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.
26 Thursday Jul 2018
He
a sheep
like us all
walks, one day,
in a new direction.
Sheep don’t do that,
leave their flock.
In this he becomes a black sheep
turning away from name, money, easy street-
which isn’t so easy.
With him, now, he carries weight
of blame, criticism, and no one bothering to ask
why.
Years, many, pass.
His children grow, not knowing the stories he never told,
seeing him as just another sheep folded into the flock.
They wander for a path of their own.
One, separating from the rest, looks back
wondering
why he never asked why.
06 Friday Jul 2018
The swallow dip of joy,
swift arc and cut through bright sky,
has been on lengthy migration
to lands unnamed.
Yet the time allotted here, however long,
confined in concrete, noise, requirement and excess
may finally break me of this place.
What follows out
of the daily abrasions of adjusting
while not giving everything and nothing away
may open space enough for that swallow
to return truly
home.
26 Tuesday Jun 2018
While sitting in a slurry of nettles and skunk,
a confused mess of fury and grief,
I had to remember,
remember those I know well who will do anything not
to change.
Clenching to what doesn’t grow,
but metastasizes, brings more comfort
than trying it all, somehow, differently.
Yet the questions have yet to be born in them,
and time, with practice, has taught them not to find any stirring
since the familiar is the balm that keeps the abyss
from glistening up and pulling them under and out,
as it is for me now from the slick, hard cornered rock
I seem desperate to hold.
Time and body say, release this faithless fight and self-loathing,
those committed shackles of the past,
and give in, set adrift and enter
what is unimaginably larger than the Seen.
13 Wednesday Jun 2018
Aching back, pounding head,
weakening eyes, softening memory,
anger, nightmare, spasm..
Symptoms.
What loves to be complained about
over tea, through the phone,
aloud aloud somebody hear this, oh please.
Imagine turning attention around,
bear chewing his tail-
Wake to me!
Symptom becomes lotus
opening
from murky waters into light.
Manifestation of inner
to outer,
an offering
a medicine
a gift.
Pain is not for pain’s own sake.
With suffering,
we alter to listen.
Awareness reaches up,
roots down,
grows.
27 Sunday May 2018
Dancer
unable to dance,
Writer
without words,
Climber
minus a mountain,
What now?
Not grasping for known
while Unknown is your becoming
means finding,
and learning
a whole new way to move.
Wiggle a little,
court the formless
in this precious release
of who you believe yourself
to be.
27 Sunday May 2018
The transformed steals the love-light,
not for greed
but for our preference.
What’s left behind in grit and dust,
even discarded in rank alleyways,
is the work of the chrysalis.
The
cramped
confused
identity-erasing
dark
of wrestling for the next life form,
of flight,
of nectar,
of tumbling in gravity’s wave
among flowers, bees and blue.
Remember what beauty lies in ugliness
before walking away from the misunderstood.
23 Wednesday May 2018
The basements, bathrooms, shrouded corners,
narrow, black to seem endless, alleys,
the Do-Not-Enters,
these are the intended places.
Go to them.
What courage lies docile and low
will rise up, a fire, a wave, a mountain
to have your back even as growing fear
dissolves
what you think holds you together.
10 Thursday May 2018
Stumbling,
having missed a pebble for the story in your head,
breaks the monotone
in favor of dripping notes tangled, soft,
attentive.
Dipping into that honey, the stream beneath the firehose flow,
entices a hidden music into the aching
and sharp places, wounded from too much narrow focus.
Broadening,
that song- touched by your welcome-
changes things.
20 Friday Apr 2018
Nothing to hold onto,
the castle crumbling,
narrow a ledge, heavy the stone, cracking
walls and the mind hunts
for where to land
and it leaps to worry, no,
Fear projected onward, forever, helplessly.
Alone, like this, a sore eating away flesh-
and not real.
Grasping does haunt,
bite in and seep out, a rising fever.
But
it is a snarling shadow dog.
Sit,
solid, alive, and watch the demolition-
you’ve brought about the Fall,
soak up its awesome, fleeting
magnificence.
Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone 