And how death does remind us,
You
are alive.
On this new day he is no more.
Thank you, Thich Nhat Hanh.
And how
22 Saturday Jan 2022
Category Archives: poems
This is your life
19 Wednesday Jan 2022
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
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
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
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.
If your love
20 Monday Dec 2021
If your love has courted you
winding and strong
to the door of Death, again, again,
ya kinda gotta wonder- – what
in
the
hell?
(An exclamation ! floowing from that question
seems most appropriate
but not in sting of a shaming judgement, No, no,
as it needs usher in a tender resignation,
an emollient of wondering in which
you slip a hand beneath that tiny bird,
approach slowly with soft eyes to ask,
how, oh how, did this loyal heart of mine learn
to love like that, to love those with inclination,
without qualm,
to do those things they’ve done?)
A new snail trail, steady and true, awaits
in this, the second half of life . . .
How to begin a day
13 Monday Dec 2021
The storm is making noisy mouths of the shingles this morning,
and pom-poms of the pine’s branches.
Rain beads the panes,
droplets meet socially, gather in their weight
and river down, down towards wet ground.
A limy glow. Needles sticking long on fence, on chair,
all throughout lavender’s hair.
Yesterday at this time crows were dancing in sunrise light,
pink orange, sorbet swirl of clouds,
save one:
She sat still atop a black fir, staring.
Our four eyes, in settled bodies, soaked in the welcoming arms
of our rising Sun–
now, She knows how to begin a day.
Tiny frog
04 Thursday Nov 2021
Tiny frog visits
at the threshold.
Years have passed since she has come.
As much time feels past since this rain.
Her throat pulses against my finger,
our skins touching,
and the gold lining her eyes gleams.
I admire her form,
the soft wetness.
We are utterly different.
Warning her of the dangers of my swinging front door
I walk her to the altar
where water and succulent,
kind attention and beauty gather.
She knows her way around.
With thanks, we part.
Until her return
in the following young morning.
Languages
31 Sunday Oct 2021
I keep checking for messages.
They aren’t there, of course.
What sends messages these days
doesn’t use the language I grew up learning.
How many languages don’t we speak because of those
we had to,
pinning words down with force for
efficiency
exactness
precision
accuracy
literalness lopping off the Song of the universe?
There is light, instead, what trees eat,
reflecting on the full belly of blood-red
garden pot,
and wind talking the leaves high,
high up the towering eucalyptus.
Clapping faeries have flitting epochs to share,
and they await those willing to listen
to languages bodies understand.
More quiet than I yet can hold
is the ear that can translate for me.
God, I know what I would like to be
in service to what is far greater~
please, show the winding way…
Burial
29 Friday Oct 2021
What’s it like to live the lives of the ghosts that inhabit you?
You know it well.
Ask the parts with poison in a syringe
ready to inject each time you step off their worn,
possessing and ever hungry killing path.
They seek–you know this, even without words–all light,
your light,
and they search with senses unimaginable,
like magnetism, or gravity, the tender flame
at the heart of you. And feed.
The very heart of you, the Spirit of you,
the stuff they, while living, could not tend in themselves;
the marrow of their being they nurtured with death ways.
When can the exorcism begin? How can you reclaim
your own Self,
that beauty and gift of which no one else is replica?
That’s in you,
still.
Reach for Her with every ribbon of strength
you thought you’d lost.
You are here, now, with feet on this sweet Earth,
not lost, no, only wrestling
with the ghosts your family left for you to battle.
Some warriors do not carry sword or shield,
yet they walk the battlefield alone, year after year,
collecting back the bones of those who were truly lost,
giving them, finally,
Burial.
Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone 