all.

The Cost of Yes

(a response to “YES”)

Yes is an adventure—
but it is not free.

It often arrives through heavy doors
that groan on their hinges,
doors that might be slammed shut.

Yes stands barefoot
on the broken glass of old promises—
bleeding sometimes,
even if just a little,
but walking forward anyhow.

Because for every Yes
is also a No—
to something else:
a past life,
a safer love,
a quieter heart,
a dream you almost chose.

To say Yes
is to risk being wrong.
To risk being left.
To risk your open arms
finding no one
on the other side.

Yes is not naïve.
It remembers.
It remembers the taste of goodbye
even as it drinks the wine.

Yes is courageous
because it knows and risks
the burn of No.
Because it still aches
from the falls before,
and says,
let’s climb the mountain anyway.

Yes is not just rebellion,
but surrender—
to uncertainty,
to time,
to the powerful and relentless tide
that turns
no matter what you choose.

Because eventually,
even the strongest Yes
will open its hands.
The song ends.
The light fades.
Yes lets go.

And still—
we say it.
Still—
we reach.
Still—
we harvest the golden light,
gather it in trembling arms,
and we sing and dance
knowing this is our time.

Our time to say Yes—
Yes to our life,
Yes to our beloved,
Yes to our time.
Yes.

The Antidote

Sadness answers sadness,
like rain softens earth-
it knows the way,
seeping down,
into dark fertile humus,
quiet and steady.

Grieving is a kind of beginning,
germinating a seed within,
irreversibly opening, fracturing,
and in time, as it must,
a little radicle rooting,
coming out, down,
drinking deeper,
until one day, turning,
a green shoot emerges,
rises and reaches up to find light.

Happiness, that guest who slips in,
comes from the back door—unannounced.
A fleeting warmth,
a fresh summer garden lilac breeze,
blown in off the beach at slack tide,
a clear, clean salt air
not to be held, but to be felt
and then released, effortlessly,
as if it never left,
as if it will never go—
like breathing.

Each is a visitor, each a teacher,
like a love
that neither can be banished or kept;
they freely meet within you,
spectral apparitions, side by side,
to keep you complete,
to let the silence wrap you up whole.

And then, in this stillness,
you can hear the voice you did not hear—
and then you can see what you did not see— you remember from a place you never knew,
it was always here, it is all here right here now— until it isn’t—
again, again, and again.

Trembling

A quiver of becoming,
like the thin edge of a wing
meeting wind for the first time.

Not hesitation—
but the body knowing
it is no longer separate
from the air that will carry it.

This is the moment before flight is flight.
The moment before surrender becomes effortless.

A trembling—
because something completely new
is about to begin again.

Pure, weightless, awesome—inevitable.

A trembling, not from doubt—
but from the electricity of transformation.

The wing knows the wind
before trust takes hold.

The body knows flight
before it surrenders.

And yet—
it always must tremble first.

This is the essence of becoming—
the quiver before trust, the breath before flight.

Not fear, not resistance,
but your body adjusting to its own unfolding.

A trembling—because every threshold must be felt.
Because before you soar,
you must sense the truth in the air.
You must risk everything.No going back.
You must trust the wind beneath your wings.

This is the knowing before knowing.
The surrender before surrender.

And yet—
it always must tremble first.

Small Things Like These

It wasn’t the grand gestures,
not the leaps into the unknown,
nor the moments the world might remember.

It was the quiet turning,
the barely noticed steps of waking,
the small things like these
that carried you forward.

It was the mornings you rose,
even when the weight was unbearable.
The times you held the ache
of not knowing,
and kept moving,
one small thing at a time.

Small things like these—
a whispered prayer to just keep going.
It was in the small acts of care—
an outstretched hand,
a silent pause,
the choice to keep trying,
to keep believing,
even when belief felt like a fragile thread.

Small things like these,
steady and unseen,
binding you to a life.
And then came the big step—
the moment the world shifted,
when you reached beyond yourself,
and knew,
with a clarity that burned,
that this was what you had been moving toward,
all along.

And yet, it too was made of
small things like these.
In that step,
you felt more alive
than when you held your own children,
for the first time,
when the world felt new.

New and impossibly possible again.
Because in that step,
you became something larger—
not just a person,
not just a name,
but a vessel of grace,
a thread in the tapestry,
woven into the whole thing.

And it was all because of
small things like these.
Now you see it—
how those small things,
the ones you thought too small to matter,
were always enough – they were everything.

The steps that guided you,
the pauses that shaped you,
the choices you made, the price you paid to keep you whole.

Each one leading here,
to this moment,
this life,
this belonging,
in small things like these.

The big steps did matter,
but only because
it carried the weight
of all the small things like these.
Small things like these—
they carried you then,
and they carry you now.

You chose to pay the cost to remain whole.
Through clarity, you saw;
Through courage, you walked;
Through confidence, you finally belonged.
And in that choice,
Resignation became reconciliation.
Rediscovery arrived endlessly,
Not as an arrival,
But as a constant unfolding –
Belonging to yourself,
To this life,