22 Friday Aug 2025
Searching for words is seeking water
mid-mesa.
Not a tree in sight.
Blessed sage basks in full sun.
Rain falls, drifts away.
Soon tarantulas will promenade,
romancing their coupling dance
to create the next generation.
No, the words are water
and the Maker decides when and how
they drift or drive or well up
through this hollow reed.
Let syllables drip from the tongue unsought,
honey for those hungry
and in need of that particular soul balm.
10 Saturday May 2025
I draw nearer the Unknown.
How can I not,
to be closer to God is this;
Unknown–true Creation.
Not noble or shiny, maybe missing teeth,
limping, dusty and brilliant..
Stay close,
the past can not play out forever,
only mind does that,
read the signs, look for what’s different,
if, at a thought, ice fills your blood
and belly turns sour,
power has been tossed away.
Relax back into change,
those arms wait to hold you,
the generosity of a reliable and beloved friend.
Ride the horse.
12 Wednesday Mar 2025
Time is a not-knowing.
Life flow.
Infinite creative arising;
Step in
to where you can’t not be.
Awareness will return you there.
Here we are, within continent-birthing
and crumbling upheaval–
crashing edges, sudden limits, tighter twists,
unleashings,
every corner a blind turn.
So where do we go?
No place but here. This moment.
And when the lead line of anxiety
rockets out past our knowing,
we nod kindly, gather it home–
to breath, scent, pulse, wind, ground–
gently pulling back our reach,
that which takes us out past ourselves,
tipping us
away
from what is true.
Be loyal to this,
this,
this.
It is All.
17 Friday Mar 2023
The horrible truth, felt,
finally spoken,
worse than death. Many times worse.
Sky fills with vultures, high,
dozens spiraling dozens, circles and circling.
Perhaps nothing so beautiful,
nothing before.
Large, black, some golden with angling sun,
every one of them alive with death,
their carrion feast,
every one of them, all, in flight,
wings extended and eyes bright, alive
in partnership
with Death.
Alive and flying, together, loosely
through sky,
floating and effortless,
in partnership
with Death and Wind.
Effortless.
Flying, floating, free.
And effortless.
12 Sunday Feb 2023
Movement of a bone.
Suddenly.
A gate I never thought I’d walk through
swings open–
access to land traversed by others
but never by me
spreads wide and borderless.
Vast, a savannah,
broad, an ocean,
hidden, intricate, bold–
a cave, universe of a moss, storm cloud.
Speechless, held still and utterly restless,
I do not know what emergence now includes me
but this smile keeps flashing across my teary face.
03 Friday Feb 2023
Tyranny over self,
Tyranny over body,
Tyranny over the Land.
Carve mountainsides, slash prairies, pollute valleys, hate,
hate and control, cellulite, humps, wrinkles, and jiggles.
Hide and hate, turn upon the landscape inner,
the landscape outer–
one and the same.
Within this domination resides
everlasting distraction from the rhythmic pulsing
of our own heart’s rivers.
In service to the status quo.
As Earth’s waters are Life,
our blood is Life.
Break the shaming silence–the waterways know
to indulge their curves, bumps, and depths
singing praises through movement,
of tree roots, reflected sky, grating rocks
and wriggling fish.
We have only so long to celebrate and dance
our one beloved Body:
Skip the contempt useful to maintaining outdated ways.
Jump straight into dark waters full
of more Beauty than any one lifetime can hold.
23 Sunday May 2021
The fourth decade
walks me between prayers,
of one blinked forth twenty years ago,
a blessed ‘Fuck it’ rising from the earth
to cup and guide and split open, and
of another gathered in the thirties–simply
‘Thank you.’
With solid scaffolding of experience under me
I can walk with the first tucked in a back pocket,
the second, on more able days, held in heart,
and the infinite wanderings between
growing a garden of ripening fruits and blooming flowers
with seeds maturing slowly toward ground
rich with Life ready to receive them.
29 Saturday Feb 2020
Days long
become years
and one most loved becomes a harm,
and through protection and confusion you seek
understanding of drastic change,
and the heart must learn
Safe? Not safe?
Safe? Not safe?
While you search blindly for pillar of heaven,
with eyes playing no part in this pilgrimage,
Heaven rests closer than the newly loud beating
in your chest..
so it goes and on it goes and through you go
asking for direction to the River when it has sunk
far underground within life that continues on
always always life continues on
beyond twist, injury, death and journey toward Spirit
alone.
04 Monday Nov 2019
She pours glitter out of the glass slipper.
Ridiculous thing, sweat filled, fragile and unyielding.
With a moment’s further pause..
She hucks it and its mate straight
into the Sea.
Maybe there, in salty, living brine
they can return silica to sand,
or, at minimum, make homes
for lonely crabs looking
to entertain the holy wisdom
within their ocean-loving neighbors.
Glass slippers be damned, She mutters,
and skips off between broken waves and flattened
wet shore
simply to find her own fleshy rhythm.
Perhaps for the first time.
10 Wednesday Oct 2018
She lays in bed, sheet lightly covering.
Out the window clouds of rain draw near,
without hurry or menace.
Slow jazz fills the room, no one else close
to breathe the same thick, gentle October morning
in her nest above the street.
Pumpkin pie awaiting baking,
lamb thawing on white tiled counter,
and the low-lit day opens towards everything
she loves.
Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone 