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.
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05 Saturday Sep 2015
Category Archives: nature
Crisp morning
26 Wednesday Aug 2015
Crisp morning,
Scrub jay tapping acorn into the ground,
Autumn, you flirt.
Blueberries in peace
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.
Holding body
23 Sunday Aug 2015
Posted in death, nature, poems, poetry, transition
≈ Comments Off on Holding body
Holding body
of dead hawk still warm,
the day’s tedium and irritation forgotten.
Death throws light, as life offers life.
Carrying bustle to calm
one of feather, talon, beak and bone,
expired oak reaches out arms.
Here, by trunk split to earth-
as if through lightning visitation-
raptor rests to place
without roadway and hustle,
whole in transition.
Scavengers will find their next meal,
minerals will return to dust.
Envisioned flight prepares to come again.
the twisting road
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.
From red desert cliffs
25 Thursday Jun 2015
From red desert cliffs,
broad-winged raven swoops
above juniper and stone.
Along dusty trail, over hot concrete,
striped lizards dash,
quick and anxious.
Fears, doubts, insecurities,
they cross-hatch your path just the same.
Step aside.
Raven will drop in and
snatch them with open black beak,
if you remember
to allow him his full scavenging flight.
The rocky lip
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.
What keeps a day
25 Monday May 2015
Olives here taste of rooted earth,
perfume,
undissolved salt…
in minute crystals.
I am as lopsided as any human,
careful with my creations but learning
as often as the sun is rising-
anywhere.
What is golden to my eye may appear blue
to you.
Isn’t that what keeps a day
and a long-stretching night ripe
with intrigue and a mineral calm?
The Aegean waits for my skin
to touch it again.
Fruiting trees observe
with time’s ease and abundance.
My own sorrows are meaningless
in sight of Beauty,
they are salt
added to the Sea.
He sits
24 Sunday May 2015
He sits,
this man in his garden,
on an upturned bucket
in the afternoon shade of an olive tree,
smoking a cigarette.
His downward gaze surveys lines
of young plants, his recent work,
and plucks whatever potential-
of lazy thought
of future harvest
of aches, of history-
of each inhalation in his own world
where bees hover
to take him in.
Blow her alive
15 Friday May 2015
Wind scours Skyros,
casting off whatever doesn’t blow her alive.
Roosters call into her,
releasing ritual morning battle cries-
two voices,
one earthless,
one earthbound,
twist together in a marriage of grand and minute.
Cats own the streets below her gaping arms,
molding themselves into stone hollows,
low and restful,
knowing that to cling is to miss the beckoning..
Open opposite windows
and your room will fill with dervishes.
Drop it all,
unclasp fingers and release hold-
Spirit sings into nothing less.
Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone 