Monthly Archives: January 2025

Rain through the night

31 Friday Jan 2025

Posted by in poems, poetry, time

≈ Comments Off on Rain through the night

Rain through the night

and blackening ponderosa bodies rise

in thick, wet sky.

Their darking green, needle plumes and pompons,

shake dripping day.

Lately, a mystery cat laps within the boundaries,

hunting, romping, eating,

skittering away–just enough– at my voice,

her cream color like the stones,

her eyes wide and assessing.

Ice approaches after today’s relative warmth.

What’s already out there is here,

pattern of time a rounding, reason-breaking

all-at-once.

We are all there,

now.

What will be,

is.

Bound

27 Monday Jan 2025

Posted by in learning, poems, poetry

≈ Comments Off on Bound

Bound, and squirming, in the binds

of our own stories.

Brain picks them up, gut tightens and writhes,

unceasing but for moments:

Drop it.

None of this is true.

You are not this.

But the ego likes its house.

Even if the water’s shut off, rafters tilt,

light obscures through unwashed panes.

Repetition of story

and the prison story makes.

Comfortable? No. Familiar? Yes.

Dismantle the house, it is not you.

Brain picks up the story

and You put it back down.

Over, and over, and over, and

over.

Beyond the wire

15 Wednesday Jan 2025

Posted by in Opening, poems, poetry

≈ Comments Off on Beyond the wire

There’s a coyote

who prances for prey, alone,

bushy tail and quick jaws,

out by the downed orchard ladder,

knows

each morning,

to amble by, crosswise, unhooked fence

to closed.

I don’t know where he wanders but

his visits thread the world,

animal to animal,

and my mind follows full marled fur

beyond the wire and through the long field

of thin-armed oaks.

The next meal is plenty to concentrate on

with wide openness,

allure, risk, and slow lichen growing,

a bounty of waiting.

Hour upon hour

04 Saturday Jan 2025

Posted by in poems, poetry, snow

≈ Comments Off on Hour upon hour

Clumps of feather snow drifted heavily down

hour upon hour

and the whole of the visible world softened in white.

A surprise storm cupped the riverland,

suspending life in sweet and requisite slowness.

By late afternoon,

a collective inhale–wind change

and the vanished birds flocked in,

lilting through air, hopping

branch to earth and

back again,

their celebrations begun.

Gave way

03 Friday Jan 2025

Posted by in Deliverance, poems, poetry

≈ Comments Off on Gave way

Frozen beads drop on fallen snow,

an unusual morning music.

Overnight, the roof of the shed

gave way,

resting now on domed forehead of the horno.

Deer turn to stare at my presence.

Ponderosas, no longer white,

burn their reserved green.

Today’s another passing without any humans,

I continue listening.

Mettle

02 Thursday Jan 2025

Posted by in abundance, approaching, beauty, becoming, companion, courage, dark, devotion, discomfort, dreaming, fertile, food, Found, freedom, human, Love, loving, medicine, movement, night, offering, Opening, pain, poems, poetry, prayer, presence, receiving, release, return, storm, water, welcoming, wonder, work

≈ Comments Off on Mettle

Withstand the Void.

Please.

Be upon your own two small feet,

at the edge,

darkness cloud-forming,

ledge a tipping perch.

Night ocean crashes on rock straight below,

the rhythmic waters moon-guided, rich and dangerous.

Call forth in echoless open and

wait,

the wind will snap and take it up.

Let the Void offer

all your fears, inadequacies, foolishness,

rage, grief, shame and sorrows.

Be with them.

Sense their intolerable

movements in your one body–

these are the monsters

you are to marry.

In union, living through and beyond

your exiled, an invitation

to what Beauty is yours deeply,

the gift to be offered back.

Leave no aspect behind–

you are here to love the denied.

Blood needs circulate.

Bones need grow. Air must enter.

Bring the outcasts and castaways under

warmth of your grand cloak.

Allow them refuge of your beating heart.

Welcome the unwanted,

a feast-filled table is set to feed everything

in dawn of this new year.