Category Archives: Opening

In circles

15 Wednesday Oct 2025

Posted by in Awareness, break out, connection, death, Earth, Elements, endings, eternal, fearlessness, human, laughter, learning, liberation, Life, Opening, play, poems, poetry, rebirth, receiving, release, return, ride, Sight, story, time, visit, welcoming, wonder, work, world

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Time, in circles, rolls and spirals on..

we’ve been bamboozled and blinded by firm

starts and finishes–

Yes, birth to death,

but this existence is no line.

Pluck a stitch and you’re speaking with your grandmother,

dead long thirty years back.

Pick at another and your future babies,

whether this life or another,

giggle in morning thunder.

Our brains have been trained

by unnatural and convenient beliefs

unrecognized as such.

Put on a pair of enormous shoes borrowed

from a stranger and step..one

two three..

backwards to gather a new look

at the vastness of stories dancing about.

Teach your eyes to see the impossibly invisible,

what tires and confuses you now becomes,

in truth, a consequential but very funny

game–

remember your heart

and play it well.

New

18 Thursday Sep 2025

Posted by in ancestors, beauty, devotion, grief, Healing, heart, history, home, liberation, Life, medicine, mystery, new, Opening, poems, poetry, question, shame, song, transformation, unlearning, violence, waking, weaving, welcoming, wonder, work, world

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Confusion tumbles out of us,

violence and shame, ever pointing–

over there, over there.

Look in the mirror, friend, we each must

consider our part, the veins of ugliness within,

ignored, denied, pushed away.

Wounds need care,

sunlight and tenderness.

Otherwise, they fester.

None goes unhurt, none walks without darkness

to be held.

Point not that way, and that,

drop the pointer all together.

We are a we, and in it together to reweave

an old, old decaying story into blessing and art,

connection, nourishment and song.

What beauty brings us here now?

What Beauty to be bestowed back to Life?

Ask the ancestors,

they know,

ask the ancestors for help–

healing takes everyone, form and formless alike.

Let the new story begin..

it breaks through already

in the most delightful, unexpected ways.

Our bodies

02 Wednesday Jul 2025

Posted by in Earth, Elements, monsoon, offering, Opening, poems, poetry

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Clouds form over the distant olive hills,

soft in morning light.

By afternoon, when heat has cooked the world white

and this desert sky holds back some of its blue,

those same clouds will tower and be belly grey and thick,

heavy with rain they can’t wait to loose.

Our bodies will vibrate with thunder.

Planting Stones

26 Thursday Jun 2025

Posted by in Earth, family, generations, human, movement, offering, Opening, pain, poems, poetry, prayer, release, return, unlearning, walking, woman, wonder, work

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A fresh blood, now, runs from this wound,

dripping thick, womb-blood red,

to thirsty ground.

The trail follows me as I leave,

planting stones.

Each feeds dark Earth,

sticks weapons of their confusion, fast.

My back, low belly, my heart unwilling,

unaccepting soft targets,

half a lifetime on.

Planting stones returns

this deepest and cruel ancestral story

to the Mother who fashions stone into gold,

medallions for witful generations to come.

Flowers may bloom, cool waters may move,

Hummingbird brings those open prayers

to Heaven.

It ends with me.

I walk away into land of blowing dust,

with stars shining straight from the hands of God,

I walk away toward the fire

ever burning on…

The unsettlement

01 Sunday Jun 2025

Posted by in confusion, courage, Opening, poems, poetry, seasons, spring

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Critters chasing through high trees,

squirrels limb to limb and birds,

in flight, one to another to another,

and the song,

songs,

braiding on the wind,

wind gathering applause of soft and hardening

oak leaves,

dark, thick, fresh to the season,

and I,

far into the unsettling,

year of the unsettled,

take counsel:

keep faith, drop the choking self-doubt,

open back up, out, into Spirit–

no flower is itself

without

loss,

loss of safety’s deceit.

Nothing guarantees certainty but

betraying yourself for mere

survival.

That rushing in?

Trust it.

Spring

05 Monday May 2025

Posted by in abundance, community, companion, connection, creation, Earth, Elements, Opening, poems, poetry, seasons, spring, transformation

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Bees have buried themselves

in crab apple’s blooms,

hummingbird launches skyward,

chattily, all the frills of mating on display.

Stripey-legged bobcat’s ghostly moves

stitch the garden knoll

while anise hyssop digs into her new home

and calendula flowers at hollyhock’s feet.

Everybody’s humming their song…

Full toward sunrise

21 Friday Feb 2025

Posted by in death, endings, fertile, offering, Opening, poems, poetry

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A sister dies,

and in morning

the robin atop a bare-limbed tree sings,

and sings,

bold rusty breast full toward sunrise.

Frost clings to windows,

the fuzzy round-leafed plant beside the door,

and plans.

Nothing moves.

Arranging a future, an impossibility,

a flourish at the end of a dance

not being danced.

Coffee, a book, clean water,

a quiet night,

follow the small blessings.

They are, really, thousands of rocky miles

from small,

tall as the crown of a tree attracting music

to the cold, restful,

fading dark.

In the waiting

03 Monday Feb 2025

Posted by in creation, dark, endings, fertile, Opening, poems, poetry

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Lightest snow falling,

earthward stars drifting,

fireflies curious to kiss the ground,

and a new birdsong has joined dawn.

Migration keeps on,

my breath expands with the music

and I smile.

The art of waiting requires immense courage,

no panic at the unknown can fix it,

choices wrenched from an undeveloped state

only put off the inevitable.

Wait when the waiting asks.

You’ll see its velvety cloak swish

from the corner of an eye.

Wait.

Dissolution and decay create the fertile

in darkness.

Until a yes, an enoughness of a way, opens,

no right action.

Seeds know when,

now is for tending inner terrain

and now is for trust.

In the waiting, the fruit.

Beyond the wire

15 Wednesday Jan 2025

Posted by in Opening, poems, poetry

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There’s a coyote

who prances for prey, alone,

bushy tail and quick jaws,

out by the downed orchard ladder,

knows

each morning,

to amble by, crosswise, unhooked fence

to closed.

I don’t know where he wanders but

his visits thread the world,

animal to animal,

and my mind follows full marled fur

beyond the wire and through the long field

of thin-armed oaks.

The next meal is plenty to concentrate on

with wide openness,

allure, risk, and slow lichen growing,

a bounty of waiting.

Mettle

02 Thursday Jan 2025

Posted by in abundance, approaching, beauty, becoming, companion, courage, dark, devotion, discomfort, dreaming, fertile, food, Found, freedom, human, Love, loving, medicine, movement, night, offering, Opening, pain, poems, poetry, prayer, presence, receiving, release, return, storm, water, welcoming, wonder, work

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Withstand the Void.

Please.

Be upon your own two small feet,

at the edge,

darkness cloud-forming,

ledge a tipping perch.

Night ocean crashes on rock straight below,

the rhythmic waters moon-guided, rich and dangerous.

Call forth in echoless open and

wait,

the wind will snap and take it up.

Let the Void offer

all your fears, inadequacies, foolishness,

rage, grief, shame and sorrows.

Be with them.

Sense their intolerable

movements in your one body–

these are the monsters

you are to marry.

In union, living through and beyond

your exiled, an invitation

to what Beauty is yours deeply,

the gift to be offered back.

Leave no aspect behind–

you are here to love the denied.

Blood needs circulate.

Bones need grow. Air must enter.

Bring the outcasts and castaways under

warmth of your grand cloak.

Allow them refuge of your beating heart.

Welcome the unwanted,

a feast-filled table is set to feed everything

in dawn of this new year.