21 Friday Oct 2016
You
to whom strangeness is foreign
in the creative force of living
-from the bubbling,
biting smell of fermenting kimchi,
to the heated twisting of metal
in rough hands capable
of leaving can’t and wrong and won’t behind-
Keep following
those peripheral ribbons of inspiration.
The crumbs of the yeah-butts
couldn’t possibly do.
21 Tuesday Jun 2016
A black and white world
hasn’t any lines to blur-
what relief to fearful minds.
And if a smudge
tangoes with reason,
snapping the bra straps of rationality?
Waters might move in,
fill bleached arroyos,
and offer liquid to dry, cracked,
sorrowful lands.
Take the risk.
Invite chaos to play.
16 Wednesday Mar 2016
Knowing,
that precious illusion,
needles and digs
until
a gasp can puncture
and
welcome
Unknown
back into the dance
04 Friday Dec 2015
Along the borderline,
territory between nowhere and here,
a no-woman’s land.
As the barbed fence you’ve been following
runs out,
wire hanging,
wind and boot crush
contain the remains.
Stop walking.
Look far, gently,
in each sparse direction,
above and below.
A kiss will press your cheek,
hair will lift out of your face.
Even desolation carries Spirit.
Perhaps, especially.
Where the winds blow uninterrupted,
dry sweat into salted white rings,
room for Her grows.
Beneath an open range sky she spreads wings,
hovers,
inspires your scent.
In the borderlands, a map is only hope-
drop it.
You are being breathed-
oh yes, bigger journeys beckon
and instructions no longer apply.
22 Sunday Nov 2015
Doubt
brings options:
to shrink or
to reach.
Retract into the likes of a hermit crab
and the inside of a shell becomes much
of the known world.
Extend into open space
and the lion that could be out to get you
may now be the elicitation
to explore
an ever-widening landscape
where you track the wild unknown.
16 Monday Nov 2015
I reach softly into the black pocket,
wrestle with butterflies-
these are prayers
and this is Mary Poppins’ bag.
What arises hasn’t feet
or end
or concrete idea to control comfort.
This is roll of tongue,
whisker of remembrance,
waft of cinnamon from grandma’s kitchen long ago.
Your divinities are found here,
as are everyone’s.
We enter alone,
exit the same,
but billions of hands reach
to hold us in between if
we choose
to let them.
23 Friday Oct 2015
we open,
creation flickers appreciative eyes
knowing it may express itself through us
and bring a union of hearts-
small reminders of what binds us to life, place, and
one another.
hear the songs
of light, color, sound and page,
whose voices crack through lies
separating us
from the unchanging.
21 Wednesday Oct 2015
The imprint of the dream,
a sudden waking
a gasp
an “oh my god” and
you return
to the surface
from a who-knows-where and
a deep
dive
down
carrying now
a dancing fish.
Upon the glass, a reflection.
Through the glass, a being.
Beyond the glass-
a destination calling you forth.
Without end
begins
with accepting the task
that brought you here.
18 Friday Sep 2015
Turning the corner,
two winds blow.
The old blasts my back,
picking up tacks and sharp-edged photographs
along its path.
Those shes are afraid to let me go.
Losing habits,
the groove-cut ways,
riles folks.
The wind in my face,
cold, fresh,
hasn’t yet warmed with the bodies of the unmet,
invites like a new swimming channel
whose water is clear, dark,
hugging smooth stone,
knowing well the course and direction
in which it takes me.
Turning the corner
dances my hair on end,
and has me falling forward
into invisible arms I must trust
to catch me.
05 Friday Jun 2015
You climb the mountain,
slow step after conscious step,
and see before you stones, sharp underfoot,
angular in the strong sun..
Sweat beads and drips and
it’s a recognizable salty pleasure but
water,
water is good.
Sparse trees
bent
by the wind-
forbs wiggle in it,
hair every which way from it.
Steadily on, you walk,
glad for movement.
The peak looms large, but your tongue
and mind taste it.
Finally there- moments from the top-
and breathing deepens, eases, you
sigh.
Reaching the rocky lip,
not caring your laces drag behind,
you hook thumb under strap
of your heavy pack,
welcoming a stretch of rest..
When
you glimpse
what didn’t seem likely- not now,
not here,
not this,
but another peak in a range the map said
was done-
Oh unexplained territory,
unforetold valley and mountain ahead..
Silly map.
No one can ever anticipate
what lies ahead
for only you.
Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone 