• About

Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone

~ a wild and sacred journey

Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone

Monthly Archives: September 2015

Return

30 Wednesday Sep 2015

Posted by feralpoet in abundance, becoming, courage, devotion, emotion, freedom, learning, poems, poetry, presence, release, the road, work

≈ Comments Off on Return

For those running running,

forget holding onto your hat-

that which has you trying to flee,

with its tangles and barbs and gashes and claws,

can outrun you

and knows every shortcut

to come out ahead

again

and again and again..

Face what you plead with silently

to go away

Return return

Hold onto your heart instead.

That intricate webbing of blood coursing its way

through all of you,

into toes, and eyelids, and knees.

Your heart, you,

the one constant partner-

wrap tender fingers around the unwanted.

For those working through terror,

For those tending to their rage,

For those who turn, who return-

Your life is yours.

Now

29 Tuesday Sep 2015

Posted by feralpoet in becoming, courage, dark, death, learning, movement, poems, poetry, release, strength, the road

≈ Comments Off on Now

Flames approach,

lick your heels,

singe your hair…

Now isn’t the time to run.

Turn-

Enter the fire.

After all

28 Monday Sep 2015

Posted by feralpoet in beauty, courage, listen, peace, poems, poetry, presence, Sight

≈ Comments Off on After all

Look.

Beauty,

she encircles you,

informs and

works through you.

Forgetting,

while wringing hands and fighting lonely tears,

that you are in relationship

with every stone you stumble on in chance meeting,

the dusty path that hugs your shoes,

the doves sweeping low overhead,

the desk that absorbs each press of your pen,

the books whose pages capture your breath,

the ceiling that gathers searching late-night stares,

the chipped cup,

its divot a place your tongue seeks,

socks he wore, but just the once,

a scarf she knit you, knowing full-well your love of the yarn,

and the animal responsible for it,

that patch on your shin that showed up, what, a decade ago now?,

let alone the scratch on the car that saved your life..

Forgetting builds a wasteland.

Come.

Sit.

Look around you.

We are, after all,

in this together.

Talking with stones

27 Sunday Sep 2015

Posted by feralpoet in abundance, listen, movement, nature, poems, poetry, presence, receiving

≈ Comments Off on Talking with stones

Talking with stones,,

Orb weaver builds ladders to the sky,

Screeching hawk tells me where I am,

and Vulture lands

large

to roost in his pine..

Still stones speak–

      I will build you a home

                   here

        every time you ask.

For what it’s worth

19 Saturday Sep 2015

Posted by feralpoet in abundance, beauty, courage, freedom, joy, nature, poems, poetry, receiving, release

≈ Comments Off on For what it’s worth

Beneath skins and fur

I too rest in beauty

Let not a hand touch me

and still

I smile

For what it’s worth-

which, in a blink, may stack higher

than last year’s wages-

there is no fading value,

nor lost horizons

Forever always reaches towards us..

In a crisp pink angle of morning light

my heart is yours.

In shadow

18 Friday Sep 2015

Posted by feralpoet in abundance, dark, movement, night, poems, poetry, presence, receiving, wonder

≈ Comments Off on In shadow

Cold coffee

Footfalls in the dark

Walking nose into web

The scurry

A mosaic

Labyrinth allows both

Entry and Exit

and maybe only one

My hand is warm

It will find your shivering skin

Bring fire to blackness you fear 

Being alone is part of the mystery

Finding each other in shadow

A turn of the veil.

Turning the corner

18 Friday Sep 2015

Posted by feralpoet in becoming, courage, dark, death, discomfort, Inspire, joy, learning, movement, poems, poetry, transition

≈ Comments Off on Turning the corner

Turning the corner,

two winds blow.

The old blasts my back,

picking up tacks and sharp-edged photographs 

along its path.

Those shes are afraid to let me go. 

Losing habits,

the groove-cut ways,

riles folks.

The wind in my face,

cold, fresh,

hasn’t yet warmed with the bodies of the unmet,

invites like a new swimming channel

whose water is clear, dark,

hugging smooth stone,

knowing well the course and direction

in which it takes me.

Turning the corner

dances my hair on end,

and has me falling forward

into invisible arms I must trust

to catch me.

Sunrise laughter

13 Sunday Sep 2015

Posted by feralpoet in abundance, aging, beauty, becoming, learning, movement, poems, poetry, quotations, the road

≈ Comments Off on Sunrise laughter

A sacred hunger grows

and tonight can’t possibly be the right time

to feed it,

but wine and the Hammond organ 

sure carve paths through

this wicked churchyard of a settlement.

Knock on my door in the morning,

my sight won’t be so cloudy

with delicious nostalgia,

and what sorrow erases clear vision

will lighten

with sunrise laughter.

All that is

13 Sunday Sep 2015

Posted by feralpoet in abundance, craving, dark, discomfort, movement, poems, poetry, release

≈ Comments Off on All that is

In the company of ghosts,

today moves not with breath

but dark memory,

heavy and present.

I may call

to ask if you’re there.

Placing my hand on your chest

to feel the warmth of skin

and the play of caring blood

would remind me that what was

is not all that is.

A painting of night

12 Saturday Sep 2015

Posted by feralpoet in aging, beauty, becoming, dark, death, devotion, family, learning, listen, movement, night, poems, poetry, receiving, release, vision, wonder, work

≈ Comments Off on A painting of night

While hands rest on sink edge
and skin drips above dirty bowls,
eyes see wall and window and trees in view
of an idea
who drops in,
pulls as much space
as a full day gathers snow,
and says,

Your wound is their wound is a wound
far-reaching with cold, gnarled underground fingers.
Hold the hand you fear,
befriend the dead. 
Bring here of the gifts
your people await release.
Possess the expanse
and embody the unspoken…

Hearing the music of you
in a flooding of my entirety,
more life rises in death
than even a painting of night
could dream.

← Older posts

Subscribe

  • Entries (RSS)
  • Comments (RSS)

Archives

  • November 2025
  • October 2025
  • September 2025
  • August 2025
  • July 2025
  • June 2025
  • May 2025
  • April 2025
  • March 2025
  • February 2025
  • January 2025
  • November 2024
  • October 2024
  • September 2024
  • August 2024
  • July 2024
  • June 2024
  • May 2024
  • March 2024
  • February 2024
  • December 2023
  • November 2023
  • August 2023
  • July 2023
  • June 2023
  • May 2023
  • April 2023
  • March 2023
  • February 2023
  • January 2023
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • March 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • June 2020
  • April 2020
  • February 2020
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • December 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • July 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014

Categories

  • About
  • abundance
  • adventure
  • aging
  • ancestors
  • anger
  • approaching
  • Autumn
  • Awareness
  • beauty
  • becoming
  • Body
  • break out
  • change
  • community
  • companion
  • confusion
  • connection
  • continuance
  • courage
  • crafting
  • craving
  • Creating
  • creation
  • dance
  • dark
  • daughter
  • death
  • Deliverance
  • departing
  • devotion
  • digging
  • discomfort
  • dissolution
  • distance
  • dread
  • dreaming
  • dreams
  • Earth
  • Elements
  • emotion
  • endings
  • eternal
  • Expanse
  • family
  • father
  • fear
  • fearlessness
  • fertile
  • Fire
  • flight
  • flood
  • food
  • Found
  • freedom
  • friends
  • generations
  • ghosts
  • giving
  • global
  • grace
  • gratitude
  • grief
  • growing
  • Healing
  • heart
  • history
  • home
  • honoring
  • Hope
  • human
  • Immortal
  • Infinite
  • Inspire
  • instinct
  • joy
  • land
  • language
  • laughter
  • learning
  • leaving
  • liberation
  • Life
  • light
  • listen
  • Loss
  • lost
  • Love
  • lovers
  • loving
  • medicine
  • monsoon
  • mother
  • motion
  • motionless
  • movement
  • mundane
  • Music
  • mystery
  • naked
  • names
  • nature
  • new
  • night
  • of sorts
  • offering
  • Opening
  • pain
  • peace
  • photos
  • play
  • poems
  • poetry
  • Power
  • prayer
  • presence
  • question
  • questions
  • quotations
  • rage
  • rain
  • ramblings
  • rebirth
  • receiving
  • release
  • return
  • ride
  • roughness
  • Run
  • Season
  • seasons
  • shame
  • Sight
  • silence
  • slow
  • snow
  • song
  • sound
  • spring
  • still
  • stillness
  • storm
  • story
  • strength
  • Summer
  • tea
  • thanks
  • the road
  • time
  • transformation
  • transition
  • travel
  • traveling
  • Uncategorized
  • undone
  • unlearning
  • violence
  • vision
  • visit
  • void
  • waking
  • walking
  • water
  • weaving
  • welcoming
  • wind
  • woman
  • wonder
  • words
  • work
  • world
  • young

Meta

  • Create account
  • Log in

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Subscribe Subscribed
    • Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone
    • Join 429 other subscribers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone
    • Subscribe Subscribed
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar