Category Archives: the road

Close at hand

26 Saturday Apr 2025

Posted by in devotion, human, Life, movement, poems, poetry, prayer, presence, the road, travel, walking, welcoming, wonder, work

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The Mountain meets the clouds,

the Mountain stands on the other side

of the world.

Moving your feet, left

then right,

muscles flex, breath rushes in

then out..

you are fire,

heart pumping,

you are water,

blood rivering through,

you are air,

lungs bellowing,

you are earth,

bones holding, levering, building.

Shoes crease, then crack,

soon tear,

body aches,

mind strains.

You can journey to the Mountain

on two feet, on all fours, on belly

with hands clawing along.

You can also sit–

the depths required, the same–

whatever territory that needs be traversed

travels with you,

rests with you,

sleeps within you,

requires the all of you.

Awake.

The Mountain is close at hand.

Burgundy overstuffed chair

24 Thursday Oct 2024

Posted by in home, poems, poetry, the road

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Sitting in a burgundy overstuffed chair

in the children’s library,

one of the most joyous places to be,

with an oval blue rug edged with smiling kids,

their woven images holding hands, underfoot,

a mom begins reading a story aloud.

A green spotted carved dragon listens in,

and the enormous bear and giraffe,

they lean closer from high,

cappuccino-colored corners.

I thank the world for libraries,

for books, for people behind counters who say,

Yes.

Once again, having no house key on my ring,

I breathe in while I still can,

knowing all this will continue on

without me.

Twisted linen

20 Monday May 2024

Posted by in generations, movement, mystery, offering, pain, poems, poetry, the road, weaving

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Twisted linen in the closet:

rumpled skirt, wrinkled vest..

Who would imagine shirts

could dent.

Comical to even consider remedying that.

Seems I can not stay put.

A magnet polarized from place

when place is done.

Not that I want to be washed from the creekbed.

I’ve bolted, leapt, flown, jumped and been

catapulted;

I’m praying for a gentler crossing

this go round.

The hanging lines held in linen

are a telling road map

of more to come.

A place I have become

12 Saturday Mar 2022

Posted by in laughter, motion, movement, names, new, poems, poetry, the road, transition, undone, unlearning, weaving, welcoming

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A place I have become,

with no knowing where home is.

I carry home with me and in her, them, him I reside.

Words only bring us to the doorway,

imagination opens the door.

In this extended departure

the landscape broadens, roads disappear,

names change, expectation reveals its hollowness,

and desert mountain awaits.

A place I have become, moving upon this earth

without long plan, without people on the receiving end,

with nothing of permanence.

Laughter will replace fears and doubts soon enough.

For now, chasing details fills the days.

This place I become will carry me to the grave,

wherever and whenever that shall be.

In the meantime, feeding the soil, sitting with what is,

allowing for what will be, dropping off

assumptions,

and listening softening listening softening. . .

I want to know this place deeply and dearly

before I go.

And the girl goes ‘Aauchgh!’

09 Wednesday Feb 2022

Posted by in poems, poetry, song, the road, water, wind

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Sitting there, facing a willowy creek,

alders tipping their heads over the pavement,

the girl goes ‘Aauchgh!’

It may have been because of a masterful song

warbling out my mouth,

‘Ohh the sheep dung’s got strong, oh

oh and it wafts in the wind, oh

sheep dung smooooke…’

That may have been what got up her ire,

she was doing homework in the other front seat

afterall,

but who’s to say.

‘Ohh the sheep dung’s got stroooong today…’

‘Aauchgh! Stop!’ She yurdles,

(not sure that’s a word, but she did it),

while holding back the quivering corners of her mouth,

trying very hard to be

s e r i o u s.

‘Guh, stawwp!’ But I can’t ya see,

because that dung sure’s having its way today.

So, the song keeps going and the girl keeps groaning

and all is well,

sitting and waiting under the waving alder trees.

May the way rise up

30 Sunday Jan 2022

Posted by in poems, poetry, the road, transition, wonder

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This new dawn

brings a big swale of soul-saving,

a no-net-now, Lord help me, cliff-dive into

open waters disguised as dry, dry, dryness of

desert mountain.

Plants rattle distant leaves,

winds pitch tiny gravel, clack click click,

down unseen scree slopes.

Scooping myself out of what no longer serves,

serving myself into a richer soup

the likes of which I’ve not yet known,

gulp,

answering the call looks a whole lot like crazy,

stepping into an unfinished painting

feels well beyond reason.

Good thing neither much matter.

Ho ho wah ho ho wah ho,

may the way rise up, rise up to meet,

Wah ho ho Hey.

This is your life

19 Wednesday Jan 2022

Posted by in death, learning, poems, poetry, prayer, presence, the road, welcoming, wonder

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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?

If your love

20 Monday Dec 2021

Posted by in abundance, aging, break out, death, Love, loving, new, peace, poems, poetry, shame, the road, wonder

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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 . . .

The road back

13 Tuesday Jul 2021

Posted by in poems, poetry, return, the road

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I, like many, come from a long line

of self-hating people.

The road back from that twists,

arduously,

and is often blind.

Today’s prayer for each of us~

May your return be beautiful.

May the old break be discovered and lovingly mended,

honored in its new foundness,

and a way of celebration, a wisdom

to walk along softly,

be born again in you.

Such kindness

17 Tuesday Nov 2020

Posted by in learning, mystery, pain, poems, poetry, shame, the road, welcoming, wonder

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Such kindness lives in “I don’t know how.”

Past a freedom of “I don’t know”

little HOW asks in the mystery tender

after years of silently absorbing assumptions,

a force feeding of belief that you are supposed to have

already

walked the path no one had shown you and

you hadn’t yet found.

How, on this fault line shaking, cracked

and dappled light lit earth

are we to know before we know

and who–back to who before who before who–

syringed that toxin into our bloodstreams

fueling generations of debilitating pain and shame

saying we are broken

and must fight a way through

simply

to

endure?