Archive
A poem about friends and time: “Back to the Middle”
We had a Sunday lunch with good friends we hadn’t seen in a while. As conversations flowed through our three hours together, it was as if no time had passed at all. Yes, we caught up with experiences and events, but the meaningful words were about community, togetherness; time had no meaning. As Hafez and Bob Sima’s song puts it: “Our hearts are the oldest of friends”!
I think a lot about time. My little story about good friends picking up together as if there had been no time since our last togetherness tells me that time is mostly meaningless; an invention to help us get to appointments on time, but otherwise mostly empty. We are always, if we truly understand this, in the “middle of time” in every precious moment.
Back to the Middle
We measure time through
Many rhythms and cycles,
From the micro-spin of electrons
To the macro-spin of galaxies,
From the beat of a hummingbird’s wings
To the breath of a humpback whale.
Is there a flow to these cycles of time?
Does the arrow of time vector with no end?
The Universe expands, accelerating
Outward to some unmeasurable future.
Is that time’s destiny
Out beyond the stars?
Sun-cycles measure the seasons;
Moon-cycles measure the tides.
Blood-cycles measure a human life;
Breath-cycles measure all life.
Earth-cycles measure evolutionary epochs;
Solar-cycles measure planetary life.
Cycles within cycles, the rhythm of Consciousness.
What is the beat of Mind? The measure of Wisdom?
If time does not flow is it the end?
Consciousness is all there is, beyond reason.
All time is here, now, in this moment.
We always come back to the middle.

©2025 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.
A Mid-January Poem
This “fell out” of my “Morning Pages” today as I considered the day and date. It’s basically just a muse about the “real” meaning of time. Not much substance to it, actually; like a breath!
Mid-week, Mid-Month
Mid-week, mid-month, we seem to have traveled fast!
But time is like that – both expanding and contracting,
Just like the breath.
Looking forward it seems to extend out endlessly
Toward the edge of All, into timelessness.
Looking back it all collapses rapidly in a fading,
Forgotten memory – no time.
With a deep inhale the past catches the present
And the events of before blur into now.
With a deep sighing exhale the future fades as well
Into the ever present now.
With another inhale we expand again,
Poised, ready for what lies ahead –
But holding that breath we wonder:
Are we truly ready?
We hold, poised at the pinnacle just before we step
Into the future, exhaling in a rush
To catch up with ourselves.
Whether we step or pause seems not to matter.
Holding to the center is what we have now.
Hold on tight. Weeks, months: only rotations
Of the Earth about the Sun. Weeks expand to seasons,
Cycles return to the start, endless spinning and revolving
Through the Cosmos to arrive just here.

©2025 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.
A Friday Poem for the New Year: “Locked by the Clock”
Over the holidays I’ve been reading a lot of Rumi, especially “The Soul of Rumi, A New Collection of Ecstatic Poems” translated by Coleman Barks. Many of these poems are ghazals, poems comprised of couplets. In his later published poems, Robert Bly took up this form. I have refrained from writing in this form as the rules are complex. But I don’t necessarily have to follow all the rules to write couplets. And I don’t have to call this poem a ghazal!
At this time of the year I often think about time. Yesterday as I was writing, the title of this poem came to mind. As I began to write it couplets came through. And as the poem developed our trip to the ocean to celebrate our December 15th special day came to mind. So, here is an attempt at a ghazal-like poem to celebrate the New Year and to put the passage of time in proper perspective!
Locked by the Clock
Teaching Qigong I often say:
“Locked knees block Qi.” Energy,
It flows from the earth, through the feet
Into the core of our being. Feel it,
The force of that flow surges
Like the tide lifting the heart. Listen:
The roaring surf, the salt spray
Glistening in the hanging mist, suspended:
The shimmering light of winter’s
Sun. Such times at the shore!
It is easy to float, drifting within the
Tide, not locked by the clock. Free:
No thought, merging with the
Ocean, emerging as One.

