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Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone

~ a wild and sacred journey

Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone

Category Archives: return

In circles

15 Wednesday Oct 2025

Posted by feralpoet 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

≈ Comments Off on In circles

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.

A little time

01 Monday Sep 2025

Posted by feralpoet in approaching, Autumn, endings, fear, history, honoring, human, Immortal, loving, medicine, poems, poetry, rebirth, receiving, release, return, ride, seasons, slow, time, transition, welcoming

≈ Comments Off on A little time

Autumn grips with fast approach,

a fear, a sadness, an ineffective hesitation

in the cooling molasses wrapping us up.

Another anniversary rides toward its destination.

No keeping that horse at bay,

no desire to,

but apprehension sinks–

abide and wait, abide and wait..

with a little time,

it will turn itself inside out and

become a celebration…

Planting Stones

26 Thursday Jun 2025

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

≈ Comments Off on Planting Stones

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…

Mettle

02 Thursday Jan 2025

Posted by feralpoet 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

≈ Comments Off on Mettle

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.

A little

18 Saturday Nov 2023

Posted by feralpoet in community, listen, loving, movement, offering, poems, poetry, prayer, presence, rebirth, receiving, return, stillness, welcoming

≈ Comments Off on A little

We save each other’s lives 

a little

every day.

Follow a pointing finger,

find the child.

Hear a cry never

bellowed,

resolve the ache.

Listen through hands,

to a quaking,

a breaking

of a heart yet again,

and turnings of ages will echo

through bone.

These are callings

answered by few.

Let the unmoved move

with slightest

kindest

deepening

touch,

reach stars buried

and waiting

for a return to dark sky.

We save each other’s lives

a little

every day.

In this is more

than enough.

Shadow

29 Thursday Jun 2023

Posted by feralpoet in community, movement, poems, poetry, rebirth, receiving, release, return, shame, transformation, welcoming, wonder, work

≈ Comments Off on Shadow

Wrestle your shadow until sweaty and limp,

stand up,

press powder to forehead and cheek,

adjust pants and what’s in them–

whichever or both or none–

but set yourself right for the outer world to see

that nothing is happening, not a thing is at stake

and amble down the road as if not fully consumed

by what you almost let slip.

Your badness, your weakness, childishness and

ugliness and incompetence.

Tattered cloth, disheveled hair

they give you away but more

the look

on your face

of shame, perhaps shrouded in pride,

with taste of bile

flooding your tongue

Ah!

What effort and energy wasted

on the inevitable.

Rather than hide and deny,

cover up and clean up,

try turning,

turning toward your shadow in greeting..

Soften instead of wrestle,

invite instead of deny,

look gently, giggle and come to know…

in the folds of great being–wonders and understandings,

unexpected magics and compassion.

Light, dark, braided.

Depth.

Beautiful.

Walking along

24 Wednesday May 2023

Posted by feralpoet in light, poems, poetry, rain, return, song, sound, spring, walking, water

≈ Comments Off on Walking along

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.

The snakes are waking

23 Sunday Apr 2023

Posted by feralpoet in change, light, movement, poems, poetry, receiving, release, return

≈ Comments Off on The snakes are waking

The snakes are waking, I feel them

stirring below ground.

With each step through dry arroyo,

around sagebrush, around stone,

I prepare for the sliding S–

Sssssss.

Warming earth holds us both,

one oval hole under plump cactus,

one casita on a hill.

Hello quiet ones,

we two stretch ourselves toward growing light.

Singing through dawn

20 Thursday Oct 2022

Posted by feralpoet in approaching, beauty, poems, poetry, return

≈ Comments Off on Singing through dawn

Coyote’s been singing through dawn,

calling sun back

from behind the mountain with quivering jaw.

She sounds young,

experimenting with her prowess.

Golden locust leaves hang silently, cold,

awaiting their restful drop.

The pale grasses sing too,

while sagebrush sustains Earth’s bass notes.

Turning of a new day can hold us,

more steadily than any mother..

we need only remember.

So long ago

06 Friday May 2022

Posted by feralpoet in Body, grief, naked, nature, poems, poetry, return

≈ Comments Off on So long ago

What kind of oppression is this

for women to hate their own bodies into submission?

To tuck, flatten, cut, shape, build, color,

paint, starve, carve, feed, hide, cover, sculpt

and bind

such unique beauty and presence

to conform to something else?

For someone else?

Many are even convinced they do it

for themselves.

What, and whom, does it serve?

How long have we lied to,

hated, pushed away, contrived

and disappeared ourselves?

It goes beyond gender.

(Choose any system and look at how

we’ve turned it against ourselves.)

Ever noticed a peacock, tiger, or,

hell, a goat

do the same?

How ridiculous.

And cruel.

To what god have we bowed

when discarding the body we have been given,

one never to be created twice–not ever to be seen again–

to be wanted? appreciated? included?

Ohhhh let’s gather another tribe instead,

shake ourselves loose from those heavy chains

clamped on our wrists so long ago

we couldn’t possibly remember.

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