28 Tuesday Feb 2023
How do we tender the fire,
walk the line,
embody a waking spectrum of both
the violence within–that murderous rage–
and the sacred Spirit we carry?
How do we live between
the harm we are capable of and
the goodness of our natural being?
Until each of us faces that living death,
cashes in the chips of our denial,
we humans will continue to destroy one another,
our earthen home,
and ourselves.
Let’s rise to the task.
We have, perhaps, no better work to do.
18 Saturday Feb 2023
This valley
has a strange hold on me.
Through flourishing, violent uprisings,
bloody defeats,
this ancient soil fruits a people belonging,
unmoving, and struggling
cavernously.
I’ve been transplanted, migratorily bound,
the next move both imminent and unimaginable.
Time is ridiculous–
when that change comes
and twists me from these mountains’ grip,
it could be Thursday,
or next millennia.
A loosening grip
and a thunderous push to be here,
beautifully unexamined,
saddles beneath me.
I must ride.
Discomfort undertows us to
get
over
ourselves.
12 Sunday Feb 2023
Movement of a bone.
Suddenly.
A gate I never thought I’d walk through
swings open–
access to land traversed by others
but never by me
spreads wide and borderless.
Vast, a savannah,
broad, an ocean,
hidden, intricate, bold–
a cave, universe of a moss, storm cloud.
Speechless, held still and utterly restless,
I do not know what emergence now includes me
but this smile keeps flashing across my teary face.
06 Monday Feb 2023
Eagles have been visiting.
One Golden.
One Bald.
Their flight cups the sky in feathers,
wings like hills undulating in earthquake–
broad, liquid, generous,
a strength and self-possession of mountains.
Excitement, a sparkling water spring,
surfaces with their arrival.
Lifting my eyes to greet them,
my heart fills,
and I lower forehead to Earth.
06 Monday Feb 2023
Mud’s come
but you wouldn’t know it
until your foot is three inches deep.
Or, god forbid, your tire by far more.
That’s the thing about this place–
dry as the brown cracked skin lining the arroyos
but a certain season arrives
and the steady, hard, rocky road you’ve trusted
decides to gulp you and whatever force is moving you along
straight into its earthen gullet.
I can understand that kind of gluttony.
Maybe it’s best I slow down and prison-break my shoe.
04 Saturday Feb 2023
A note to any who would like to follow Salt, Smoke, and Stone,
and to the many who already do
{A gracious hello to you.}.
Today is a significant day–
No more ads.
Phew.
And yay!
So. Cheers to this renewal of an invitation,
an invitation to join in relationship with the words
and alllll that underlies them;
more is now possible.
03 Friday Feb 2023
Tyranny over self,
Tyranny over body,
Tyranny over the Land.
Carve mountainsides, slash prairies, pollute valleys, hate,
hate and control, cellulite, humps, wrinkles, and jiggles.
Hide and hate, turn upon the landscape inner,
the landscape outer–
one and the same.
Within this domination resides
everlasting distraction from the rhythmic pulsing
of our own heart’s rivers.
In service to the status quo.
As Earth’s waters are Life,
our blood is Life.
Break the shaming silence–the waterways know
to indulge their curves, bumps, and depths
singing praises through movement,
of tree roots, reflected sky, grating rocks
and wriggling fish.
We have only so long to celebrate and dance
our one beloved Body:
Skip the contempt useful to maintaining outdated ways.
Jump straight into dark waters full
of more Beauty than any one lifetime can hold.
Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone 