08 Wednesday Mar 2017
Grass,
green, high, lilting..
Spring wears her tall rubber boots
and wanders through
from seedling to start, from birdsong to unfurling fiddlehead.
Crossing slopes slowly,
around and up,
She eventually meets their tops
having tapped every waking wildflower
with a wink and a sweet how-do-you-do.
Her hair trails behind her in post-storm breeze.
With a softened gaze, you’ll catch a snippet of calico print dress
somehow waving
from a corner of your own sunny imagination.
31 Tuesday Jan 2017
Eyes heavy from reading news,
a seemingly apocalyptic caravan of events
and, yet, spirited fires light here, there, and there-
in me, in you, over the next hill where soft glow flickers.
Hours on the phone, speaking up, speaking out, thanking,
and yet another heart lifts during great challenge.
Tend to that fire consistently,
have water always near to temper and moisten,
eat of earthen foods to slow, slow
into the long journey ahead.
All are precious in this global transformation,
take another’s hand in yours in pure reminder.
17 Saturday Dec 2016
It wasn’t through torn paper
blackened shoelace
or scuffed wall
that I found You.
It wasn’t the constant push
circulating fear
or I-must-do-betters..
not even the inch between
the sidewalk and me
plus a bruised knee.
Not exactly.
Add the non-starts,
regimented dreams,
what’s-wrong-with-me’s,
attempts to fit when fitting fed starvation,
and the broken heart- birthday after birthday-
with one shattering
nearly beyond recovery
that, finally,
I found You.
The joke being
that I’ve carried You in me
since before the first sunrise.
Except now,
when I say hello
I can hear You answer.
30 Sunday Oct 2016
What if we were as fierce
about seeing
finding
knowing beauty
as ugliness, fear, and lack?
Would we not become greater protectors
of the overlooked and precious?
Would our focus not
change
from what we want to avoid
to that asking
for further creation?
From being barefoot on rain-soaked earth
while sun breaks clouds overhead,
to cinnamon in coffee,
the perfect heat of a shower,
sustained note of a well-played cello,
to strangers reaching for each other’s hands,
and friends who have plenty to eat,
a car that starts,
the woodpecker we’d like to curse
for waking us out of sleep-only-
its tapping brought us a view of the sunrise,
and places in existence where peoples
are honored and heard.
Wouldn’t the goodness flood us
even if
nothing else could we sense but
the beating of our own heart-
wouldn’t miracles fill our days?
22 Thursday Sep 2016
Being an untamed tributary
of a river whose origin reaches far
into depths unkown
brings twists of bramble,
leaping fish,
frog and cricket symphonies,
bats dipping low in twilight-
when settling into quiet lulls.
In rugged young churning-
escaping water
pulls earth, boulder, tree to itself
as passion builds with heavy rains,
filling banks,
carving hungry routes,
chewing civilized lands and
renewing plots left withering.
This tributary is this and more,
trading nothing away
in honor of its nature–
wild, strong and unpossessing.
23 Tuesday Aug 2016
I can’t speak to you from here.
From here where I don’t listen.
But if I stop
circling and
running and
dodging
and
reaching..
If I lay down armaments
and armour
both weighing, separating,
isolating
me
from
me
and
me from you.. If
I lay myself down
upon your buried curving roots,
this bodily circulation
will remember
a tree-based rhythm,
an earthly pulse.
Without effort
the music changes.
13 Saturday Aug 2016
And if the stars are talking to you
through closed sash and latched window?
And if the tree sway would catch you in a dance
were you only to step outside at dawn?
And if the thick green pond might turn blue
if you’d catch its eye while passing by?
And if the coyote call one ridge away
could reach your naked aching ear
were technology not wedged tight,
filling the cracks where nature could get in?
And if the ducks recently born,
hiding beneath the bowering bracken
edging the water
could gather your attention as you do theirs,
would this love affair ripen
and our wild and sacred
no longer be made into amusement parks?
There is a begging for fidelity here-
make this wild love affair true.
It is our one way through.
13 Saturday Aug 2016
Sometimes
one who entwined fingers with you through the night
departs as
quickly
as he arrived,
and kisses left on on the back of your hand
mark his passing.
Sometimes
that is
plenty.
13 Wednesday Jul 2016
The season of talking grass brings rattlesnakes,
grasshoppers blooming out each foot fall,
the head of a rabbit left by a skilled carnivore-
this, and more,
among seed heads clapping in the wind.
Moisture snuck deep underground,
like the losing end of relating.
Still,
it’s
simply
promise
of fecundity yet to come.
25 Saturday Jun 2016
I have searched, reached,
spoken, cried, and delivered.
My arms have ached in fullness, emptiness
and longing,
my legs have quaked miles into the journey
with nowhere but onward
left to go.
Muscle blood bone
register waking
like petals opening toward light.
What I now carry will remain behind
in this daily offering
of God
back to God.
Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone 