22 Sunday Nov 2015
Doubt
brings options:
to shrink or
to reach.
Retract into the likes of a hermit crab
and the inside of a shell becomes much
of the known world.
Extend into open space
and the lion that could be out to get you
may now be the elicitation
to explore
an ever-widening landscape
where you track the wild unknown.
19 Thursday Nov 2015
Shame is a dark and sticky thing.
A hole we never see.
A bottomless, unnameable void.
It snatches us in the unlit alleys of our minds.
Ghastly,
what it thinks it can make us do-
shrink ourselves to the smallest brittleness
of an undesirable,
worthless,
lifeless
outcast
who cannot get anything right.
Immense power we give to one with no hands,
no face,
not even a nose.
And, how lucky we are
to have the nerve
to turn and look,
to sniff,
to get to know
the lurking bogeymen, the paralyzing Medusas,
behind the fence
and around the bend.
Come, come-
Let us ask them to tea
to learn what it is
they really want.
16 Monday Nov 2015
I reach softly into the black pocket,
wrestle with butterflies-
these are prayers
and this is Mary Poppins’ bag.
What arises hasn’t feet
or end
or concrete idea to control comfort.
This is roll of tongue,
whisker of remembrance,
waft of cinnamon from grandma’s kitchen long ago.
Your divinities are found here,
as are everyone’s.
We enter alone,
exit the same,
but billions of hands reach
to hold us in between if
we choose
to let them.
16 Monday Nov 2015
Bathed by cricketsong
in dying light,
tiny apples burst round on the limb.
Fall swoops
like twilight bats
and trails of smoky ritual.
Guided by questions,
a door opens,
letting the irrational and mysterious
walk through.
I offered you rage.
You returned it as fertility.
Thank you.
29 Thursday Oct 2015
Knowing nothing and
sensing much
leaves tongues tied in noncomprehension.
Were seeking to begin here
reaching would stop
and there beside me you’d be.
Sigh..
there beside me you’d be.
Right-
you already are…
18 Friday Sep 2015
Turning the corner,
two winds blow.
The old blasts my back,
picking up tacks and sharp-edged photographs
along its path.
Those shes are afraid to let me go.
Losing habits,
the groove-cut ways,
riles folks.
The wind in my face,
cold, fresh,
hasn’t yet warmed with the bodies of the unmet,
invites like a new swimming channel
whose water is clear, dark,
hugging smooth stone,
knowing well the course and direction
in which it takes me.
Turning the corner
dances my hair on end,
and has me falling forward
into invisible arms I must trust
to catch me.
13 Sunday Sep 2015
In the company of ghosts,
today moves not with breath
but dark memory,
heavy and present.
I may call
to ask if you’re there.
Placing my hand on your chest
to feel the warmth of skin
and the play of caring blood
would remind me that what was
is not all that is.
25 Thursday Jun 2015
From red desert cliffs,
broad-winged raven swoops
above juniper and stone.
Along dusty trail, over hot concrete,
striped lizards dash,
quick and anxious.
Fears, doubts, insecurities,
they cross-hatch your path just the same.
Step aside.
Raven will drop in and
snatch them with open black beak,
if you remember
to allow him his full scavenging flight.
05 Friday Jun 2015
Events arise and show you
you can be made of jello-
in some especially unreasonable flavor like kiwi-
and your mind starts spinning and nothing is working and
everything seems wrong and
you’re busted, no broken, no worse
and
and
on and on and on
until
you stop believing,
look around,
recall that you’re breathing
in a flowering burst of recognition
that you simply
have
more to heal.
05 Friday Jun 2015
You climb the mountain,
slow step after conscious step,
and see before you stones, sharp underfoot,
angular in the strong sun..
Sweat beads and drips and
it’s a recognizable salty pleasure but
water,
water is good.
Sparse trees
bent
by the wind-
forbs wiggle in it,
hair every which way from it.
Steadily on, you walk,
glad for movement.
The peak looms large, but your tongue
and mind taste it.
Finally there- moments from the top-
and breathing deepens, eases, you
sigh.
Reaching the rocky lip,
not caring your laces drag behind,
you hook thumb under strap
of your heavy pack,
welcoming a stretch of rest..
When
you glimpse
what didn’t seem likely- not now,
not here,
not this,
but another peak in a range the map said
was done-
Oh unexplained territory,
unforetold valley and mountain ahead..
Silly map.
No one can ever anticipate
what lies ahead
for only you.
Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone 