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.
06 Thursday Sep 2018
Where salt meets sweet,
I sing to the waters.
Where sand holds wave, pelicans slap
great wings,
and solitary duck pops up from below
in a stilled bowl
waiting for winter,
I sing
and Wind joins in,
riffling the surface, ripples reaching
in patterns hypnotic and old.
Sing to the waters,
their reply waits for your greeting among reeds,
rushes, fishes and stone.
15 Friday Jun 2018
Someone told me today,
“You have great energy.”
Someone else
turned out to be my middle school literature teacher.
Another day, perhaps, I’m terrible,
and a familiar stranger might not be
who I think at all.
Ground is uneven.
Earthquakes come, volcanoes blow.
A life is a creative act,
parceled out in retrospect,
birthed forward through chaos.
Unformed to the end
each of us shapes the clay we’re given.
The world will think
whatever it thinks,
what matters is speaking God straight back
into God’s own ear.
22 Tuesday May 2018
It’s the twist of a good story
to say it begins where it begins.
Because who is to say what happened first?
The lines we lead, roads we walk, families we form,
always
always something came before..
and during.
Land of birth, food of soil, light of sun,
books read, laughter lived, sex, music,
slumber.
Infinite details of the turning of the world,
and equally many perspectives,
makes knowing
a sweet impossibility.
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.
06 Tuesday Mar 2018
Having lost touch with the beauty of chaos
a fogged vision sewn of fear
and the iron-grip of hoped for control
eventually forces bursting rolls of laughter, or
sphincters tight enough to pop
(not so pretty- quick, turn toward the pansies planted to your left).
If remembrance of having a tail to shake breaks through,
that romp, leap, roar and thirteen-step boogie
will plunk soul back in wild order
and life’ll flow naturally once again.
02 Tuesday Jan 2018
Are you a border dancer,
never wanting fully to be here and
forever a passionate sliver of now,
sipping the drops, and drinking the deluge,
wondering what place you actually occupy?
It’s a slippery stick
meant for the ripeness of the forest floor,
unintended for adolescent hands.
What feeds does not come from you-
one so easily confused, acting comically small and guilty.
Real nourishment soaks in with time and respect
from Beyond-
origin of nectar and mystery, the breast milk
of endowed life in service to the Gods.
Leave the stick to its mushroom duff
where growth and decay follow ancient rhythms.
Dance there,
the place unnameable, infinitely creative,
and belonging to no one.
28 Thursday Sep 2017
Stars, warm wind, Morning rises
with purple sky.
Foucault pages rest in my lap yet
song of hummingbird through open window
means infinitely more.
A feeding tree- one plump with fruit and tiniest birds-
is black silhouette waking
into day’s light.
03 Monday Apr 2017
Darkness, silence, brightness of stars,
silhouetted tree crowns,
the beauty of five a.m.
I’m not sure why we forget,
so readily forget,
the preciousness we participate in.
These troubles,
the wasting, threatening, destroying-
maybe turning ourselves right-side-round toward
birthing light
relies upon one task:
Remembering.
16 Monday Jan 2017
Shy at the gate,
toss your head, flip your tail,
switch ears, twitch nostrils-
a fine tension builds,
keep with it.
Shimmy your skin and whinny, yes,
a whoa-what’s-happening kind of alarm.
Stay with it.
That gate’s got words for you,
and not of a sort your brain’s going to comprehend.
They have teeth, and dirt, and a strange wind to them,
which may be the reason for the fleeting,
repeating
blood chills, maybe.
Rushing to run misses the opportunity.
Kick the temple bell with an eager hoof if you have to
but know
this place between,
at the gate before god knows what and you,
holds the field of promise.
Hang in, possibility calls you far,
far from the familiar.
Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone 