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.
01 Saturday Sep 2018
Where are the Grandmothers?
With family torn, history unknown, stories never uttered,
lineage not spoken,
where are we?
We become dangling dolls, feet like bell clappers,
swaying this way and that with no ground
beneath us.
So utter.
Utter.
Utter your questions and longings to the Grandmothers,
the Grandfathers, the Sisters and Brothers who couldn’t grow up,
the sharers and protectors from the other side where
viewing carries a different, sideways, deeper,
beyond kind of knowing.
Stir the waters you can not see,
the current carrying you, and ask.
Ask.
Ask and the formations for you to hold and gaze at
reminding you of the support in the surround
can shape, at last, in the wet red clay
held by your praying hands-
Grandmothers, Come to me…
08 Wednesday Aug 2018
August,
the light casts red.
Dry season wilt and crunch, yellow
becoming brown,
and hungry fires chew acres
to miles
of hillside and range.
Fire’s satiation point moves further out
each passing year
as our own deafness to species and spaces
beyond our own grows.
Dim the constant noise of phone, computer,
bottom line, app and sale-
play a role smarter than consumer-
and how life continues from here may
be more inclusive, open, mindful
and naturally sweet.
The fires have much to say.
01 Wednesday Aug 2018
He slams the door behind him.
You think, Good riddance!
When next your heart stops and breath catches,
out comes a gasp, What have I done?
Melting down, falling to bits, the world goes
from complete sense to non-sense,
and it is on that iceberg of moment
(and each drifting ice island following)
when wondering, Is this true?
might most gather you back together in a form
strong enough,
wise enough
to hold all the sensations and feelings
threatening to tear you to pieces
to be with Now,
an actual fullness of Life
for which you have the grandest capacity.
31 Tuesday Jul 2018
This day he walks slowly,
approaching in nearly a shuffle.
Handing me a candy- the kind once known as penny-
saying, this aging stuff, not so easy.
I used to think, he shares with a soft shake of his head,
I could stay a perpetual teenager. But not so.
His health, not good,
the poetry, music and culture
having always fed him
no longer enough.
Or so it seems to him, on this day.
Clutching a small handled paper bag, one somehow
always carried,
he steps away, looking emptily into distance
not physically there,
leaving me with a golden,
foil covered chocolate coin never to be eaten
and an appreciation for his difficult facing
of what he long imagined
could be outrun.
06 Friday Jul 2018
The swallow dip of joy,
swift arc and cut through bright sky,
has been on lengthy migration
to lands unnamed.
Yet the time allotted here, however long,
confined in concrete, noise, requirement and excess
may finally break me of this place.
What follows out
of the daily abrasions of adjusting
while not giving everything and nothing away
may open space enough for that swallow
to return truly
home.
26 Tuesday Jun 2018
While sitting in a slurry of nettles and skunk,
a confused mess of fury and grief,
I had to remember,
remember those I know well who will do anything not
to change.
Clenching to what doesn’t grow,
but metastasizes, brings more comfort
than trying it all, somehow, differently.
Yet the questions have yet to be born in them,
and time, with practice, has taught them not to find any stirring
since the familiar is the balm that keeps the abyss
from glistening up and pulling them under and out,
as it is for me now from the slick, hard cornered rock
I seem desperate to hold.
Time and body say, release this faithless fight and self-loathing,
those committed shackles of the past,
and give in, set adrift and enter
what is unimaginably larger than the Seen.
13 Wednesday Jun 2018
Aching back, pounding head,
weakening eyes, softening memory,
anger, nightmare, spasm..
Symptoms.
What loves to be complained about
over tea, through the phone,
aloud aloud somebody hear this, oh please.
Imagine turning attention around,
bear chewing his tail-
Wake to me!
Symptom becomes lotus
opening
from murky waters into light.
Manifestation of inner
to outer,
an offering
a medicine
a gift.
Pain is not for pain’s own sake.
With suffering,
we alter to listen.
Awareness reaches up,
roots down,
grows.
27 Sunday May 2018
Dancer
unable to dance,
Writer
without words,
Climber
minus a mountain,
What now?
Not grasping for known
while Unknown is your becoming
means finding,
and learning
a whole new way to move.
Wiggle a little,
court the formless
in this precious release
of who you believe yourself
to be.
23 Wednesday May 2018
The basements, bathrooms, shrouded corners,
narrow, black to seem endless, alleys,
the Do-Not-Enters,
these are the intended places.
Go to them.
What courage lies docile and low
will rise up, a fire, a wave, a mountain
to have your back even as growing fear
dissolves
what you think holds you together.
Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone 