Sign Post

Literally

I’ve always had a sense
I was being given signs.
And for years I wondered
How to be sure which things
That might be signs
Were signs.

I know I’m not alone.
Creative people especially talk about signs
Because we get them a lot.
We’re tuned in.
We’re sensitive.
We see more.
Hear more.
Feeeeeel more.
Have a special kind of radar.
We need it.
See above. #sensitives
And signs help us understand.
Help us navigate.
Around danger.
Towards beauty,
Through stories.

And reading the world
Is crucial.
After all we’re in the business of being signs.
What that movie says about us.
How that book nailed the zeitgeist.
What those paintings reveal about the world.
People try to read the world through what we make.
If we’re lucky

But figuring out which things are just things
And which things are signs
Is its own art form.

My rule:
A sign is loud.
Not always audibly.

It can be loud because it’s
Out of place.

Like a spider
In the woods.
That’s quiet.
Sure. A spider. Moving on.

But a spider in your lingerie drawer?
That’s loud.
And congratulations btw on having lingerie.
And a drawer to put it in.

Or maybe something is loud becuase of its timing.
Like the morning after my mother died
My dad found a butterfly – ok a moth – moth/er?!
Under the covers.
On her side.
That first unbearably lonely morning.
When he was making his bed
That had been theirs
For more than 50 years.
That was the loudest moth ever.

Or maybe something is
Loud by repetition.
11:11
All those ones.
And for some reason you are looking at the clock right then.
All the time now.
Just when you have learned
It might be a sign of the portal opening.
Or angels being nearby.
Or just a sign that there are signs.

The thing about signs
Only you know
What it’s a sign of.

Though sometimes something is loud
And you know it’s a sign
Because it’s so. on. the. nose.

Like when I was moving to the desert
(Long story. Back in LA now.)
I’m in my packed car
Driving east towards the freeway.
In many ways I didn’t want to be moving.
And one of those ways
Was being separated from my yoga studio.
And I start to cry.

I’m not a good enough driver
To drive while crying.
I’m barely a good enough driver
To drive while driving.

So I pull over
And I give myself a talking to.
You’ve been flowing in yoga
Now you are flowing in life.
So flow.
You are a flow-er.
Oh! A flower!
I’d never made that connection before.
And I saw how this difficult time
Was part of blooming.
And I looked up.
And saw I was on Flower Street.
Sometimes a sign is literally a sign.

We get better at reading the signs.
And being the signs.
Sometimes we listen to what the universe is telling us.
Sometimes we tell the universe
What’s in our hearts.
Life is a conversation.
And a poem.

Leave the light on in the dark.
It’s a sign.
Someone is home.