30 Thursday Mar 2023
Amaranth blush of silver maple,
grape hyacinth, flowering quince and crocus,
yellows, whites, purples, colors rising
from frosted dirt.
Poetry opens upon the skin of the earth.
How stirrings there
happen here,
within bone and blood.
Forgetting not to look, I see
with soft eyes closed,
unwinding spines of sprout, of vine,
twist toward sunlight.
Fully unbound by thought,
none needs instruction or understanding–
each knows its source and pattern,
with the only timing being right timing.
26 Sunday Mar 2023
You drop
again
into the cavern void of light,
pure dark pressing hard upon you,
vacuuming all air from your lungs, faith
vanishing with the bright world.
Hell changes its mask for each of us.
The cavern has no up, no down, no way to go
but within, where the pantry stands bare as prairie winter.
Possessed by stunting panic, mind swirling nevers and forevers,
begging,
‘Please, no.’
And yet.
Here you are.
If, for even a flash of an instant, you could let a finger
reach out, curious though tense,
to the black walls, sloped floor,
whatever it is actually holding you,
is there earth? Is there scent? What sound?
A blessed thought enters.
Persephone.
You say her name aloud,
more weak exhalation than speech,
‘Persephone.’
She gets pulled down by the heel
into the underworld.
‘Persephone,’ rises your whisper.
And with it, the tiny spark of memory
that she, like you, is always, has always been,
released again at the end of winter,
released again into the birth of spring.
And spring must come.
25 Saturday Mar 2023
Dense snow falls
and covers the streets.
What would it be without them?
Grasses stretching on, herds of deer.
Wolves might return. And bear.
Thick muscled trees poke the sky,
their entangling limbs in dances slow, slow,
slow upon the land.
Ladybugs know it. Ground squirrels, too.
Turn your opened mouth to the clouds
and you can suckle a frozen milk, tender, gentle.
I will walk into the hills where evergreens hug the rise,
letting my feet take me into a whitened hush.
21 Tuesday Mar 2023
Posted in motionless, poems, poetry
≈ Comments Off on Have you stood?
Have you stood
in the center of the street, a crooked five-way intersection,
cars all around,
stop sign only there and there, cars streaming past,
irregular and from blindspots, there and there.
No rest, they just keep coming,
exhaust and tires, drivers, cargo, barking dogs,
more and more.
The sensible thing would be to get out of the street,
the smart choice, the why didn’t you, why wouldn’t you,
don’t just stand there! crowd hissing on.
What isn’t understood,
except in your own panicked heart and frozen feet,
what they will likely never descend to–
far too scary to submit to–
is the bodily acceptance that no sideline, no sidewalk, no aid at all
offers safety
any more than right at the center of oncoming traffic..
not the left, not the right, pick your side of the dial,
that clock position, nothing feels any safer
than where you are
right now
in the middle of oncoming traffic
and somehow,
somehow
that has to be
okay.
And somehow,
somehow
you will be
okay.
17 Friday Mar 2023
The horrible truth, felt,
finally spoken,
worse than death. Many times worse.
Sky fills with vultures, high,
dozens spiraling dozens, circles and circling.
Perhaps nothing so beautiful,
nothing before.
Large, black, some golden with angling sun,
every one of them alive with death,
their carrion feast,
every one of them, all, in flight,
wings extended and eyes bright, alive
in partnership
with Death.
Alive and flying, together, loosely
through sky,
floating and effortless,
in partnership
with Death and Wind.
Effortless.
Flying, floating, free.
And effortless.
15 Wednesday Mar 2023
Yesterday,
I walked the streets through heavy snow,
wet lumps falling
slowly.
From across a large pasture,
a footstool of a goat, wide as long and
well-furred in big bodied apricot eruption,
ran straight to the sparse metal fence in greeting.
I stopped, realized he really was trotting over for me
and broke into laughter.
Excited to make his acquaintance, I squatted down.
He arrived, turned his butt to the fence,
tore large mouthfuls of long grass, chewed in exaggeration
and ignored me completely.
Laughing so hard I nearly fell over, I stayed.
He never did introduce himself.
11 Saturday Mar 2023
People walk the oceanside
with leash in one hand, coffee mug in the other.
Small waves lick the shore, clouds,
in a brief break between storms,
milk water to sky–
horizon barely a line.
Fog clings to the crowns of pines, the shoulders of hills,
mist rising,
sand grits beneath occasional footsteps.
Salt and wetness heavy the air.
Dawn seems to extend the whole morning long.
10 Friday Mar 2023
I drink in a teal grey ocean,
lap after lap of frothing wave, cormorants bobbing.
Rain falls, unstopping,
tree-ripping wind having settled.
Thousands remain without power, businesses are closed,
emergency vehicles and power technicians stand in the roads.
I love my car. She’s keeping me warm, safe, mobile.
Such a strange trip.
How I will face that mountain pass is beyond me.
Adventures are like that.
09 Thursday Mar 2023
I’ve entered a middle place.
Nothing similar, all askew, between there and there–
Here.
From bone-sucking desert dryness
to an active atmospheric river in the West:
A massive dumping of snow approaches
and may freeze me in a fractured state.
And it’s good.
Being taken apart to be remade is soul medicine–
ever becoming means
relinquishing the familiar.
Seems this journey demands long nights’ jarring of a wagon ride,
heavy, unavoidable air of fuel burning,
relentless winds whipping rain in my face.
After an evening arrival,
a grumpiness of wants corroded my vision.
Once heat reached many sore muscles,
I could see the riches surrounding me.
And a first deep sleep in weeks
seeped into thirsty veins
with voices of owl
and a community of frogs singing
a long and generous lullaby.
03 Friday Mar 2023
Posted in approaching, movement, poems, poetry, rebirth
≈ Comments Off on Magpie arrived with a twig
Magpie arrived with a twig in her beak this morning,
pausing on a bare branch of one tree
before taking it to last year’s nest in the spruce.
I guess that nest will be renewed.
And the plumpest ladybug, full of spots,
waddled up a window facing the mountain.
How lucky spring is to have these visitors, and early.
How lucky am I.
Time to take my sun-starved skin outside
and face the quiet with this internal buzz.
The gathering busyness of the season seems already
to have taken hold.
Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone 