27 Sunday May 2018
Dancer
unable to dance,
Writer
without words,
Climber
minus a mountain,
What now?
Not grasping for known
while Unknown is your becoming
means finding,
and learning
a whole new way to move.
Wiggle a little,
court the formless
in this precious release
of who you believe yourself
to be.
19 Saturday May 2018
Not until the attentive itch
do they exchange glances to mean
It’s Time.
And off we pile into the car, heading deep
into night and whatever flight waiting
with breath, rolling, in the wings.
Winding round and up and up and round
through dark and sensation
into rolled down window sweetness of valley grass and oak,
Stumbling, graceful, grit of dirt road scuffing,
spinning under 2 a.m. sky and flopping across hillsides,
the stars, sharp and grabbable,
become a spiral
spiral
spiral
as alive to be tucked in a pocket,
as hover, massive and in reach, directly overhead,
as rest in mind twenty-five years on.
16 Friday Mar 2018
A princess in the tower,
at a distance looking down,
wishing
and kept.
How to get out? How to get away?
Desperate for rescue, a puddle of tears
and fury.
Why me? This terror and despair.
But, one sunrise, a light switches,
the kaleidoscope shifts,
her untapped power surges
along with the sight that she is on the inside.
An inside most would never know.
Following the sun
with fingertips searching slowly
the walls that keep her,
Somewhere, like the chink in the dragon’s scales,
a crack in stone
will bring the first ray of wisdom,
and freedom for which she was born
hungry.
20 Tuesday Feb 2018
A conditioning of impotence,
reaching for the salt when another swipes it first,
mounting silence in heavy boots, step upon step,
crags of volcanic history ignored by all
but you.
Buttons pop in flights of frustration,
and the weight of carrying baggage,
generations of status quo,
threatens to break your back
until
the ludicrous heart-heaviness and surge
for a real place in family becomes visible
for the impossibility it is.
Pitching the straps off your shoulders,
searing sight of that graveyard of the forgotten
rising skyward
into memory, you shake your head
at the Sisyphean absurdity,
turn around
and walk away.
02 Friday Feb 2018
And when Fear comes knocking?
Or, more likely, bamblarkblasting its way in,
do you invite him to sit down,
notice her nebulous sucking barbed wire darkness,
and surrender yourself to the visit knowing
something important will be learned?
Come, come Fear, welcome,
enter and offer what brings you through town-
you might say
in honor and awe of,
out of respect for the guest with power
to leave you shivering, quivering
and yet more able to walk on
with starlight in your eyes-
have yourself a cup of tea,
You must be tired.
28 Sunday Jan 2018
The mendacity of the Father,
the for-your-own-good, you’ll-
understand-one-day,
spank you on the ass ruler of the house,
might there not be another way?
Look the white shark in the eye and see
what he claims to be is none other
than the abuse he forgets
once brought him to his knees.
Question where you came from,
you may find there’s a curse
invisible, iron gripped,
you alone can shake off.
Pain, unaddressed, is only fed
to the next generation who cling,
cling to the same pedagogy
that poisoned your once Free spirit..
Now’s the time-
reclaim it.
21 Sunday Jan 2018
At forty
she felt seventy.
Experience’s weight
had sunk posts deep into the landscape of her being.
Ache and limitation, an undertow of fatigue,
confusion at the seeming permanence
of the uninvited, the resisted,
lead this human to take possession, fully-
and for the first time-
of a life unwritten, free of guarantees,
and her own.
Entirely her own.
Her landscape now is a garden,
loved and wanted, with posts that may disappear.
Or not.
With their origins recognized, appreciated,
and their presence finally respected,
perhaps a hammock will be slung between them
in honor of spring’s arrival.
17 Friday Nov 2017
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.
16 Saturday Sep 2017
Unsure the proper weight of memory,
this trough I built is full.
The heavy bottomlessness of water sucks under,
especially when it prefers to move.
Sensing an unintended timelessness,
I pull, twist, crack apart worn wood,
watch stasis become
a brook babbling its true and changing song.
11 Tuesday Jul 2017
To the fierce woman–
not the girl, whatever the age, trying to look pretty,
to be nice,
not the girl in the woman’s body aiming
to be desired, seductive, adored, heroic, cool, mysterious,
No, no-
To the fierce woman who knows the song of her own heart’s beat,
who cares not about how she appears, but about who she is,
who isn’t reaching for the next best outfit, witty comeback, title or
right answer–
To the fierce woman who walks how she walks,
talks how she talks,
ages as she brilliantly ages,
sees how she sees and
loves how she loves,
my God, Welcome.
Welcome to this world.
You
are
needed.
Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone 