23 Sunday Apr 2023
Author Archives: feralpoet
With one slow turn of the head
21 Friday Apr 2023
With one slow turn of the head
eyes sift softly through glass and
who should appear but the swallows;
The swallows are back,
zipping and gliding and making mirth–
they are the mirth-makers–
and my heart goes lightly, up and out
with them.
They emerge from a crack in the world,
from beyond there to right here.
How lovely to be with them again.
Together, as sun says goodbye this evening,
we will cut the sky.
We will cut silent sky,
and pull down a net of stars
to sprinkle dreaming
across a blooming desert night.
Enough
20 Thursday Apr 2023
Troubled by this cultural grab for legacy
that older people writing books and making speeches and
facing death
fixate upon,
the strange ego javelin
aimed towards making a lasting mark–
with their initials starkly upon it–
I pull my head out of my own ass and look
at a simple and wondrous case in point,
the early spring burst of a small crabapple tree:
With first new leaves gathering food of the sun,
and deep pink buds tucked between pale open blooms
offering food to the bees in pollination’s blessed exchange,
not a cell in that tree requires recognition
or hungers in desperation to be remembered
once it’s gone.
She is born, feeds, is fed, shelters, shades, and grows,
creates new life, diminishes, and becomes earth.
That is thanks enough,
perfection enough,
selfness enough.
Enough.
Like songs of sparrows sputtering in wing flutter
all about the garden,
this gift and given
of spirit to form back to spirit,
in this, how can we forget
no loop of the Divine
could ever
go wrong?
Vultures
15 Saturday Apr 2023
The vultures have returned
from distant winter shelters,
their broad arms now stirring pale spring skies.
Between mesa and hilltop, there’s a valley
and her thighs cradle winds
soul-driven to buoy those dark ones,
to bring them in circles, mixing pollen and dust,
whisking insects far below
to petals low and wide.
The languages spoken meet human ears
only as whistle and snap,
but the Others, they carry conversations
over whole continents.
It can be seen in outstretched wings,
high in leafless cottonwoods,
of vultures at sunrise.
In silence, before the world wakens,
if we stand with the trees,
our bodies hear their words
and join in the call and response,
without thought, instinct recalled.
Medial Woman
14 Friday Apr 2023
Medial Woman,
I place my trust in you
who reweaves the world in vision, web and pearl.
Stars offer themselves to your old and nimble fingers,
music of your silent imagination.
Cradling myself in the timeless,
the wide, stable feet of your journeying,
I pluck feathers from the western wind,
forage in fields, in forests, spanning forever.
There’s not an ocean, in singular swirling,
that together we’ve not swum.
Beneath your gaze, egg-filled nests become visible,
rising springs share their voice
and solace of a kindness of words flows
through your unmoving lips.
I train my ears,
I train my eyes,
I allow the knowing in my hands
to find their joyous, wild and original way.
Flourishing life
11 Tuesday Apr 2023
Surprising
what we cling to
the stuff and ways
that serve us no more.
Time comes
when what must break
will be broken
and the methods once keeping you alive
those now killing you
ask for burial.
Honor them..
No easy terms to dodge.
No simple way out.
Break or be broken.
Give over, give up, give
to the starving one in you
who can no longer live unnourished.
Let die
what must die.
Your flourishing life depends upon it.
The borderlands
11 Tuesday Apr 2023
I live at the borderlands,
between mountain and grassland,
river and sea.
Here, vultures gyre above the hollows, high
as the peaks
in gliding circles,
where death meets light
and darkness greets the sun.
I live the in-between,
not expected, not sane, full
in constant emptying,
I rise as others fall, gather while
the confused lose.
Accompanying all, I am ever ready
to catch the tender hand
finally opened
by life.
I can not be held,
you will never be without me.
In cracks cursed for tripping you up,
that’s my nestling place.
I can not be found where money buys me, nor
in the thing anyone else swears will conjure me–
but my laughter will.
Eventually,
you will feel within
the kindness in those peals
and the years of loss, confusion, pleading
shall mulch the most fertile ground
you could set restful, strong,
willing roots into.
Welcome the borderlands,
for in them I dwell
ungraspable.
The wind is up
09 Sunday Apr 2023
The Wind is up
and her voice big. She sweeps
and dips, grabbing and forcing flee–
her humor boundless as her movements.
She carries tale from far, far away,
distance being her spirit flying,
and your ears are the intended settling place
for the riches of that unique story.
However we have cuffed our own ears after
having them cuffed,
we need remind them gently,
open,
yes, open–
gifts are coming and
we must prepare.
Compared to where I’ve been
08 Saturday Apr 2023
Funnel spider rests in his high hammock,
rain clouds gather
though it could not be more dry,
the sagebrush and last year’s sickle grass whip
in intermittent blasts of wind.
I sit on the brick floor eating sausage,
wet hair blunt after the cut I just gave it,
admiring this spot, its drastic seasonal shift,
and the birds firmly in their nests.
Compared to where I’ve been,
this is a whole other planet.
Thinking back
02 Sunday Apr 2023
Thinking back
to the girl I was, there on the wide plains,
ready as always to be older,
hair blowing about my face, following a draw
where the closest thing to forest resides,
a reach of his hand and the surprising words,
“May I kiss you?,”
my sputtering response, feet scuffing the trail,
eyes searching branches above,
and out in the open,
heat lightning flattening the sky,
clouds larger than the world swallowing it operatically,
endless fields of soy and corn green, green and
silently sick with decades of poison, places I avoid,
the tap water tasting of it,
the children and the cancers, their deaths and
their broken parents moving themselves far
and away,
a new life all that can save them,
the foal walking and just born, and
winter’s remaking, everything a crystalline palace,
inches of ice encasing trees and distant sun
shining through.
I wasn’t a girl then.
But from here, thinking back,
I surely was.
Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone 