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Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone

~ a wild and sacred journey

Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone

Category Archives: Elements

In circles

15 Wednesday Oct 2025

Posted by feralpoet in Awareness, break out, connection, death, Earth, Elements, endings, eternal, fearlessness, human, laughter, learning, liberation, Life, Opening, play, poems, poetry, rebirth, receiving, release, return, ride, Sight, story, time, visit, welcoming, wonder, work, world

≈ Comments Off on In circles

Time, in circles, rolls and spirals on..

we’ve been bamboozled and blinded by firm

starts and finishes–

Yes, birth to death,

but this existence is no line.

Pluck a stitch and you’re speaking with your grandmother,

dead long thirty years back.

Pick at another and your future babies,

whether this life or another,

giggle in morning thunder.

Our brains have been trained

by unnatural and convenient beliefs

unrecognized as such.

Put on a pair of enormous shoes borrowed

from a stranger and step..one

two three..

backwards to gather a new look

at the vastness of stories dancing about.

Teach your eyes to see the impossibly invisible,

what tires and confuses you now becomes,

in truth, a consequential but very funny

game–

remember your heart

and play it well.

Begin again

22 Monday Sep 2025

Posted by feralpoet in Autumn, Elements, Loss, poems, poetry, Season, slow, welcoming, wonder

≈ Comments Off on Begin again

Autumn,

time of longing

and remembrance

rolls in pale liquid light.

Yellows, softness, dry and sombre.

Mountain cold drops, magpies dip

and squabble.

Why fear grips me isn’t fully known.

Begin again, the season angles into quiet,

a blanket across empty lap.

Clear darkness

04 Friday Jul 2025

Posted by feralpoet in approaching, dark, dreaming, Earth, Elements, Expanse, liberation, night, poems, poetry, rain, release, thanks, water

≈ Comments Off on Clear darkness

Wetness of the earth

after night’s sudden and generous rain

settles the sharp dust of hard happenings.

Sleep came long and heavy,

dreaming ridding a poison too old to name.

Bless the waters

and millions of emergent stars hitched

to an approaching clear darkness.

Our bodies

02 Wednesday Jul 2025

Posted by feralpoet in Earth, Elements, monsoon, offering, Opening, poems, poetry

≈ Comments Off on Our bodies

Clouds form over the distant olive hills,

soft in morning light.

By afternoon, when heat has cooked the world white

and this desert sky holds back some of its blue,

those same clouds will tower and be belly grey and thick,

heavy with rain they can’t wait to loose.

Our bodies will vibrate with thunder.

Spring

05 Monday May 2025

Posted by feralpoet in abundance, community, companion, connection, creation, Earth, Elements, Opening, poems, poetry, seasons, spring, transformation

≈ Comments Off on Spring

Bees have buried themselves

in crab apple’s blooms,

hummingbird launches skyward,

chattily, all the frills of mating on display.

Stripey-legged bobcat’s ghostly moves

stitch the garden knoll

while anise hyssop digs into her new home

and calendula flowers at hollyhock’s feet.

Everybody’s humming their song…

Holy rage

14 Thursday Nov 2024

Posted by feralpoet in community, Creating, daughter, digging, dissolution, Elements, fearlessness, Fire, generations, history, honoring, human, instinct, Love, mother, movement, Opening, pain, poems, poetry, prayer, presence, rage, strength, violence, woman, work

≈ 1 Comment

I see her, red hair aflame,

paint flying.

Swaths of blackest black,

gashes of scarlet–

blood, bone, ash, scorch,

ochre of marrow.

Enough words, make image.

Shock the system with truth,

Pandora’s box wide,

coffins nesting

and thrown open, skulls screaming out,

souls of generation upon generation of women:

This will not stand.

This will not stand.

No!

Heaven & hell

29 Saturday Jun 2024

Posted by feralpoet in Body, Elements, poems, poetry

≈ Comments Off on Heaven & hell

I’ve been contemplating heaven and hell,

while chewing an apple slice,

staring at where

the sweet dry hills meet sky.

I think it’s kind of like that.

They come together, an uneven between,

the elements can be explored, felt, seen,

drawn, smelled, poked:

they’re in sacred relationship.

And we have to learn, each within ourselves,

our relationship to them.

Both teach. Both burn us to essence,

if we let them.

We can enter one and take the other

right along with.

Wherever you stand, sustenance can be found.

Where’s your heaven to your hell?

Are you the same within each?

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