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Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone

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Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone

Category Archives: prayer

Spirit joins in

19 Saturday Jun 2021

Posted by feralpoet in aging, change, learning, movement, poems, poetry, prayer, water

≈ Comments Off on Spirit joins in

In the pain of remembering

body and mind hurt

but I look to the Crow on the wire

and hear Hummingbird marble singing

above the fence.

I think in this knitted brow sometimes

tissues rearrange–slow motion, soft earthquakes

moving tiny body mountains towards

a little more soul food, a morsel for the ant,

a morsel for me.

Humanness is a tanglement,

confusion a rushing river thick.

Taming forces in an undoing of habit

I drop below the river top

and listen

to deeper music that dances along

within a different rhythm,

one at which the learning turns gently

and Spirit joins in.

Between prayers

23 Sunday May 2021

Posted by feralpoet in abundance, aging, becoming, giving, growing, Infinite, land, learning, poems, poetry, prayer

≈ Comments Off on Between prayers

The fourth decade

walks me between prayers,

of one blinked forth twenty years ago,

a blessed ‘Fuck it’ rising from the earth

to cup and guide and split open, and

of another gathered in the thirties–simply

‘Thank you.’

With solid scaffolding of experience under me

I can walk with the first tucked in a back pocket,

the second, on more able days, held in heart,

and the infinite wanderings between

growing a garden of ripening fruits and blooming flowers

with seeds maturing slowly toward ground

rich with Life ready to receive them.

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.

Golden key

04 Thursday Jun 2020

Posted by feralpoet in beauty, break out, dark, devotion, global, listen, movement, offering, pain, poems, poetry, prayer, presence, the road, transition, work

≈ Comments Off on Golden key

A big moment arrives,

likely without your (intentional) bidding,

when no Golden Key arrives.

You swear you aren’t looking for one,

assure others you know there isn’t one,

and yet?

Yet, when you open that door

none appears.

And everything comes up short.

Where is your way through?

Surely, following such pain and strife,

with the endless effort and hope,

some

Thing

will

raise its head and wag a greeting

of arrival.

Because your faith needs food.

Instead, you are told

humanity is a shithole

with moments of beauty between.

And how that isn’t trauma added

to the heartbreak is beyond you.

Because Faith needs not only Beauty

but connection.

Not unending loss

and rage,

but nutrients for the lost souls and

the begging souls who try,

try,

try

for a beautiful life founded on self-respect

and a worth unquestionable,

unquestionable by color, origin, belief,

or day alive navigating a difficult and messy

and Beautiful world.

Finding the faith within to keep on

may be the magic

all of us seek.

Days long

29 Saturday Feb 2020

Posted by feralpoet in change, Infinite, learning, Loss, pain, poems, poetry, prayer, the road, work

≈ Comments Off on Days long

Days long

become years

and one most loved becomes a harm,

and through protection and confusion you seek

understanding of drastic change,

and the heart must learn

Safe? Not safe?

Safe? Not safe?

While you search blindly for pillar of heaven,

with eyes playing no part in this pilgrimage,

Heaven rests closer than the newly loud beating

in your chest..

so it goes and on it goes and through you go

asking for direction to the River when it has sunk

far underground within life that continues on

always always life continues on

beyond twist, injury, death and journey toward Spirit

alone.

November 3

03 Sunday Nov 2019

Posted by feralpoet in change, learning, mystery, offering, pain, poems, poetry, prayer, receiving

≈ Comments Off on November 3

Is it true that time changes?

Not here, but there, not past that imaginary line

but an inch before it.

Waking today brought an altered number

on a clock

yet Sun didn’t hiccup or falter.

Who are we to roll such dice?

Upon opening my eyes today

I’m living out a past pain through new labor.

Which is true–

the old pain, the fresh effort?

November 3 offers lost agonies returned,

a dawning, growing prayer

and broadening recognition of space

expanding into the Grandmotherly arms

of a beckoning,

wrinkled

and rollicking humor.

Woman, shave your head

08 Friday Mar 2019

Posted by feralpoet in beauty, Body, break out, home, honoring, learning, Love, movement, pain, poems, poetry, prayer, strength

≈ Comments Off on Woman, shave your head

Got long hair?

Got any hair?

Woman, shave your head.

And collect the assumptions hoisted upon you,

the ones you weren’t quite certain,

but now you know,

have been dragging you down.

Belly scraping the road.

Woman, got long hair?

Shave your head, and learn how confused

perceptions and expectations of you

are.

Where you may have been pretty, attractive,

desired,

suddenly the sight of that is gone

and people, most people, don’t have a clue

how to respond, how to comprehend–

But you were pretty.

You were attractive.

You were desirable.

Watch them turn their eyes away, unable

to look at you.

Hear them,

hating what they see and can’t understand,

say, “You look so…different.”

The least offensive, yet unasked for, comment

they can make.

Woman, got long hair?

Shave your head,

and discover what assumptions shove you low, in place,

a shallow ditch where you have been put.

Some react in adoration,

others with titillation, however briefly,

or with shock envy disbelief disgust.

Woman,

if ever you didn’t fully get it,

not in the tautness of your sinews,

how the appearance of a woman is believed

to belong

to the public,

that it is open invitation to

critique judgement opinion desire and rejection,

stick a personal act of transformation,

like dynamite,

within social view.

Woman,

if you want to know not

what others want you to be

but the stuff you’re made of,

Go,

Shave your head.

Day opens

10 Wednesday Oct 2018

Posted by feralpoet in abundance, Infinite, Music, nature, poems, poetry, prayer, weaving, welcoming

≈ Comments Off on Day opens

She lays in bed, sheet lightly covering.

Out the window clouds of rain draw near,

without hurry or menace.

Slow jazz fills the room, no one else close

to breathe the same thick, gentle October morning

in her nest above the street.

Pumpkin pie awaiting baking,

lamb thawing on white tiled counter,

and the low-lit day opens towards everything

she loves.

In the cross-hatch seat

28 Tuesday Aug 2018

Posted by feralpoet in abundance, becoming, community, gratitude, honoring, joy, light, loving, nature, poems, poetry, prayer, weaving

≈ Comments Off on In the cross-hatch seat

In the cross-hatch seat of the chair

wooden, dusted in time and use,

a cat

curled

and sleeping.

Looking over at her, floor boards below and sun

reaching through a far window,

doubt can not waver the sweetness

of a morning with feline, coffee, a book

and silence rising from the woods outside.

Where lies

26 Sunday Aug 2018

Posted by feralpoet in abundance, beauty, becoming, break out, change, community, courage, crafting, Creating, devotion, dreams, freedom, honoring, listen, movement, nature, poems, poetry, prayer, release, song, stillness, welcoming, wonder, work

≈ Comments Off on Where lies

If a push,

somewhere a pull.

Where taken,

pray it has been given.

The Western sense of community..

in itself a paradox?

We’re part–everyone–of centuries of history

cycling, tumbling, molasses-thick onward

with nanosecond “advances.”

No mystery that you, and you, and I

can not seem to catch our breath.

Faster is not forward,

as bigger not better, nor more money success.

Where lies the soul stuff making life

Life?

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