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Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone

~ a wild and sacred journey

Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone

Category Archives: nature

At no distance at all

24 Thursday Jun 2021

Posted by feralpoet in abundance, beauty, home, learning, nature, poems, poetry, welcoming

≈ Comments Off on At no distance at all

Today is the wagging tail of a red squirrel,

and an open door.

It doesn’t close now, outside being home,

inside being a storage place.

Yesterday two hummingbirds chased hawk,

funny youngster learning her way,

an iridescent green-backed fly sat still

at the center of a jasmine flower

and I laughed in the toppled, strong arms of a ten year old,

who pushes me always to the floor loving

every taboo body part and happening of hers

as she, too, learns her way.

In the tumbly, bumbly flight lessons

of the two towhees

I witness a desire to enter through the propped door

after hopping the limits of the garden perimeter,

speaking confusion and discovery.

Here, together, the sky-reaching cypresses,

the eucalyptus bird hotel

and the sweeping vultures,

all of us, we are finding our way;

some heavier with faith and knowing

bring needed weight into the feet of those

easily tousled by winds blowing hard.

What must it be to be full

each day

with relation, within the great motions,

settled during movement

and drinking in the finite, ever-renewing Beauty

at no distance at all to a single one of us?

Out there

06 Sunday Jun 2021

Posted by feralpoet in becoming, change, community, land, nature, night, poems, poetry, unlearning

≈ Comments Off on Out there

Seems I’m becoming the neighborhood wild one,

unkempt, bedraggled, living out of pile and box,

a two-legged more attuned with the four and winged,

becoming something I can’t yet recognize,

likely to speak a language closer to the birds and loping raccoons

than the stuff that’s tangled my brain until now.

Night walks are introducing those I live with,

swooping bats among them.

There’s lots of soft chatter out there…

Long missed and calling

24 Monday May 2021

Posted by feralpoet in change, land, movement, nature, night, poems, poetry, story

≈ Comments Off on Long missed and calling

Today, finally, I can sit in the sun

and let tears run their river course down upon

this new place I call home.

Walnuts in my teeth and blueberries in my belly,

I’m meeting the many pincher bugs residing here,

the flies and bees, jays, roses, swallows and eucalyptus.

I awoke suddenly night before last

not knowing what hit me until my senses explained

skunk had a nocturnal exchange with an uninvited guest

and the room had filled with the intensity of her defense.

I understand.

At times I could lift my tail and release my own musk

if I had it.

And then the neighbor whose

sexual escapade she sustained for nine hours

straight

left me crooked and grumbly for, well,

hours more than that.

But the mission bells ring, the hills that held me as a child

hold me once again.

Much will come of this, here, together

with land that made me work to the distant edges

of my heart’s own end.

Stories and word shall find matter,

yes,

and maybe my heart can rest and open again

in the constant cricket song and salted wind

of ground long missed and calling.

This is not

09 Monday Nov 2020

Posted by feralpoet in death, devotion, honoring, Loss, nature, offering, pain, poems, poetry, prayer, presence, undone, work

≈ Comments Off on This is not

This is not stick feathers in your hair and prance round

the earth as if you are one. You

couldn’t not be if you tried. You

can, however, think it, feel it, behave it as if

it were so. You aren’t here

to earn it. To remember it, Yes,

and to work it through.

Mass microbes work upon you–feathers

are the cartoon version (blessed though they be).

If no brook bubbles beside you, neighbors’

televisions blare craftless tales, and your mother

is dead, Remembrance,

work though it must and will take,

is what these days reaching toward your own death

are for..

Slow into morrow, into marrow..

not only could you lose everything–

you will.

With that might your cellular awakening bring glimpse

before the end

Gold of what you are made.

Next door

18 Saturday Apr 2020

Posted by feralpoet in change, community, nature, poems, poetry

≈ Comments Off on Next door

A cat has moved in next door.

Tuxedo.

White whiskers and a spot at the window.

Lace curtains always closed now stay pinned aside,

for his sleeping and watching perch depends

upon the ever-changing sight of visiting creatures

for peanuts.

To the railings and porch boards come jay and squirrel

and crow, large as the cat zeroed in

with green eyes shining in face of black fur.

And lucky for me, this virus-induced foster

and I visit with eyes watching

through two panes of glass.

Provided, of course, no wildlife prevails.

In the new quiet of town,

sound of the bells reaches the house every quarter hour.

The big trees, strange as it seems, have yet to leaf out

like a reminder of the sickness slowing life down

even though spring

is in full swing.

What has sounded

08 Friday Nov 2019

Posted by feralpoet in community, home, honoring, learning, Loss, Love, nature, poems, poetry, the road, work

≈ Comments Off on What has sounded

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.

Perhaps for the first time.

04 Monday Nov 2019

Posted by feralpoet in beauty, becoming, courage, fearlessness, freedom, honoring, Infinite, movement, nature, poems, poetry, story

≈ Comments Off on Perhaps for the first time.

She pours glitter out of the glass slipper.

Ridiculous thing, sweat filled, fragile and unyielding.

With a moment’s further pause..

She hucks it and its mate straight

into the Sea.

Maybe there, in salty, living brine

they can return silica to sand,

or, at minimum, make homes

for lonely crabs looking

to entertain the holy wisdom

within their ocean-loving neighbors.

Glass slippers be damned, She mutters,

and skips off between broken waves and flattened

wet shore

simply to find her own fleshy rhythm.

Perhaps for the first time.

At the Crossroads

12 Sunday May 2019

Posted by feralpoet in break out, change, family, learning, light, movement, mystery, nature, poems, poetry, transition

≈ Comments Off on At the Crossroads

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.

Bloom

09 Thursday May 2019

Posted by feralpoet in abundance, becoming, change, Creating, devotion, discomfort, movement, nature, poems, poetry

≈ Comments Off on Bloom

Wild rose

has begun her bloom once again

held safely within bower of thorn and halo

of virile and lustrous poison oak.

She reaches toward fullness,

touched by bee and blue,

balanced in sun and flickering shadow.

We, too, grow into bloom,

toward heaviness of fruit

and bounty of seed for generations to come.

All in time,

all in good time.

Solstice

20 Thursday Dec 2018

Posted by feralpoet in honoring, light, movement, nature, poems, poetry, transition

≈ Comments Off on Solstice

We’re stirring the cauldron

the thick and sticky

syrup and grit

the mud pulling at our heels

not the bright spring sprout

with nodule of dew

but the dark, obscured, unformed

and weighty partner

the feeding stew

of shit, and fears, unspoken grief

broken tears

and mothering blood

offering slow-cooked nourishment

to the sprouts

that invariably come

here, there, we know not where.

Winter time,

soul, hearth, slumber and pie time.

May we hold growing light

tenderly

with encouragement

of the winter to come.

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