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
Eagles have been visiting.
One Golden.
One Bald.
Their flight cups the sky in feathers,
wings like hills undulating in earthquake–
broad, liquid, generous,
a strength and self-possession of mountains.
Excitement, a sparkling water spring,
surfaces with their arrival.
Lifting my eyes to greet them,
my heart fills,
and I lower forehead to Earth.
15 Tuesday Nov 2022
Posted in approaching, night, poems, poetry
≈ Comments Off on Edge of the storm
Blue spruce holds in her generous arms
the whipped cream snow junco ushered in
two nights ago.
In deep dark came his hooded head
and spread wings at the window glass.
As the wind changed, from still
to sweeping, he danced from the blackness
all flutter, gentle and strong,
up the door pane, over to full window beside
and back again.
Back, forth, up, down,
when do songbirds ever enter the night and dance?
Here, at the front edge of the storm,
he arrived, to sit
finally on the low lip of the door frame
and look in with yellow-orange beak
and open breast.
After his hilly flitting away
the snow began falling.
And I smile at the generous arms of the blue spruce
who perches the birds every day.
20 Thursday Oct 2022
Posted in approaching, beauty, poems, poetry, return
≈ Comments Off on Singing through dawn
Coyote’s been singing through dawn,
calling sun back
from behind the mountain with quivering jaw.
She sounds young,
experimenting with her prowess.
Golden locust leaves hang silently, cold,
awaiting their restful drop.
The pale grasses sing too,
while sagebrush sustains Earth’s bass notes.
Turning of a new day can hold us,
more steadily than any mother..
we need only remember.
13 Thursday Oct 2022
Day rises over mountains here,
between spiderweb strands and curved grass heads,
each breeze taking
more leaves toward winter.
Autumn is abrupt,
a visitor with next stop clearly on the books.
How can time be slowed when it feels gulped?
Sleep is a banging need
while what must be done must be done.
Soon, a long deep breath,
soon, soon
before the first snows…
01 Thursday Sep 2022
Apples are falling from their trees
spreading sweetness to the ants and the air.
I keep wishing for a horse to feed them to as we walk along.
Skunk fans her tail at my approach
and waddles into the weeds through a living cave of stem and leaf.
Sun holds to the distant side of the mountain
but warmth and light are rising.
Laughing as I scuff along, there’s coyote–
she’s wandered into the domestic zone
to sniff things out, yes, and to stir up every dog
in the neighborhood.
Yip yip and garble bark grff.
The graveyard rests out past the hollyhocks,
walking by each day settles me.
Raw, unpainted crosses, tilted
and cracked.
Rounded mounds of earth, peaceful
and heavy.
Can’t help but smell autumn this morning.
11 Friday Mar 2022
What is to come
with such violence in the world?
Old as existence, violence arises and
falls away, erupts and leaves ash heaps,
sterility, an airlessness that waits,
waits,
waits
until seeds able to withstand–and bring Life–
from extremes
begin anew.
But the cycles can not, will not, alter
until every one of us, each one unto themselves,
can reach the threshold of greeting
the violence with and in
ourselves.
Begin, begin, as those stalwart seeds,
to come consciously into relationship
with the most difficult impulses we humans possess,
one by one by one, together,
let us move into wisdom’s ability
to navigate this earthly realm
beautifully and whole.
26 Wednesday Jan 2022
Posted in approaching, poems, poetry, prayer, presence, transition
≈ Comments Off on Lights are richly set
Ever dismantle a life?
Good lord, it’s a lot of work.
The giving away and selling, shuffling,
sorting, fussing and figuring.
Seems easy. Until you do it.
Then this liquid giggle burbles up
as you find you’d never intended to do
this thing that any spare,
and some not so spare,
time is suddenly dedicated to.
Now, leaning towards a future
you’ve not the faintest whiff of a clue about
as it pulls onward,
you stumble spin, slowly, staring out
in all directions,
including the one that’s got you in its tractor beam..
Zzzzzorp.
Dismantle, dismantle,
ditch this, heave that, pawn that,
huddle at this memory’s blast radius,
shake off the hold of that stubborn monkey,
you know–getting on with it,
despite the maniacal grip of safety,
security, and the other obsessions of mind:
Possessing illusions isn’t wealth, I tell ya.
So, here goes, scraping out the last from the burrow,
to leave only pounded earth.
What comes next rests just behind the heavy velvet curtain,
lights are richly set,
the theater hushes in the dark…
29 Friday Oct 2021
A day arrives
during night dreaming
when you come to retrieve a child, an infant
in button-up full-blue onesie,
from a house expecting you
and, upon entry, you recognize the woman
whose house it is. She rises from a room sized table,
oblong, solid, warm and wooden. An enormous shined egg.
Around its edges sit monks, scholars, drummers–
elders all. It feels better than anything you’ve felt
in ages.
She not only welcomes you, while rising,
but asks you to stay.
Come join us.
She says that. . Come. Join us.
Somewhere, slung between infancy and elderhood, you stand,
at times barely, and then holy invitation is spoken,
warmly.
Keep hollowing out the space,
hallowing the place,
where the invitation can finally cross from sleep
into waking.
30 Friday Jul 2021
When was the last time
someone kissed tears from your eyes?
Perhaps never.
Or, maybe, a memory comes of what used to be.
Neither matter, for there is more being asked.
A calling. A welcoming.
Have you ever wished to lower your own lips
to those salty waters?
A writing arrived today about fixing our brokenness.
I armored up at the thought.
How misguided a notion, this fixing. And
truly, how impossible.
Our treasures rest there, pulling us
gently
towards grace.
It’s all in how we approach.
Be kind.
Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone 