Category Archives: story

In circles

15 Wednesday Oct 2025

Posted by 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

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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.

In her corner

18 Thursday May 2023

Posted by in anger, father, food, grief, mother, movement, pain, poems, poetry, story, water, words

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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.

The wind is up

09 Sunday Apr 2023

Posted by in listen, movement, poems, poetry, receiving, story, traveling, wind

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The Wind is up

and her voice big. She sweeps

and dips, grabbing and forcing flee–

her humor boundless as her movements.

She carries tale from far, far away,

distance being her spirit flying,

and your ears are the intended settling place

for the riches of that unique story.

However we have cuffed our own ears after

having them cuffed,

we need remind them gently,

open,

yes, open–

gifts are coming and

we must prepare.

Long missed and calling

24 Monday May 2021

Posted by in change, land, movement, nature, night, poems, poetry, story

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Today, finally, I can sit in the sun

and let tears run their river course down upon

this new place I call home.

Walnuts in my teeth and blueberries in my belly,

I’m meeting the many pincher bugs residing here,

the flies and bees, jays, roses, swallows and eucalyptus.

I awoke suddenly night before last

not knowing what hit me until my senses explained

skunk had a nocturnal exchange with an uninvited guest

and the room had filled with the intensity of her defense.

I understand.

At times I could lift my tail and release my own musk

if I had it.

And then the neighbor whose

sexual escapade she sustained for nine hours

straight

left me crooked and grumbly for, well,

hours more than that.

But the mission bells ring, the hills that held me as a child

hold me once again.

Much will come of this, here, together

with land that made me work to the distant edges

of my heart’s own end.

Stories and word shall find matter,

yes,

and maybe my heart can rest and open again

in the constant cricket song and salted wind

of ground long missed and calling.

Perhaps for the first time.

04 Monday Nov 2019

Posted by in beauty, becoming, courage, fearlessness, freedom, honoring, Infinite, movement, nature, poems, poetry, story

≈ Comments Off on Perhaps for the first time.

She pours glitter out of the glass slipper.

Ridiculous thing, sweat filled, fragile and unyielding.

With a moment’s further pause..

She hucks it and its mate straight

into the Sea.

Maybe there, in salty, living brine

they can return silica to sand,

or, at minimum, make homes

for lonely crabs looking

to entertain the holy wisdom

within their ocean-loving neighbors.

Glass slippers be damned, She mutters,

and skips off between broken waves and flattened

wet shore

simply to find her own fleshy rhythm.

Perhaps for the first time.

Scars

10 Wednesday Oct 2018

Posted by in becoming, Body, break out, change, death, honoring, learning, loving, nature, pain, poems, poetry, story, the road

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Scars

attest to bridges crossed battling dragons,

to threatening rivers entered

that pushed at knees, sucked at ankles.

To deep mountaintop scree, ragged, sharp and steep where

falling

meant death and dismemberment.

We were there,

we know,

we learned.

Yours lay upon your body

differently

than mine;

equally, they shape us.

Scars pulse out of step with the rest.

Each must be attended to,

honored,

for what they give,

for what they gave up.

Where are the Grandmothers?

01 Saturday Sep 2018

Posted by in abundance, becoming, break out, community, family, honoring, learning, listen, movement, nature, poems, poetry, story, the road, welcoming, wonder

≈ Comments Off on Where are the Grandmothers?

Where are the Grandmothers?

With family torn, history unknown, stories never uttered,

lineage not spoken,

where are we?

We become dangling dolls, feet like bell clappers,

swaying this way and that with no ground

beneath us.

So utter.

Utter.

Utter your questions and longings to the Grandmothers,

the Grandfathers, the Sisters and Brothers who couldn’t grow up,

the sharers and protectors from the other side where

viewing carries a different, sideways, deeper,

beyond kind of knowing.

Stir the waters you can not see,

the current carrying you, and ask.

Ask.

Ask and the formations for you to hold and gaze at

reminding you of the support in the surround

can shape, at last, in the wet red clay

held by your praying hands-

Grandmothers, Come to me…

Family legacy

28 Thursday Jun 2018

Posted by in devotion, family, loving, poems, poetry, release, Sight, story, strength, work

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Undefined,

perpetually assumed,

the answer to the question

of family legacy.

Is it money?

Name?

Philanthropy?

Power? Fame? Title?

Accomplishment?

Keep digging. It resides

well beyond the surface of things.

Might it be anger, abuse,

enslavement, enslaving, addiction,

a thick poison, barely visible

and acutely sensed?

Might it be secrets held, shames and generations of fear?

Likely, aspects of these remain

and are being carried-

whether chosen or not.

The question then emerges from distant,

unvisited places, whispered

as warm mother to sleeping infant,

And what would it be for you

to transform

such a legacy, slowly, steadily,

with loving devotion

so as to soften- just a little-

the burden of a misunderstood life

with a dash more kindness, and fist full

of intent.

Far from easy, and miles east of glamorous,

that work may be your simple, impossible,

and singular gift

with the breath you borrow

here,

one day at a time.

Halfway through

10 Sunday Dec 2017

Posted by in aging, becoming, change, devotion, Expanse, poems, poetry, story, the road, wonder

≈ Comments Off on Halfway through

And what if it turns out,

or turns in or turns about,

that you find yourself starting over

-o-v-e-r-

at roughly (obscurely) halfway through

-as best you can tell-

the life you’ve been given?

Did you miss something along the way?

A flowering path, a waterfall dive, a hollow

to watch stars fall?

A tricky switchback, a higher climb, a conversation

with a person you ignored

(or whose shoes you noticed but whose words you never met)?

The questions fill every available basket.

Meanwhile.

An unobscured landscape has poured itself out

before you.

Maybe there,

there is the place to begin.

If you need more time

23 Thursday Nov 2017

Posted by in becoming, change, discomfort, learning, listen, Music, mystery, nature, poems, poetry, story, strength, vision, welcoming, work

≈ Comments Off on If you need more time

If you need more time

for the new birds to find you,

take more walks with your awkward, fledgling self.

Squawking and flight, a generous song now and again,

will always surround you.

Being the only of a kind in a place

opens more relationships than you might think, while

flavor of faith develops

with your stronger listening ears.

It is needed as you continue, seeing ahead

and noticing the talon prints you’ve left behind.