24 Wednesday May 2023
Walking along
a smile comes easily.
The air smells green–
that much rain has fallen.
Crimson buds fill out on prickly pears
as beetles stack in consummation
and the crickets serenade.
Even the light feels pregnant this afternoon.
23 Tuesday May 2023
Listening to sparse raindrops slowly
hit the glass.
Through the windshield
a mountain rises still touched by snow.
In the field,
no prairie dogs bark from rounded rim,
staying instead
firmly below ground.
Thunder sounds from above,
walls of the adobes drip widely,
roof edges like spilled paint cans.
One sparrow’s unafraid of the movements
and sings from a line
as lightning sparks to the west.
18 Thursday May 2023
She sits in her corner, turning page
after paper page…
Held by two walls, floor and wood ceiling,
she removes herself
from still more broken connection.
Out there, nothing but loss.
In here, with pictures and stories, friends and
a giving, participatory world.
With father gone for work, back for dinner,
home only for irritation, judgment and sleep,
With mother avoiding pain through worry,
busyness and food,
anger unthinkable,
The girl is left knowing–
beyond the material,
she’s on her own.
Books act as balm
until, later, distance and exploration
return her to the early grief
of being alone
surrounded by people.
The nectar soothes her broken heart,
tear by reclaimed tear.
16 Tuesday May 2023
Enter the back field,
forgotten field,
the ignored place,
avoided place,
and wait.
In that expanse,
glacially, co-arising finds faces
to show you.
As knocking starts,
though there are no walls,
no door,
trust who comes…
Way out there on the dirt
created by every death ever,
soon enough including your own,
while it feeds infinite Life,
a quaking begins in your heart,
echoes of the pulsing earth upon which
you stand.
Do not run.
Throw off your shoes, find your feet,
let the soles of you do the listening.
As the countless losses
that have brought you to this moment
wash through, over and around you,
within those faces being shown,
greater understanding dawns–
eventually.
And though the grief you’ve held away,
both knowingly and not,
feels like it will do you in as, finally,
you agree to do more than encounter
this abiding friend,
how concrete and personal it all has seemed
now shimmers,
quivers,
like water,
like air,
and its permanence–never real–dissolves.
Traces remain,
beauty of fossils, of exoskeletons,
and strength to take another breath
is given,
not simply found.
Lightness accompanies darkness
in their timeless marriage
consciously
once again.
12 Friday May 2023
Sweep the threshold,
unlock the door,
put the busyness away–
what comes is far
too important.
Build a fire,
quiet the house,
all your sensing is required.
Hear the hoof beats?
The full horse breaths?
Mice may scratch in the walls,
spiders rattle the roof,
you’ve nothing to do
but be home.
Movements beneath your skin,
flashes of thought,
quickening heart,
allow them.
This is a welcoming.
You don’t know who approaches
only that they must.
Freedom blooms
as we set
a place for everything.
What you carry in your blood
has voice–
Let her sing.
30 Sunday Apr 2023
Had I never entered this country
dark magic would have remained part
of fairy tales.
But tales are born of happenings,
not purely imagination.
What can be directed towards light can also
be twisted black.
Centuries of pain does that
to people’s souls,
leading them to avenge this blessed world.
Living amongst the workings,
talk will be talk, suspicion
suspicion,
and yet what I’ve seen
turns firm ground to putty.
You’d best not leave any hair behind.
Still, the cruelty that fuels and fires does,
in the end, destroy
those who’ve let ghosts poison them.
And the original curse
rolling through the generations lives on
until someone down the line breaks it
by gathering up their own light.
29 Saturday Apr 2023
Butterfly sipping on plum blossoms,
pink singing tree crowned
with a cloud of happy bees.
This morning,
an inch of powdery snow,
this afternoon,
sun has melted it in blue.
Spring loves its wild swings.
28 Friday Apr 2023
Two girls
walk a small street in balmy late afternoon,
past nice houses,
down a line echoing the coastline,
ocean sand steps away.
They stop on a mounded grassy spot,
at muffled edge of sun and tree shadows,
to sit.
And where, while being girls,
have they chosen
to park their behinds and stare
but directly across from the wide concrete stairs
leading up to the boys’ army and navy academy.
To watch and wait.
One girl, daughter of another daughter
molested by her own father,
later becomes a stripper,
breasts hugely augmented,
spending her nights being watched.
The other, also daughter of a daughter
molested the same way,
runs into the arms of men twenty-plus years
older,
never wondering why.
Two girls deliver themselves,
prey to predators.
This
is a common story.
27 Thursday Apr 2023
Crying
to stop the dread,
‘Please don’t make me go.’
Crying to be heard,
‘Don’t make me go.’
She pauses. (Thankfully.)
My small body leans, limp,
into hers. Hers sits now
on couch spine, hands around me.
Before us, the hall yawns toward stern front door.
‘Please can I stay home today?’
Another shudder,
more tears.
In my growing self I know
what school takes, what it gives away
as if useless and bad.
But.
I was marched out to face again
what I hated,
and these many years later I know–
had my little heart been heard
that day my life would have changed.
27 Thursday Apr 2023
Shaving my head on the mesa,
white sun rising behind juniper hills,
I became myself again.
I did not know I’d been gone.
With each new song of bird, new ray of light
and dropping hair,
freedom lifted, heaviness fell.
I did not know I’d been gone.
Voicing thanks to Sun
and all goodness that surrounds,
I also fell,
fell fully into the arms of Spirit.
Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone 