Category Archives: poems

The open door

12 Saturday Feb 2022

Posted by in change, community, growing, home, honoring, learning, listen, Love, poems, poetry, transition, unlearning, wonder, work

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Somehow it is February and 79 degrees.

What a wonder.

We have entered a new world, mostly of our own making.

Turning back is a fantasy holding some together,

imagining it isn’t happening holding others.

Our earth mama talks with us, through us, always–

she shows more loudly by the year

the honest consequences of our actions.

Birds sing loudly on the other side of the open door,

more kinds than usually heard in chorus.

They bathe bathe bathe and chitter, twinkling songs..

A magical day,

yet strange.

Prayer flies through the open door that we all learn to listen,

listen and praise, find ourselves on our knees ready

for change that serves Life.

And the girl goes ‘Aauchgh!’

09 Wednesday Feb 2022

Posted by in poems, poetry, song, the road, water, wind

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Sitting there, facing a willowy creek,

alders tipping their heads over the pavement,

the girl goes ‘Aauchgh!’

It may have been because of a masterful song

warbling out my mouth,

‘Ohh the sheep dung’s got strong, oh

oh and it wafts in the wind, oh

sheep dung smooooke…’

That may have been what got up her ire,

she was doing homework in the other front seat

afterall,

but who’s to say.

‘Ohh the sheep dung’s got stroooong today…’

‘Aauchgh! Stop!’ She yurdles,

(not sure that’s a word, but she did it),

while holding back the quivering corners of her mouth,

trying very hard to be

s e r i o u s.

‘Guh, stawwp!’ But I can’t ya see,

because that dung sure’s having its way today.

So, the song keeps going and the girl keeps groaning

and all is well,

sitting and waiting under the waving alder trees.

Open space

03 Thursday Feb 2022

Posted by in change, poems, poetry, undone, wonder

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Ever fallen into the space you’ve created?

Like, sold the furniture, given away the dehumidifier,

cast off an extra dish, sock, bathroom scrub,

old toothbrush donated to the cause of grout?

(That shit loves growing a dark beard no matter

the effort. Water welcomes tiny critters.)

Well,

I have too.

The marvelous twisting ways of COVID

includes–demands?–tickles forth

sudden reversals.

That just sounds silly.

COVID giggles at removing the floor beneath your feet.

All in a day’s work for wee virus folk.

Sooo, here I am, furnitureless, floorless, planless,

hmm…less, less, less

is good.

And laughable.

In giant open space I sit,

wondering . . .

May the way rise up

30 Sunday Jan 2022

Posted by in poems, poetry, the road, transition, wonder

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This new dawn

brings a big swale of soul-saving,

a no-net-now, Lord help me, cliff-dive into

open waters disguised as dry, dry, dryness of

desert mountain.

Plants rattle distant leaves,

winds pitch tiny gravel, clack click click,

down unseen scree slopes.

Scooping myself out of what no longer serves,

serving myself into a richer soup

the likes of which I’ve not yet known,

gulp,

answering the call looks a whole lot like crazy,

stepping into an unfinished painting

feels well beyond reason.

Good thing neither much matter.

Ho ho wah ho ho wah ho,

may the way rise up, rise up to meet,

Wah ho ho Hey.

Lights are richly set

26 Wednesday Jan 2022

Posted by in approaching, poems, poetry, prayer, presence, transition

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Ever dismantle a life?

Good lord, it’s a lot of work.

The giving away and selling, shuffling,

sorting, fussing and figuring.

Seems easy. Until you do it.

Then this liquid giggle burbles up

as you find you’d never intended to do

this thing that any spare,

and some not so spare,

time is suddenly dedicated to.

Now, leaning towards a future

you’ve not the faintest whiff of a clue about

as it pulls onward,

you stumble spin, slowly, staring out

in all directions,

including the one that’s got you in its tractor beam..

Zzzzzorp.

Dismantle, dismantle,

ditch this, heave that, pawn that,

huddle at this memory’s blast radius,

shake off the hold of that stubborn monkey,

you know–getting on with it,

despite the maniacal grip of safety,

security, and the other obsessions of mind:

Possessing illusions isn’t wealth, I tell ya.

So, here goes, scraping out the last from the burrow,

to leave only pounded earth.

What comes next rests just behind the heavy velvet curtain,

lights are richly set,

the theater hushes in the dark…

This is your life

19 Wednesday Jan 2022

Posted by in death, learning, poems, poetry, prayer, presence, the road, welcoming, wonder

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This is your life.

You will be abandoned again and again.

Until you stop abandoning yourself.

You will die.

Die before you die

and what emerges will hold you.

The way is long

yet it will end quickly.

What bursts through you like a flower singing

to the sun?

What cat are you curled beneath the moon?

Whatever you hold dear will be gone.

So,

how can the shimmer and spark of you

become

fully

in this moment?

Have you ever exploded a potato?

17 Monday Jan 2022

Posted by in break out, food, poems, poetry

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Have you ever exploded a potato?

Not poked enough fork holes and made

an unintentional bomb

inside your own oven?

Well, apart from being a mess, it begins

with a sound,

one not unlike an overripe pineapple

dropping onto your roof.

And the ears up, animal attention wanting

to locate what on earth

just happened.

Then, maybe, the run towards the baking tubers,

ready to investigate.

Tip open the door, hesitantly, and there it is,

splattered across every surface in tiny

pieces. And a laugh

when you spot an emptied skin,

shell of the bursted culprit, at the verrrrry back

bottom, well beyond reach.

Swear to god it’s smiling there

resting hollow

and strong.

‘Ahahaaa,’ it says, ‘and that!

is my end.’

Hell is a how

15 Saturday Jan 2022

Posted by in companion, dark, poems, poetry, receiving, wonder

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Do you know hell?

Hell. Funny word. It is a concealed place;

Only, it isn’t a place–it has no where.

Hell is a how.

How withheld the light. How the ghosts possess.

How living has not Life within it.

Flames? There may be…but they cast dark upon

darkness, and a way beyond seems

to have no way at all…

Until, a laugh. I mean, like the kind that jiggles your belly cells.

Or whispered breeze wafts rose your way,

or homemade bread greets you as you walk in the door..

Once in a while–and a while in hell is certainly interminable–

the lid gets cracked. Gasp! The light! Air!

…holy hell, how did I come to you (or, you to me?)…

Keep following the holy, wondering,

wondering,

robe yourself in the wondering:

She’ll guide you through the non-place

back to you,

and Life,

richer for the knowing, with a precious crumb more

for the offering…

Rain

29 Wednesday Dec 2021

Posted by in giving, motion, poems, poetry

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Globe diamonds dangle in slanting sunlight

following morning rain.

Nothing could be brighter,

more precarious.

The river can’t gulp fast enough

after all this rain.

Days of wetness, slow, fast, hard, intermittent.

Maybe nothing more beautiful,

except that it falls exquisitely in the shallow bowl

of the bird bath.

Oh, it’s musical, even on the other side of glass.

Years of dryness and thirst, drought damage

and wondering, fires and more fire,

and now this.

The frogs are having a field day.

A field month.

And my they are sweet.