Category Archives: death

Along the long road

16 Wednesday Oct 2019

Posted by in aging, becoming, change, community, death, home, learning, Loss, poems, poetry, release, the road, work

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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.

Scars

10 Wednesday Oct 2018

Posted by in becoming, Body, break out, change, death, honoring, learning, loving, nature, pain, poems, poetry, story, the road

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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.

Feather etchings

17 Friday Nov 2017

Posted by in aging, beauty, becoming, change, death, devotion, freedom, honoring, mystery, nature, poems, poetry, the road

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Feather etchings of wrinkles,

our tributaries of experience, deepen

towards more

not less.

Must we forget what the soul always knows,

that appearance is not worth

and youth is not to be strived for

but grown beyond?

Instead of living seventy years

as wobbly egos forever hungry and

needing to be bolstered,

we can throw our arms, like thick-barked tree limbs,

around death,

our constant friend teaching us

the riches of storied contours and

what it is to truly live.

Golden bridge

14 Tuesday Jun 2016

Posted by in abundance, beauty, becoming, change, courage, dark, death, dreams, fearlessness, freedom, joy, learning, listen, movement, mystery, nature, poems, poetry, receiving, work

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If dreams rise

of planting marigolds in snow,

yet the spiders that plague you still

have not yielded

understanding,

can we love each other in our differences?

While you wrestle with your ghosts,

and I with mine,

is there a golden bridge between us

where

the songs we sing,

the tears filling our eyes,

the breath aching our lungs,

the laughter erupting before placid waters

may join?

We mustn’t forget

how many languages we share 

even without knowing

any of the words.

Born thus far

14 Saturday May 2016

Posted by in abundance, adventure, beauty, becoming, change, courage, crafting, dark, death, Deliverance, devotion, discomfort, Fire, honoring, learning, listen, loving, movement, mystery, poems, poetry, presence, strength, the road, transition, vision, work

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An open chair awaits you.

Clearing it of a tumbling-height stack

of NOs 

took some doing.

Approximately four decades worth.

And now that the rich, carved wood and velvet

of that high-backed chair holds nothing of mine,

there’s space for you at the table.

Admittedly, food hasn’t been cooked…

Uhm tea, however,

I’m ready to commit to.

Candle, flame and flowers adorn 

ridged lengths of milled tree

where our cups may sit.

Breath hasn’t yet dropped to belly-

waiting on your arrival out here in the valley

has caught it between Yes and Oh shit.

A place here, with me,

at a royal oak table welcoming us both

is the stretch of generosity and strength

born thus far.

Wake up!

09 Monday May 2016

Posted by in adventure, becoming, change, courage, dark, death, devotion, fearlessness, freedom, learning, Love, movement, night, poems, poetry, release, strength

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the first memory,
a fear of ghosts,
might choke you in your sleep.
wake up.
one step forward with a little foot
and another,
and another with your foot, not so small-
recall your body
to pierce darkness inhabited
by the terrifying,
and purposely forgotten.
wake up!
repossess what’s yours, kid.
throw your little arms out into night’s gullet,
rid the rotting presence rising
from beyond the grave.
we’ll approach together.
your journey neither begins
nor ends
trembling in a spindle bed
below third floor timbers,
its vacancy above met
by broad staircase
channeling
down
what no one else will face.

One day, she runs.

07 Saturday May 2016

Posted by in adventure, beauty, becoming, courage, dark, death, Deliverance, devotion, Expanse, family, fearlessness, freedom, Infinite, joy, Love, loving, movement, mystery, naked, nature, night, poems, poetry, Run, strength, the road, transition

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In the dark unfolding familiar

and friendless place

where place began,

a necessary and

deceptive

seed was planted.

Nourishing form, forgetting spirit,

growing grew and suckers spread.

A viral overload threatened.

Silently

soil

fed

resistance.

Until…

 

One day,

she runs.

From sick enclosure out into night,

thinly covered,

taking nothing, no shoes,

she bolts in a snap of a now! beyond

hallways, doors, gates,

with pounding heart, searchlight eyes, flying hair,

bare feet slapping pavement,

escaping by back ways known

intimately as the corners of her old room.

Rushing behind houses, through hedges,

ducking limbs, all chance of observance

and grabbing dominion.

Outside the limits,

with no objects to keep her,

by her own deliverance

she finds

her true way Home.

Sacrifice the god of nice

29 Friday Apr 2016

Posted by in abundance, adventure, beauty, becoming, change, courage, crafting, death, devotion, discomfort, Expanse, freedom, honoring, joy, poems, poetry, strength

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A watermelon, round.

A sword,

heavy-hilted, ornate, decisive.

Raise the blade,

two-handed,

and drop sharp steel through rind,

flesh,

rind;

Sacrifice the god of nice.

Free her from the bondage

of acceptable mediocrity.

Spill seed,

honor sweet juice.

Initiate of destruction-

break open the tidy container

or

she will rot,

denied of her original gift.

This inborn generosity 

invites feast.

Fill your belly.

Call me Pele

20 Wednesday Apr 2016

Posted by in abundance, adventure, becoming, change, courage, death, devotion, discomfort, fearlessness, Fire, freedom, Infinite, lost, loving, movement, mystery, poems, poetry, wonder, work

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Call me Pele.
All forms burn and
none stands outside creation.
Shake your definitions loose-
this is generosity.
The fires sustaining me,
I sustain.
Unbroken circle-
food, faethm, corage,
the Wild.
Do not question
if you desire
better.
For, certainly,
better
desires you.

Mosaic garden

19 Tuesday Apr 2016

Posted by in becoming, change, death, Expanse, Fire, freedom, gratitude, joy, learning, lovers, loving, movement, mystery, nature, pain, poems, poetry, release, transition, work

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The most dangerous words

she spoke-

“…but he has a really good heart”-

a knife

cutting her own heart out

in sacrifice to his.

A ritual, repeated,

a trance-beat of the drum

thrum pum,

only not for something holy, as imagined,

but for destruction.

The cold knife now shattered-

dropped gleefully from great height-

is planted in pieces in the mosaic garden.

Among lush green and fiery blooms,

metal glints in sun’s eye

as earthly reminder.