Category Archives: community

Vultures

15 Saturday Apr 2023

Posted by in community, instinct, language, poems, poetry, silence

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The vultures have returned

from distant winter shelters,

their broad arms now stirring pale spring skies.

Between mesa and hilltop, there’s a valley

and her thighs cradle winds

soul-driven to buoy those dark ones,

to bring them in circles, mixing pollen and dust,

whisking insects far below

to petals low and wide.

The languages spoken meet human ears

only as whistle and snap,

but the Others, they carry conversations

over whole continents.

It can be seen in outstretched wings,

high in leafless cottonwoods,

of vultures at sunrise.

In silence, before the world wakens,

if we stand with the trees,

our bodies hear their words

and join in the call and response,

without thought, instinct recalled.

Morning birds

12 Saturday Nov 2022

Posted by in community, flight, light, listen, movement, poems, poetry

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Chittering morning birds pull me from the page–

eyes move from word toward sound,

where their light hopping feet bring me to flight

from bare branch, through 17 degree air,

to bark-covered lattice above the front door.

Frost, like gold flakes, falls from their trail in sunlight.

They have such great conversations.

Can’t help but

01 Thursday Sep 2022

Posted by in approaching, community, death, laughter, movement, poems, poetry

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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.

How long ago were we taught?

06 Friday May 2022

Posted by in break out, community, fear, land, lost, poems, poetry, unlearning

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How long ago were we taught

to fight with our own selves,

to oppress and bind ourselves–

to be better, to be nice, to fit in, to be worthy?

To be successful, accomplished, competent?

Parents aren’t to blame, they were taught the same.

Go back and back and back. . .

and back.

It served something much larger

for us to bash down our own beating hearts and bright,

lit up eyes.

We needn’t be oppressed from out there when

we do it first from the inside.

Go to a job (what a weird requirement)

at the outlet mall so you can live.

Nursing survival fears, real and imagined,

keeps us very busy–and useful–

to systems that cut us from the land,

from the divine,

from one another.

Life has never been, will never be, easy

but isolation,

disconnection,

meaninglessness

are the poisons we serve our own bodies and minds

when chasing and begging for pieces of paper.

Currency.

And the fear of not having enough, or

losing what we have,

ties us in

to beliefs and habits and conditioning

that make television the closest thing

to mother’s milk that we can reach.

Or the bottle.

Nothing is wrong with you. Nothing is wrong with me.

Nothing is wrong with us.

But something is wrong with wedging our precious selves

into tiny spaces, tiny perspectives, tiny versions

at the breath-stealing expense

of our own inborn radiance.

Wind blows a chorus

21 Thursday Apr 2022

Posted by in abundance, community, honoring, learning, listen, loving, movement, Music, offering, poems, poetry, wind

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Wind blows a chorus in the mountains.

I’d forgotten how the trees sing in rounds,

sometimes whispering,

sneaking a song, suddenly, behind you

then switching far out in front, down the hardscrabble

with its abundant life of stone and tiny leafings,

scales and flitting feathers.

I wonder about the songs echoed

from those not swishing needles and branches.

What part of the rondo do our human ears miss?

How sweet to offer our voices back

to the heart of the mountain

by joining in its steep and generous sound.

What is to come?

11 Friday Mar 2022

Posted by in approaching, becoming, community, fertile, motion, movement, poems, poetry, violence, work

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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.

The open door

12 Saturday Feb 2022

Posted by in change, community, growing, home, honoring, learning, listen, Love, poems, poetry, transition, unlearning, wonder, work

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Somehow it is February and 79 degrees.

What a wonder.

We have entered a new world, mostly of our own making.

Turning back is a fantasy holding some together,

imagining it isn’t happening holding others.

Our earth mama talks with us, through us, always–

she shows more loudly by the year

the honest consequences of our actions.

Birds sing loudly on the other side of the open door,

more kinds than usually heard in chorus.

They bathe bathe bathe and chitter, twinkling songs..

A magical day,

yet strange.

Prayer flies through the open door that we all learn to listen,

listen and praise, find ourselves on our knees ready

for change that serves Life.

How to begin a day

13 Monday Dec 2021

Posted by in abundance, beauty, community, flight, honoring, movement, nature, offering, poems, poetry, stillness, wind

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The storm is making noisy mouths of the shingles this morning,

and pom-poms of the pine’s branches.

Rain beads the panes,

droplets meet socially, gather in their weight

and river down, down towards wet ground.

A limy glow. Needles sticking long on fence, on chair,

all throughout lavender’s hair.

Yesterday at this time crows were dancing in sunrise light,

pink orange, sorbet swirl of clouds,

save one:

She sat still atop a black fir, staring.

Our four eyes, in settled bodies, soaked in the welcoming arms

of our rising Sun–

now, She knows how to begin a day.

Tiny frog

04 Thursday Nov 2021

Posted by in community, nature, poems, poetry

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Tiny frog visits

at the threshold.

Years have passed since she has come.

As much time feels past since this rain.

Her throat pulses against my finger,

our skins touching,

and the gold lining her eyes gleams.

I admire her form,

the soft wetness.

We are utterly different.

Warning her of the dangers of my swinging front door

I walk her to the altar

where water and succulent,

kind attention and beauty gather.

She knows her way around.

With thanks, we part.

Until her return

in the following young morning.

From sleep into waking

29 Friday Oct 2021

Posted by in aging, approaching, community, devotion, digging, dreams, friends, Healing, honoring, poems, poetry, prayer, presence, weaving, welcoming, work

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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.