25 Saturday Apr 2020
A full circle closed today,
from expectation to loss,
from pedestal to the fall..
A journey made time and time
again.
Bound to a nature of its own making,
the question of when the final turn
arrives being that eerie shimmer
at the horizon.
With delusion’s slap in the face
what you do with the broken fantasy
remains the treasure
at the end.
What shall be created from the rubble
and bruises?
Can you be what fed you?
Could you embody what your heart was sure
you couldn’t live without?
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.
08 Friday Nov 2019
What has sounded
to others
like endless gripe and grating unfinished complaint,
a chosen rageful fixation,
certain Pathology…
has been body and mind finding its way
through toxic darkness.
Nature being destroyed by humans
in blind arrogance and greed,
consumption wired into how many “likes” and “followers”–
those empty signs of worth and feedings of narcissism–
in ever-widening circles,
in rapid speed, increasing.
How.
How does a body and mind adjust to such devastation?
To home being pillaged and raped?
To the Temple filling with piles of trash,
masses of people,
noise and excrement along every path?
There is no adaptation to that.
There is constant heartache
and anger.
With home now being just another thing for sale
and silence and solitude disappeared,
what illness have we invited through our collective front door
in exchange for one more meaningless photo
gone viral?
It’s time we spend time on the virus
we have ignored
for entertainment.
03 Sunday Nov 2019
Is it true that time changes?
Not here, but there, not past that imaginary line
but an inch before it.
Waking today brought an altered number
on a clock
yet Sun didn’t hiccup or falter.
Who are we to roll such dice?
Upon opening my eyes today
I’m living out a past pain through new labor.
Which is true–
the old pain, the fresh effort?
November 3 offers lost agonies returned,
a dawning, growing prayer
and broadening recognition of space
expanding into the Grandmotherly arms
of a beckoning,
wrinkled
and rollicking humor.
16 Wednesday Oct 2019
Without a story to tell
who are we but people who have not lived.
Watching children play,
approaching hand in parent’s hand
to a park that is my front yard,
Spirit
is restored.
Sliver by sliver
and dose by dose.
While now there are trees that whisper and swish
in every kind of wind
instead of uninterrupted concrete and destructive voices,
I have the long view
knowing what it is to live between rage and despair.
And I don’t like who it made me.
Sometimes I realize,
when before I could not,
we may become who we do not want to be
simply to return, along the long road,
to who we are.
12 Sunday May 2019
Tension builds
where the incomplete blow
as storm winds
toward completeness.
With worn boots and ragged clothes
after years in the woods
a brightness comes.
What had been too frozen to speak,
let alone move,
imprisoned by experiences of youth,
is warming with daily lighting of the flame.
Who had been silenced
who had been harmed
who survived by freezing in time
and not breathing to avoid giving herself away
is no more a fossil
a casualty
a repetition of a story too old to tell.
With spark, a light in thick darkness,
a new way forward.
Without knowing, or plan, or shape
to follow,
entry into another world–
full capacity–
at the Crossroads.
08 Friday Mar 2019
Got long hair?
Got any hair?
Woman, shave your head.
And collect the assumptions hoisted upon you,
the ones you weren’t quite certain,
but now you know,
have been dragging you down.
Belly scraping the road.
Woman, got long hair?
Shave your head, and learn how confused
perceptions and expectations of you
are.
Where you may have been pretty, attractive,
desired,
suddenly the sight of that is gone
and people, most people, don’t have a clue
how to respond, how to comprehend–
But you were pretty.
You were attractive.
You were desirable.
Watch them turn their eyes away, unable
to look at you.
Hear them,
hating what they see and can’t understand,
say, “You look so…different.”
The least offensive, yet unasked for, comment
they can make.
Woman, got long hair?
Shave your head,
and discover what assumptions shove you low, in place,
a shallow ditch where you have been put.
Some react in adoration,
others with titillation, however briefly,
or with shock envy disbelief disgust.
Woman,
if ever you didn’t fully get it,
not in the tautness of your sinews,
how the appearance of a woman is believed
to belong
to the public,
that it is open invitation to
critique judgement opinion desire and rejection,
stick a personal act of transformation,
like dynamite,
within social view.
Woman,
if you want to know not
what others want you to be
but the stuff you’re made of,
Go,
Shave your head.
05 Tuesday Mar 2019
If the book leaves you in tears,
consider it a friend.
What can’t salt water wash away?
A central gripping has
kept me off-kilter,
winter storms filling gutters and feeding
blue mold.
In a sense,
nothing is going as planned–
precisely how this melting,
sanding, scuffing and lonesome roll
is meant to go.
As the slow unfurling tightens me into
a speedy withdrawal,
reminders trickle in to soften,
a kitten-stretch of a soft pawed
softening,
when I can.
More friends,
words heaping page upon page,
sit kindly waiting nearby
in a generous pile.
10 Wednesday Oct 2018
Scars
attest to bridges crossed battling dragons,
to threatening rivers entered
that pushed at knees, sucked at ankles.
To deep mountaintop scree, ragged, sharp and steep where
falling
meant death and dismemberment.
We were there,
we know,
we learned.
Yours lay upon your body
differently
than mine;
equally, they shape us.
Scars pulse out of step with the rest.
Each must be attended to,
honored,
for what they give,
for what they gave up.
09 Sunday Sep 2018
A new life begins
and the old one decides to throw a tantrum
pulling pans, mid-bubble, off the stove,
pitching a canister of oats across the tile
unscrewing the cap on the honey just enough
to guarantee a disaster the moment it’s needed.
You’re in the muck of it,
the stuck of it,
and an evil grin blooms slightly on your old life’s face
who sits nearly out of sight
helping you to forget its presence
until
you shake your head, bounce dust out of ears,
and spot it there.
No sir! This game, while it has been fun,
is no more.
With a step, a bit of a jig, you leave not only the kitchen
but the house
leaving whatever sticky puddle behind
for the ants to clean up.
Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone 