13 Sunday Sep 2015
In the company of ghosts,
today moves not with breath
but dark memory,
heavy and present.
I may call
to ask if you’re there.
Placing my hand on your chest
to feel the warmth of skin
and the play of caring blood
would remind me that what was
is not all that is.
12 Saturday Sep 2015
While hands rest on sink edge
and skin drips above dirty bowls,
eyes see wall and window and trees in view
of an idea
who drops in,
pulls as much space
as a full day gathers snow,
and says,
Your wound is their wound is a wound
far-reaching with cold, gnarled underground fingers.
Hold the hand you fear,
befriend the dead.
Bring here of the gifts
your people await release.
Possess the expanse
and embody the unspoken…
Hearing the music of you
in a flooding of my entirety,
more life rises in death
than even a painting of night
could dream.
06 Sunday Sep 2015
Nocturnal orb weaver
has tucked herself away,,
Vulture, high in dead pine,
splays tail, fans wings wide,
back to rising sun.
Soft voice and pedal steel round the room
while Crow wanders the rail,
head cocked, assessing what’s new.
Birdtalk through treetops-
woven richness of life
finding life.
05 Saturday Sep 2015
In slightest wind
strands quiver, quicken,
sense
whole
broad reach and taut sensitivity
carry messages,
bring motion
close..
with no element lost,
nor breath unnoticed,
silver sun target dances
against my eastern window.
23 Sunday Aug 2015
Wanting to eat blueberries in peace,
I continue walking.
“Welcome to the Labyrinth.”
As if I needed the sign.
Parking bum on stone
among alyssum, chamomile and
orange blooms of nasturtium,
bees waft in and buzz by.
Sun warms back, verbena wavers,
dragonfly hovers a while.
Between lavender and me
a garden’s worth of world greens up
in the closing weeks of summer.
13 Thursday Aug 2015
And when you have to tuck your beauty away from the world to be left alone,
Or don barbs to let it be known you can be armed,
questions come-
do you engage, or duck and cover, or walk away?
Do you laugh or poke back or disappear?
In the freeze or fight or flight, where do you hold?
Words
stumble.
Momentum and strength kept you moving yet
look
look hard at the toll.
What you thought you could take,
and exactly what you have taken,
carry a cost your body will explain.
Body speaks loud.
Drop a sledgehammer on the used way,
watch a smile curl at the sight of its destruction.
Tools this grand, and in capable hands,
will topple the castle the dream
along with those miles of manipulation.
What you’ve got here doesn’t come free.
And it’s yours.
11 Tuesday Aug 2015
Tumbling into
an underworld.
Sound stolen in the descent,
movement coming from
an unknown what.
Vanished light and a search yet begun.
A wisp of swirling wind.
Inhabiting a different body,
a novice of winged creation must
forget the familiar.
Hanging topside down from leafless tree
amid dark layered upon dark,
sonar registers obstacles and surfaces
of a territory
summoning,
expecting
arrival and exploration.
Travel here is not optional.
Curling claws around smooth limb,
with wings wrapped securely,
head dangling,
blood circulating,
there can be a reaching
for nothing.
Required senses develop.
Survival.
Still, suspended, and waiting
in dangerous territory
while skills emerge.
Quieting impulse,
lets
a silenced knowing
arise
for one newly born.
02 Sunday Aug 2015
Drove the twisting road,
wound blind curves,
to somewhere once called home-
a place sweetness and tragedy meet,
a location of extremes.
Towering oaks with lobed leaf arch
toward golden grass whose seed heads nod,
obscuring the path bobcat walks.
Sky,
in blueness or star,
remains sharp.
Flies enter nose and ears,
fiery poison oak berries.
Frost will make its claim,
will lay this landscape bare.
Returning marks a turning.
The hole I’ve fallen in,
with earthen walls solid and cool,
holds today’s bones and muscle.
Eyes train upward,
restful,
knowing, this time, the visit
washes memories out
without carrying me away.
17 Friday Jul 2015
Sunrise after sunrise,
invitation
to tend to the undeveloped parts,
the living but forgotten
blinded and crouching animals left
out in the cold.
Sidle up to crackling fire and
look softly-
the shadow-dance and light castings and warmth,
ease a chronic, unnameable tension
nibbling at the corners of mind.
04 Saturday Jul 2015
Contain the heat,
the movement,
the sound.
Toss fingers wide,
and dip
chin,
blades..shoulders..elbows..palms
into a spin…
Pound
thoughts
down,
down from helter-skelter mind
through music-hugging hips,
willing knees, flexed calves, splayed toes,
beyond, even, supporting ground-
move ’em out
until sweat beads, glass fogs
and your heart and smile rise.
Once a giggle finds voice,
throw open the windows-
mimic your every pore-
invite the wind,
and
slow
the swirl
into a sway
into a collapsed puddle of joy
with eyes fixed
on boundless
sky
Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone 