10 Saturday May 2025
I draw nearer the Unknown.
How can I not,
to be closer to God is this;
Unknown–true Creation.
Not noble or shiny, maybe missing teeth,
limping, dusty and brilliant..
Stay close,
the past can not play out forever,
only mind does that,
read the signs, look for what’s different,
if, at a thought, ice fills your blood
and belly turns sour,
power has been tossed away.
Relax back into change,
those arms wait to hold you,
the generosity of a reliable and beloved friend.
Ride the horse.
30 Monday Sep 2024
Ever make a choice that lands you
smack
in foul waters?
The best made plans…
God continues laughing.
Somewhere down the dusky road
dotted lines passing softly in the rearview
will paint an unexpected picture,
shaking disparate puzzle pieces into place,
the pieces having been siblings from creation.
Keep looking ahead,
the unfurling story behind you,
rugged with color, disturbing in greys,
fuels what is to come.
And there’s no expecting
what that may be . . .
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.
12 Sunday Feb 2023
Movement of a bone.
Suddenly.
A gate I never thought I’d walk through
swings open–
access to land traversed by others
but never by me
spreads wide and borderless.
Vast, a savannah,
broad, an ocean,
hidden, intricate, bold–
a cave, universe of a moss, storm cloud.
Speechless, held still and utterly restless,
I do not know what emergence now includes me
but this smile keeps flashing across my teary face.
06 Monday Feb 2023
Mud’s come
but you wouldn’t know it
until your foot is three inches deep.
Or, god forbid, your tire by far more.
That’s the thing about this place–
dry as the brown cracked skin lining the arroyos
but a certain season arrives
and the steady, hard, rocky road you’ve trusted
decides to gulp you and whatever force is moving you along
straight into its earthen gullet.
I can understand that kind of gluttony.
Maybe it’s best I slow down and prison-break my shoe.
11 Sunday Jul 2021
When you think you are failed,
a shameful gash of a human,
misdirected, twenty years off course
and without a single storyline resembling your own
to take to your dreams, to warm a milk of recognition,
read a poem aloud to the trees.
They lean in, I swear it.
And when waters rise to your eyes
maybe your throat catches on memory
and disorientation fogs your vision,
pick up a stone, full with its permission,
and ask if it would like you to feed it the tears.
Springs of salty waters rainbowed with cares
are precious,
not to be wasted on regret.
There’s a much bigger world beyond the fears
binding you to confusion.
Cry a while with sweet words forming upon moving lips.
Walking a path others have not will wipe you out,
no need for surprise there.
It will also leave you, eventually,
soulfully
in the welcoming arms of Spirit.
And isn’t that always where you’ve wanted to be?
04 Saturday Apr 2020
A man walks beneath black umbrella,
Calla lilies bloom in the rain;
A woman stands at the kitchen window
staring out with soapy hands and sponge,
singing,
“And you look at yourself,
pacing the cage…”
The playground is taped off in yellow tape,
A child speeds home on scooter with no cars in sight,
“All the spells I could sing, it’s as if the thing is written
in the constitution of the age…”
Grass is greening, lungs ache,
and hearts are breaking,
“Sometimes the best map will not guide you…”
Stay strong and bend, be well
We are in this together together together
We are all pacing the cage–
Not alone not alone
As we walk thin line between birth and death
Now and here
Now and here
Together
Not alone
Hold that thin line dear,
Dear,
Hold it dear.
05 Tuesday Mar 2019
If the book leaves you in tears,
consider it a friend.
What can’t salt water wash away?
A central gripping has
kept me off-kilter,
winter storms filling gutters and feeding
blue mold.
In a sense,
nothing is going as planned–
precisely how this melting,
sanding, scuffing and lonesome roll
is meant to go.
As the slow unfurling tightens me into
a speedy withdrawal,
reminders trickle in to soften,
a kitten-stretch of a soft pawed
softening,
when I can.
More friends,
words heaping page upon page,
sit kindly waiting nearby
in a generous pile.
09 Sunday Sep 2018
A new life begins
and the old one decides to throw a tantrum
pulling pans, mid-bubble, off the stove,
pitching a canister of oats across the tile
unscrewing the cap on the honey just enough
to guarantee a disaster the moment it’s needed.
You’re in the muck of it,
the stuck of it,
and an evil grin blooms slightly on your old life’s face
who sits nearly out of sight
helping you to forget its presence
until
you shake your head, bounce dust out of ears,
and spot it there.
No sir! This game, while it has been fun,
is no more.
With a step, a bit of a jig, you leave not only the kitchen
but the house
leaving whatever sticky puddle behind
for the ants to clean up.
01 Wednesday Aug 2018
He slams the door behind him.
You think, Good riddance!
When next your heart stops and breath catches,
out comes a gasp, What have I done?
Melting down, falling to bits, the world goes
from complete sense to non-sense,
and it is on that iceberg of moment
(and each drifting ice island following)
when wondering, Is this true?
might most gather you back together in a form
strong enough,
wise enough
to hold all the sensations and feelings
threatening to tear you to pieces
to be with Now,
an actual fullness of Life
for which you have the grandest capacity.
Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone 