We would be shocked and eventually saddened to hear someone say this to us. Everyone has a favorite song, right? Of course, they do! But today, let's go beyond our favorite songs and ponder our favorite poems. I want us to be equally shocked if someone cannot name their favorite poem. It may actually become even more critical in our lives.

Also, we'll feature a brilliant poem for we mortals, we who are confronting greater and greater levels of difficulty and vulnerability in this world. Who knows, maybe this featured poem will become one of your favorites?

How can we weave more beauty and meaning into our lives in 2025, in the face of so many profound challenges and difficulties?

Thanks so much to each of you who have been on this poetry-based journey during 2024. In case you're in need of a collection of essays that hitches up some amazing poems with those traits that are most needed by leaders, here it is. The book is a few years old, but the poems and leadership qualities featured are timeless. Stay tuned for 2025 and a whole new series of poetry enhanced podcasts...

Find the Book here: (https://www.amazon.com/Poetry-Leader-Inside-You Mission/dp/1421837978)

"The world is not made of atoms but of stories," said poet Muriel Rukeyser. This means good, beautiful, pro-social stories (which are often poems!) can help overcome the most unjust, anti-social, and destructive stories. Here's a poem that does just that...

Perhaps we need to be a bit more humble, more careful, before we declare that we've won or lost. In this cast, the west. Turns out winning and losing may have everything to do with our timeframe, and that these binary categories we so often use, may not be up to the task. Here's a poem that muses on this very subject...

Your true story is important. I don’t know its contents and contours, but I’m certain it exists. It reflects the world, and your uniquely entangled and wondrous place within it. Your true story lies deep within your body, at a kind of soul level, we might say. It has something to do with what gives you joy, satisfaction, and clarity, combined paradoxically, with what, over the years, has also scared you, and broken your heart wide open. You may have heard parts of this story, but there's always more to discover and tell if fully, and wholeheartedly invited. You are hereby fully, and wholeheartedly invited.

Let's start a small, but significant political revolution with poetry. When someone asks you for your money and support, first give your heartfelt ideas, feelings, and opinions about what is right and wrong with politics. If they listen and respond well, then consider your support and money.

Write your own special declaration to Mother Earth and to the sanctity of your own interior self, meaning your heart and imagination...

For all those who are hurting, upset, and dismayed after the election...

A Paradox After the Election

It is 7:27 PM, Wednesday, November 6th, and I am tired, even of hope.
Or maybe it is hope, that’s grown old, and now helplessly tired of me.

I long for a place of equanimity, where nothing can easily attach itself
to what feels like permanently me. Choosing “now,” is likely all there is.

And suspecting that at least half of this feels like some kind of paradox, 
I must first choose “yes,” and then at the same time “no,” as is needed.

–Dale Biron