©2020, Richard W. Bredeson, all rights reserved.
MONDAY’S POEM: Echoes 3
It’s a dreary Monday here in the Middle Atlantic region, heavy with rain. I found a heavy poem from a series I had written on time (last Monday’s was the first in that series) and how it might operate extra-dimensionally rather than linearly. It is so easy for us in the west to think of time as a unidirectional vector: past as tail, present as shaft, future as arrow point shooting out in a single direction. But what if time is more like a bubble, sometimes expanding, sometimes contracting; what if?
Echoes 3
Echoes need emptiness.
The reverberations of time
Bounce within the hollow bubble
Of now.
Write for the future.
They need your poetry
Out there for some distant when
To exist.
There is no now,
Only the echoes of yesterday
When the world was made new
For all.
Write for the past.
There is no then without these words
Remembering those who remember
For us.
©2014 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.

MONDAY’S POEM: Echoes 1
My newest grandson, Tristan Wallace Bredeson, is here for a visit from California. He is just over three months old now, and beginning to show a delightful personality. He has been just about the most perfect baby I can imagine; he only fusses a little when he is hungry or needs a change! We are having a delightful time with him!
A new generation of Bredesons leads me to the poem today. I wrote it two years ago, but it seems to apply even more as the next generation, the next echo sounds forth. And with my son and grandson with me now, I do catch myself using expressions and words from my past, my parents. Are we learning lessons and moving on to new ones or are we just echoing within the chamber of time? Maybe the answer to this question is “yes”!
Echoes 1
Dad’s voice moved from
My ear to my throat
At breakfast. I heard
Him clearly: A non-sensical
Expression of his.
Mom’s voice jumped out of
My mouth with no thought
Or control behind it. It
Was clear, critical; some
Rule was broken.
Where is my voice? Has it
Been silenced by the tides
Of Time; lost in the returning
Ripples from the
Wall of Beyond?
Is the Wall of Time moving?
Is the sphere expanding?
The already learned lessons
Echo from the cold surface
Teaching, preaching.
Will we ever learn?
©2014 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.

FRIDAY’S POEM FROM “RHYTHMS AND CYCLES” – The Chamber of Time
One of my favorite teachers, Martín Prechtel, is a master of languages, among many things. He teaches that the Tzutujil Mayan language has no verb form of “to be.” This makes it very interesting to speak of the past or future; in fact the Mayan peoples don’t seem to mind this “missing” grammatical component and are quite happy living in the present! Would Western civilization be a bit more content if we stopped using “to be.”
Imagine the possibilities!
With this in mind I riffed off one of Martín’s teachings about living in the middle of time for today’s poem:
The Chamber of Time
What if reality is nothing more
than a huge echo chamber?
Time in this reality is nothing more
than an echo returning.
The Holy, Goddesses, Gods
are nothing more than our
reflection in this chamber.
And we, nothing more than theirs.
To be sure the rhythms, ebb
and flow, dynamic play of
Light and Shadow in this
Hologram are a multidimensional mix.
The chaotic complexity settles
into karmic patterns, polyphonic,
kaleidoscopic interplay of
a multivalence array, to be sure.
And the echoes, like the breath of the
Holy, like our own rhythms,
beats, breaths, reverberate
Through this panoply of reality in time.
©2014 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.

FRIDAY’S POEM FROM “RHYTHMS AND CYCLES” – The Future is Now
Today’s poem is a reprise from a few months ago. It comes to mind as we look toward Rosemary’s Possibilities Playshop next week. In this event we use our intuitive skills to “plan forward” toward our “bodacious wish” for the future. How does the future and all our planning (we in the west or so good about planning!) relate to the practice of being present, living now? This poem gets at that cycle and enigma of time.
The Future is Now
If the future is now
Dreams are now.
This is Dream Time.
And is the past now?
Forgiveness is now.
This is the lesson.
Now is only now,
Past time, Dream Time,
All one now.
©2014 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.

PS: If you are in the vicinity of Annapolis, Maryland, check out the Playshop opportunity: Here’s the Link
A FRIDAY POEM FROM RHYTHMS AND CYCLES – “The Future is Now”
Rosemary’s Exploration, posted today on her blog (look for it here next Wednesday), is about choice, about choosing our family, our life, our Truth. It’s about rewriting our stories the way we want them to be lived and told.
I came across this poem before I read her article; they seem to go together. All time is NOW. When we live in the present every moment is a moment of our choosing. Dream into your own reality!
The Future is Now
If the future is now
Dreams are now.
This is Dream Time.
And is the past now?
Forgiveness is now.
This is the lesson.
Now is only now,
Past time, Dream Time,
All one now.
©2014 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.



