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?
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.
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.
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.
15 Tuesday May 2018
A kitten knocks at the door.
In truth, a word behaving like a kitten,
soft, sweet, riled
from chasing a baby squirrel along the avenue.
Baby tore across the asphalt, tail barking,
no visible sign of what gave chase.
Course, words are like that,
and now one has followed me home.
A fur-lined nook between the armrest and my hip
awaits her.
Curious what mischief we can achieve today.
But first,
a short nap.
08 Tuesday May 2018
What name can be given
to soul hunger for nature,
for bodily starvation of slow rhythms ancient
and known?
Waking, sleeping, sunrise, moonset,
yes
even in the most stricken times we can find ourselves there
part of the ever-larger cosmos,
not pinned tight to trivia and misbehaviors.
But
skin suffers thirst for soil-
this hard concrete place rebounding with noise
can’t feed what does not eat the civilized.
Sit down with me, here,
let’s break sidewalk together,
chip away until earth smiles again at sky-
silent seeds await their patient growth into trees.
02 Wednesday May 2018
Something has to be old,
not this eternal new, no scuffed corners or
stories to tell.
Without scratches and scars of history
what are we
but endless remakings missing the one ingredient
making us us.
That old floor, concrete, painted red
once
holds, simply, the scent and memory of red
the countless footfalls and dropped coffees
words, silent songs, and resting weight
of decades of loved use.
Old meets time
where novelty hasn’t the guts
to leave its natural mark.
Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone 