30 Tuesday May 2023
Posted in generations, heart, poems, poetry, young
≈ Comments Off on Stand by
The bursting, buried heart of a young one standing
beside you
and the rhythm in your chest syncopates with theirs.
Tears and understanding stir
yet none but listening
and presence
can be true offering,
if even that.
Their northstar guides them, thick and heavy
as the overgrown path may be.
Stand with them
at whatever distance.
Sentinels have always been needed.
The magnetic pull of all who’ve navigated
through murk and darkness
is timeless.
Stand by.
27 Saturday May 2023
Posted in abundance, approaching, change, history, honoring, movement, poems, poetry, transition, violence
≈ Comments Off on These are the last days
These are the last days
of watching the valley open slowly
her soft green eyes,
of waiting for jackrabbit to come for breakfast,
of the coyote pack ushering in each full moon
with choral rhapsodies,
of tarantula pilgrims crossing the sagebrush mesa.
These are the last days of grit and clay dust flying
through any open window,
last of the sheriffs far more dangerous than the criminals,
of dried chiles and turquoise sky
against pink hills,
of churches holding centuries of prayer deep
in adobe walls,
of a boiling pot of cultural conflict
passed generation to generation to generation
onward making anyone arriving
within their own lifetime
a tourist.
Listen to the wildflowers and thunder, though,
and it becomes obvious–
they don’t care about endless strife.
They celebrate life and sing upward to our supportive sun.
These are the last days preceeding
the very first…
24 Wednesday May 2023
Walking along
a smile comes easily.
The air smells green–
that much rain has fallen.
Crimson buds fill out on prickly pears
as beetles stack in consummation
and the crickets serenade.
Even the light feels pregnant this afternoon.
23 Tuesday May 2023
Listening to sparse raindrops slowly
hit the glass.
Through the windshield
a mountain rises still touched by snow.
In the field,
no prairie dogs bark from rounded rim,
staying instead
firmly below ground.
Thunder sounds from above,
walls of the adobes drip widely,
roof edges like spilled paint cans.
One sparrow’s unafraid of the movements
and sings from a line
as lightning sparks to the west.
18 Thursday May 2023
She sits in her corner, turning page
after paper page…
Held by two walls, floor and wood ceiling,
she removes herself
from still more broken connection.
Out there, nothing but loss.
In here, with pictures and stories, friends and
a giving, participatory world.
With father gone for work, back for dinner,
home only for irritation, judgment and sleep,
With mother avoiding pain through worry,
busyness and food,
anger unthinkable,
The girl is left knowing–
beyond the material,
she’s on her own.
Books act as balm
until, later, distance and exploration
return her to the early grief
of being alone
surrounded by people.
The nectar soothes her broken heart,
tear by reclaimed tear.
16 Tuesday May 2023
Enter the back field,
forgotten field,
the ignored place,
avoided place,
and wait.
In that expanse,
glacially, co-arising finds faces
to show you.
As knocking starts,
though there are no walls,
no door,
trust who comes…
Way out there on the dirt
created by every death ever,
soon enough including your own,
while it feeds infinite Life,
a quaking begins in your heart,
echoes of the pulsing earth upon which
you stand.
Do not run.
Throw off your shoes, find your feet,
let the soles of you do the listening.
As the countless losses
that have brought you to this moment
wash through, over and around you,
within those faces being shown,
greater understanding dawns–
eventually.
And though the grief you’ve held away,
both knowingly and not,
feels like it will do you in as, finally,
you agree to do more than encounter
this abiding friend,
how concrete and personal it all has seemed
now shimmers,
quivers,
like water,
like air,
and its permanence–never real–dissolves.
Traces remain,
beauty of fossils, of exoskeletons,
and strength to take another breath
is given,
not simply found.
Lightness accompanies darkness
in their timeless marriage
consciously
once again.
12 Friday May 2023
Sweep the threshold,
unlock the door,
put the busyness away–
what comes is far
too important.
Build a fire,
quiet the house,
all your sensing is required.
Hear the hoof beats?
The full horse breaths?
Mice may scratch in the walls,
spiders rattle the roof,
you’ve nothing to do
but be home.
Movements beneath your skin,
flashes of thought,
quickening heart,
allow them.
This is a welcoming.
You don’t know who approaches
only that they must.
Freedom blooms
as we set
a place for everything.
What you carry in your blood
has voice–
Let her sing.
Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone 