15 Saturday Feb 2020
A box marked EXPLOSIVES
sits beside my front door.
Red paint on wood, hinges on lid;
a trunk for ammunitions
holds my shoes.
Today the light dawns,
it’s time I walk possessing
that kind of power,
reside within what transforms
not through simple destruction
but vast imaginative
Creation–
Stepping forward not one, but two.
03 Sunday Nov 2019
Is it true that time changes?
Not here, but there, not past that imaginary line
but an inch before it.
Waking today brought an altered number
on a clock
yet Sun didn’t hiccup or falter.
Who are we to roll such dice?
Upon opening my eyes today
I’m living out a past pain through new labor.
Which is true–
the old pain, the fresh effort?
November 3 offers lost agonies returned,
a dawning, growing prayer
and broadening recognition of space
expanding into the Grandmotherly arms
of a beckoning,
wrinkled
and rollicking humor.
16 Wednesday Oct 2019
Without a story to tell
who are we but people who have not lived.
Watching children play,
approaching hand in parent’s hand
to a park that is my front yard,
Spirit
is restored.
Sliver by sliver
and dose by dose.
While now there are trees that whisper and swish
in every kind of wind
instead of uninterrupted concrete and destructive voices,
I have the long view
knowing what it is to live between rage and despair.
And I don’t like who it made me.
Sometimes I realize,
when before I could not,
we may become who we do not want to be
simply to return, along the long road,
to who we are.
12 Sunday May 2019
Tension builds
where the incomplete blow
as storm winds
toward completeness.
With worn boots and ragged clothes
after years in the woods
a brightness comes.
What had been too frozen to speak,
let alone move,
imprisoned by experiences of youth,
is warming with daily lighting of the flame.
Who had been silenced
who had been harmed
who survived by freezing in time
and not breathing to avoid giving herself away
is no more a fossil
a casualty
a repetition of a story too old to tell.
With spark, a light in thick darkness,
a new way forward.
Without knowing, or plan, or shape
to follow,
entry into another world–
full capacity–
at the Crossroads.
09 Thursday May 2019
Wild rose
has begun her bloom once again
held safely within bower of thorn and halo
of virile and lustrous poison oak.
She reaches toward fullness,
touched by bee and blue,
balanced in sun and flickering shadow.
We, too, grow into bloom,
toward heaviness of fruit
and bounty of seed for generations to come.
All in time,
all in good time.
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.
06 Saturday Oct 2018
A phoebe sings now
from the next rooftop,
pumpkins are stacked upon hay bales,
and sunrise lights the sky in spreading fires.
At last, moments between tourists lengthen
and first drops of rain rise earth scents up,
up, around, and beyond.
Sleeping things wake, traveling ones return,
the cold sneaks back in cover of night.
More stars will be visiting
with the approaching new moon.
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.
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?
08 Wednesday Aug 2018
August,
the light casts red.
Dry season wilt and crunch, yellow
becoming brown,
and hungry fires chew acres
to miles
of hillside and range.
Fire’s satiation point moves further out
each passing year
as our own deafness to species and spaces
beyond our own grows.
Dim the constant noise of phone, computer,
bottom line, app and sale-
play a role smarter than consumer-
and how life continues from here may
be more inclusive, open, mindful
and naturally sweet.
The fires have much to say.
Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone 