• About

Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone

~ a wild and sacred journey

Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone

Category Archives: the road

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.

What has sounded

08 Friday Nov 2019

Posted by feralpoet in community, home, honoring, learning, Loss, Love, nature, poems, poetry, the road, work

≈ Comments Off on What has sounded

What has sounded

to others

like endless gripe and grating unfinished complaint,

a chosen rageful fixation,

certain Pathology…

has been body and mind finding its way

through toxic darkness.

Nature being destroyed by humans

in blind arrogance and greed,

consumption wired into how many “likes” and “followers”–

those empty signs of worth and feedings of narcissism–

in ever-widening circles,

in rapid speed, increasing.

How.

How does a body and mind adjust to such devastation?

To home being pillaged and raped?

To the Temple filling with piles of trash,

masses of people,

noise and excrement along every path?

There is no adaptation to that.

There is constant heartache

and anger.

With home now being just another thing for sale

and silence and solitude disappeared,

what illness have we invited through our collective front door

in exchange for one more meaningless photo

gone viral?

It’s time we spend time on the virus

we have ignored

for entertainment.

Along the long road

16 Wednesday Oct 2019

Posted by feralpoet in aging, becoming, change, community, death, home, learning, Loss, poems, poetry, release, the road, work

≈ Comments Off on Along the long road

Without a story to tell

who are we but people who have not lived.

Watching children play,

approaching hand in parent’s hand

to a park that is my front yard,

Spirit

is restored.

Sliver by sliver

and dose by dose.

While now there are trees that whisper and swish

in every kind of wind

instead of uninterrupted concrete and destructive voices,

I have the long view

knowing what it is to live between rage and despair.

And I don’t like who it made me.

Sometimes I realize,

when before I could not,

we may become who we do not want to be

simply to return, along the long road,

to who we are.

Tumbled like rocks

12 Tuesday Mar 2019

Posted by feralpoet in fearlessness, mundane, poems, poetry, Run, stillness, the road

≈ 1 Comment

I put myself down

sitting smaller after words from my own mouth

tumbled like rocks onto my own head.

I put myself down

so you wouldn’t have to–

having learned early if the insults would come

better from myself than anyone else.

Shrinking, inflated, making a joke of myself

before you could slip in, undercut, diminish.

Having grown up to be little

must break

at some point.

That point is now,

and I take it back.

I didn’t think I was special,

I knew I was.

Scars

10 Wednesday Oct 2018

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

≈ Comments Off on Scars

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.

A new life begins

09 Sunday Sep 2018

Posted by feralpoet in adventure, beauty, becoming, break out, change, learning, movement, poems, poetry, the road

≈ Comments Off on A new life begins

A new life begins

and the old one decides to throw a tantrum

pulling pans, mid-bubble, off the stove,

pitching a canister of oats across the tile

unscrewing the cap on the honey just enough

to guarantee a disaster the moment it’s needed.

You’re in the muck of it,

the stuck of it,

and an evil grin blooms slightly on your old life’s face

who sits nearly out of sight

helping you to forget its presence

until

you shake your head, bounce dust out of ears,

and spot it there.

No sir! This game, while it has been fun,

is no more.

With a step, a bit of a jig, you leave not only the kitchen

but the house

leaving whatever sticky puddle behind

for the ants to clean up.

Where are the Grandmothers?

01 Saturday Sep 2018

Posted by feralpoet 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…

Flock

26 Thursday Jul 2018

Posted by feralpoet in becoming, break out, change, community, courage, family, movement, poems, poetry, release, the road

≈ Comments Off on Flock

He

a sheep

like us all

walks, one day,

in a new direction.

Sheep don’t do that,

leave their flock.

In this he becomes a black sheep

turning away from name, money, easy street-

which isn’t so easy.

With him, now, he carries weight

of blame, criticism, and no one bothering to ask

why.

Years, many, pass.

His children grow, not knowing the stories he never told,

seeing him as just another sheep folded into the flock.

They wander for a path of their own.

One, separating from the rest, looks back

wondering

why he never asked why.

The turning of the world

22 Tuesday May 2018

Posted by feralpoet in family, Immortal, Infinite, mystery, nature, poems, poetry, the road, wonder

≈ Comments Off on The turning of the world

It’s the twist of a good story

to say it begins where it begins.

Because who is to say what happened first?

The lines we lead, roads we walk, families we form,

always

always something came before..

and during.

Land of birth, food of soil, light of sun,

books read, laughter lived, sex, music,

slumber.

Infinite details of the turning of the world,

and equally many perspectives,

makes knowing

a sweet impossibility.

← Older posts
Newer posts →

Subscribe

  • Entries (RSS)
  • Comments (RSS)

Archives

  • January 2026
  • December 2025
  • November 2025
  • October 2025
  • September 2025
  • August 2025
  • July 2025
  • June 2025
  • May 2025
  • April 2025
  • March 2025
  • February 2025
  • January 2025
  • November 2024
  • October 2024
  • September 2024
  • August 2024
  • July 2024
  • June 2024
  • May 2024
  • March 2024
  • February 2024
  • December 2023
  • November 2023
  • August 2023
  • July 2023
  • June 2023
  • May 2023
  • April 2023
  • March 2023
  • February 2023
  • January 2023
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • March 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • June 2020
  • April 2020
  • February 2020
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • December 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • July 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014

Categories

  • About
  • abundance
  • adventure
  • aging
  • ancestors
  • anger
  • approaching
  • Autumn
  • Awareness
  • beauty
  • becoming
  • Body
  • break out
  • change
  • community
  • companion
  • confusion
  • connection
  • continuance
  • courage
  • crafting
  • craving
  • Creating
  • creation
  • dance
  • dark
  • daughter
  • death
  • Delight
  • Deliverance
  • departing
  • devotion
  • digging
  • discomfort
  • dissolution
  • distance
  • dread
  • dreaming
  • dreams
  • Earth
  • Elements
  • emotion
  • endings
  • eternal
  • Expanse
  • family
  • father
  • fear
  • fearlessness
  • fertile
  • Fire
  • flight
  • flood
  • food
  • Found
  • freedom
  • friends
  • generations
  • ghosts
  • giving
  • global
  • grace
  • gratitude
  • grief
  • growing
  • Healing
  • heart
  • history
  • home
  • honoring
  • Hope
  • human
  • Immortal
  • Infinite
  • Inspire
  • instinct
  • joy
  • land
  • language
  • laughter
  • learning
  • leaving
  • liberation
  • Life
  • light
  • listen
  • Loss
  • lost
  • Love
  • lovers
  • loving
  • medicine
  • monsoon
  • Moon
  • mother
  • motion
  • motionless
  • movement
  • mundane
  • Music
  • mystery
  • naked
  • names
  • nature
  • new
  • night
  • of sorts
  • offering
  • Opening
  • pain
  • peace
  • photos
  • play
  • poems
  • poetry
  • Power
  • prayer
  • presence
  • question
  • questions
  • quotations
  • rage
  • rain
  • ramblings
  • rebirth
  • receiving
  • release
  • return
  • ride
  • roughness
  • Run
  • Season
  • seasons
  • shame
  • Sight
  • silence
  • slow
  • snow
  • song
  • sound
  • spring
  • still
  • stillness
  • storm
  • story
  • strength
  • Summer
  • tea
  • thanks
  • the road
  • time
  • transformation
  • transition
  • travel
  • traveling
  • Uncategorized
  • undone
  • unlearning
  • violence
  • vision
  • visit
  • void
  • waking
  • walking
  • water
  • weaving
  • welcoming
  • wind
  • woman
  • wonder
  • words
  • work
  • world
  • young

Meta

  • Create account
  • Log in

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Subscribe Subscribed
    • Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone
    • Join 429 other subscribers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone
    • Subscribe Subscribed
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar