30 Tuesday Oct 2018
The knots in the wood strong
hands might try
to force flat and out,
erase..
impossible.
The tree has earned those twists and kinks,
hardened, toughened grooves and bubbles,
bulged eyes skilled at a different sight.
Gentle the hand given access
to the yearning, sorrowed places-
they are not to be fixed.
10 Wednesday Oct 2018
Scars
attest to bridges crossed battling dragons,
to threatening rivers entered
that pushed at knees, sucked at ankles.
To deep mountaintop scree, ragged, sharp and steep where
falling
meant death and dismemberment.
We were there,
we know,
we learned.
Yours lay upon your body
differently
than mine;
equally, they shape us.
Scars pulse out of step with the rest.
Each must be attended to,
honored,
for what they give,
for what they gave up.
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.
06 Thursday Sep 2018
Where salt meets sweet,
I sing to the waters.
Where sand holds wave, pelicans slap
great wings,
and solitary duck pops up from below
in a stilled bowl
waiting for winter,
I sing
and Wind joins in,
riffling the surface, ripples reaching
in patterns hypnotic and old.
Sing to the waters,
their reply waits for your greeting among reeds,
rushes, fishes and stone.
01 Saturday Sep 2018
Where are the Grandmothers?
With family torn, history unknown, stories never uttered,
lineage not spoken,
where are we?
We become dangling dolls, feet like bell clappers,
swaying this way and that with no ground
beneath us.
So utter.
Utter.
Utter your questions and longings to the Grandmothers,
the Grandfathers, the Sisters and Brothers who couldn’t grow up,
the sharers and protectors from the other side where
viewing carries a different, sideways, deeper,
beyond kind of knowing.
Stir the waters you can not see,
the current carrying you, and ask.
Ask.
Ask and the formations for you to hold and gaze at
reminding you of the support in the surround
can shape, at last, in the wet red clay
held by your praying hands-
Grandmothers, Come to me…
28 Tuesday Aug 2018
In the cross-hatch seat of the chair
wooden, dusted in time and use,
a cat
curled
and sleeping.
Looking over at her, floor boards below and sun
reaching through a far window,
doubt can not waver the sweetness
of a morning with feline, coffee, a book
and silence rising from the woods outside.
26 Sunday Aug 2018
If a push,
somewhere a pull.
Where taken,
pray it has been given.
The Western sense of community..
in itself a paradox?
We’re part–everyone–of centuries of history
cycling, tumbling, molasses-thick onward
with nanosecond “advances.”
No mystery that you, and you, and I
can not seem to catch our breath.
Faster is not forward,
as bigger not better, nor more money success.
Where lies the soul stuff making life
Life?
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.
31 Tuesday Jul 2018
This day he walks slowly,
approaching in nearly a shuffle.
Handing me a candy- the kind once known as penny-
saying, this aging stuff, not so easy.
I used to think, he shares with a soft shake of his head,
I could stay a perpetual teenager. But not so.
His health, not good,
the poetry, music and culture
having always fed him
no longer enough.
Or so it seems to him, on this day.
Clutching a small handled paper bag, one somehow
always carried,
he steps away, looking emptily into distance
not physically there,
leaving me with a golden,
foil covered chocolate coin never to be eaten
and an appreciation for his difficult facing
of what he long imagined
could be outrun.
31 Tuesday Jul 2018
Where is your Beauty?
Surely not
in the new shoes, fresh haircut,
expensive manufactured perfume or
endless product
product
product
pushed, hawked, manipulated into your brain
tinkering with insecurities secret and unspoken.
Your Beauty,
your Beauty! exists. Period. No one sells it to you,
convinces you of it, holds it over you, or
wants you solely because of it-
that sort is no kin of Beauty, but mere poison.
The posh tie, synthetic cologne, hippest beard or band-
they’ll not birth Beauty either.
No mask is She. Neither bought nor sold,
She is spark, and giggle, dance step and honest stumble.
She is inspiration,
your in-spiring moment to moment.
Nurture these and Beauty rises, rises,
a river filling thirsty banks longing
to sing her praises.
Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone 