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Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone

Author Archives: feralpoet

Border dancer

02 Tuesday Jan 2018

Posted by feralpoet in abundance, Infinite, mystery, poems, poetry, vision, wonder

≈ Comments Off on Border dancer

Are you a border dancer,

never wanting fully to be here and

forever a passionate sliver of now,

sipping the drops, and drinking the deluge,

wondering what place you actually occupy?

It’s a slippery stick

meant for the ripeness of the forest floor,

unintended for adolescent hands.

What feeds does not come from you-

one so easily confused, acting comically small and guilty.

Real nourishment soaks in with time and respect

from Beyond-

origin of nectar and mystery, the breast milk

of endowed life in service to the Gods.

Leave the stick to its mushroom duff

where growth and decay follow ancient rhythms.

Dance there,

the place unnameable, infinitely creative,

and belonging to no one.

Underground wiggle

31 Sunday Dec 2017

Posted by feralpoet in movement, poems, poetry, transition, welcoming

≈ Comments Off on Underground wiggle

An underground wiggle,

earthworm-sized, easily missed,

and loud enough to wake ears primed

for uncivilized silence, whispers

in the last hours

of a year angling for its restful grave.

Without words,

the new year spreads vital language

through gritty, and fungal layers.

A hibernating, loved and longed for

movement in recent seasons

promises to return-

and the buzzing, flavorful potency builds.

Halfway through

10 Sunday Dec 2017

Posted by feralpoet in aging, becoming, change, devotion, Expanse, poems, poetry, story, the road, wonder

≈ Comments Off on Halfway through

And what if it turns out,

or turns in or turns about,

that you find yourself starting over

-o-v-e-r-

at roughly (obscurely) halfway through

-as best you can tell-

the life you’ve been given?

Did you miss something along the way?

A flowering path, a waterfall dive, a hollow

to watch stars fall?

A tricky switchback, a higher climb, a conversation

with a person you ignored

(or whose shoes you noticed but whose words you never met)?

The questions fill every available basket.

Meanwhile.

An unobscured landscape has poured itself out

before you.

Maybe there,

there is the place to begin.

A lopsided egg of a moon

07 Thursday Dec 2017

Posted by feralpoet in abundance, adventure, change, discomfort, dreams, light, nature, poems, poetry, transition

≈ 3 Comments

A lopsided egg of a moon

invited me into sleep

even after shutting the curtain against her light.

She stirred wakefulness,

and a sloshing fancy of dreams,

dreams of time travel and remembered people,

an upsurge of unknown futures and staccatos of history.

New land, an unwritten life, and no one to catch me

disturbs digestion,

but moments come when slow, long-distance swell

breaks overhead,

washing my shoulders, sucking at my ankles,

shifting immense vulnerability to a salty, and fresh excitement.

Ghosts

26 Sunday Nov 2017

Posted by feralpoet in devotion, learning, light, poems, poetry, vision, work

≈ Comments Off on Ghosts

If the light in you diminishes, wanes,

withers,

and you become a shrunken version of yourself,

be sure of this-

Ghosts are feeding.

If confidence gets tugged into the nearest pit,

and mockery replaces spark-

cynicism having leaked its silent poison into your veins-

ask not what is wrong with you

(a honed Ghost hunting tactic)

but sharpen those warrior skills to track,

sight,

and disarm the immaterial and deadly specters.

You can start by slapping a sign

on the inside of the front door saying,

Ghosts, piss off!,

while laughing at their familiar, but fruitless, methods.

If you need more time

23 Thursday Nov 2017

Posted by feralpoet in becoming, change, discomfort, learning, listen, Music, mystery, nature, poems, poetry, story, strength, vision, welcoming, work

≈ Comments Off on If you need more time

If you need more time

for the new birds to find you,

take more walks with your awkward, fledgling self.

Squawking and flight, a generous song now and again,

will always surround you.

Being the only of a kind in a place

opens more relationships than you might think, while

flavor of faith develops

with your stronger listening ears.

It is needed as you continue, seeing ahead

and noticing the talon prints you’ve left behind.

Human walking

21 Tuesday Nov 2017

Posted by feralpoet in becoming, family, honoring, learning, listen, nature, poems, poetry, story, the road, weaving, work

≈ Comments Off on Human walking

Born from uninitiated folk,

as most Westerners are,

creates holes in knowing that let icy winds enter.

Weaving oneself back together requires attention,

a briny commitment, earthly,

sight of an old fist-width rope tying the now to a millennia of then:

the family line.

Mostly invisible shoulders carry

the wobbling essential unformed

human walking known as you.

Start asking questions.

Hunger

20 Monday Nov 2017

Posted by feralpoet in becoming, devotion, learning, mystery, poems, poetry, presence, vision, welcoming, wonder, work

≈ 2 Comments

Wanting to know what satisfies

an ancient hunger you’re not even certain is yours,

countless streets, endless questions,

bottomless pans, and tears of frustration

over a lifetime

have added up to a hillock of humus,

dark, fertile, and remembered.

The sought after whatsit, the toil of time and love,

may or may not ever amble up to you,

paws dirty with devotion.

The wanting filling your carved out places,

a blue, swirling smoke scented from the beyond,

is itself required elixir

drawing you deeper into life.

Cursing that desire away, and aimlessly trying to fulfill it

means trading your own gold for dull, already forgotten tin.

Feather etchings

17 Friday Nov 2017

Posted by feralpoet in aging, beauty, becoming, change, death, devotion, freedom, honoring, mystery, nature, poems, poetry, the road

≈ Comments Off on Feather etchings

Feather etchings of wrinkles,

our tributaries of experience, deepen

towards more

not less.

Must we forget what the soul always knows,

that appearance is not worth

and youth is not to be strived for

but grown beyond?

Instead of living seventy years

as wobbly egos forever hungry and

needing to be bolstered,

we can throw our arms, like thick-barked tree limbs,

around death,

our constant friend teaching us

the riches of storied contours and

what it is to truly live.

Re-weave

16 Thursday Nov 2017

Posted by feralpoet in abundance, adventure, beauty, becoming, devotion, honoring, listen, Love, loving, movement, night, poems, poetry, receiving, release, weaving

≈ Comments Off on Re-weave

Maybe it feels like standing forever in a head-high river current,

yearning.

Yet, igniting moments drop the belly

and lurch steps-

songs jump into hiccups, the nights being

so long.

And the syrup drip into sinews brought about by

–fill in the blank here–

well, if that thing, that other

is not what it’s really about,

what more enticing invitation could possibly surface

asking you

to re-weave yourself

into God?

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