i am the alembic
the lips and the jar
the wishbone
the snake
dancer and dance
primordial breath
the wink
the bend in the bough
the notes that hold the world.
in your reach, my embrace..
within me, you
I am the alembic
12 Saturday Dec 2015
Category Archives: change
Borderlands
04 Friday Dec 2015
Along the borderline,
territory between nowhere and here,
a no-woman’s land.
As the barbed fence you’ve been following
runs out,
wire hanging,
wind and boot crush
contain the remains.
Stop walking.
Look far, gently,
in each sparse direction,
above and below.
A kiss will press your cheek,
hair will lift out of your face.
Even desolation carries Spirit.
Perhaps, especially.
Where the winds blow uninterrupted,
dry sweat into salted white rings,
room for Her grows.
Beneath an open range sky she spreads wings,
hovers,
inspires your scent.
In the borderlands, a map is only hope-
drop it.
You are being breathed-
oh yes, bigger journeys beckon
and instructions no longer apply.
Until now
29 Sunday Nov 2015
A vision may well peek from the crack
with cloudy newborn eyes,,
Step out, sticky, legs wobbling,
sensing whether this environment is ripe
for emergence.
A vision may appear,
reminding you of what’s possible,
then
disappear from whence it came.
Within the steam trail of its memory
and your belly’s pool of tears,
grief
for what could have been
and
a growing relief-
ah!
the nourishment for that dream
couldn’t exist
until now.
Doubt
22 Sunday Nov 2015
Doubt
brings options:
to shrink or
to reach.
Retract into the likes of a hermit crab
and the inside of a shell becomes much
of the known world.
Extend into open space
and the lion that could be out to get you
may now be the elicitation
to explore
an ever-widening landscape
where you track the wild unknown.
As you are
20 Friday Nov 2015
Come
as
you
are.
You may not know
what
to do with you.
Give rest-
Spirit does.
Roller skates & wings
20 Friday Nov 2015
I monkey with words,
try on hats, new songs, clashing cloth,
break the rules, knowingly and not.
Sometimes, roller skates and wings work
with a red feather boa-
unless it’s too long
when snagging it under a wheel
becomes potentially lethal.
Swinging from trees, throwing vowels like bananas,
and whooping it up in the jungle
means
I’m not likely to be invited in for caviar.
No problem,
I’m having too good of a time out here
singing beneath the stars.
Ask them to tea
19 Thursday Nov 2015
Shame is a dark and sticky thing.
A hole we never see.
A bottomless, unnameable void.
It snatches us in the unlit alleys of our minds.
Ghastly,
what it thinks it can make us do-
shrink ourselves to the smallest brittleness
of an undesirable,
worthless,
lifeless
outcast
who cannot get anything right.
Immense power we give to one with no hands,
no face,
not even a nose.
And, how lucky we are
to have the nerve
to turn and look,
to sniff,
to get to know
the lurking bogeymen, the paralyzing Medusas,
behind the fence
and around the bend.
Come, come-
Let us ask them to tea
to learn what it is
they really want.
Into the black pocket
16 Monday Nov 2015
I reach softly into the black pocket,
wrestle with butterflies-
these are prayers
and this is Mary Poppins’ bag.
What arises hasn’t feet
or end
or concrete idea to control comfort.
This is roll of tongue,
whisker of remembrance,
waft of cinnamon from grandma’s kitchen long ago.
Your divinities are found here,
as are everyone’s.
We enter alone,
exit the same,
but billions of hands reach
to hold us in between if
we choose
to let them.
Offering to Asclepius I.
16 Monday Nov 2015
Bathed by cricketsong
in dying light,
tiny apples burst round on the limb.
Fall swoops
like twilight bats
and trails of smoky ritual.
Guided by questions,
a door opens,
letting the irrational and mysterious
walk through.
I offered you rage.
You returned it as fertility.
Thank you.
What might peace look like?
15 Sunday Nov 2015
With blood running
in all our veins,
couldn’t we wonder instead
what we have in common?
We look to the skin, to the beliefs,
to what keeps us apart,
yet
hearts still entrain,
breathing seeks outer rhythms,
laughter lights eyes like the moon above..
Birth, death,
we share the same doorways
for a brief span here
together
on Earth.
What might peace look like
if we search
for what connects us
in the web of creation?
Our time is short,
the effects of war long.
Could we meet on a dark street
unafraid
and mutually glad for the passing
of a stranger?
Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone 