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Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone

Category Archives: transition

The unanswerable

16 Friday Jul 2021

Posted by feralpoet in approaching, movement, poems, poetry, still, transition

≈ Comments Off on The unanswerable

How do you prepare for something

that can’t be prepared for?

How do you lighten your load knowing

what comes next requires lightness yet

her terrain, her ways,

are utterly unknown?

A voice calls down lengthy corridors,

twisting the unremitting labyrinth,

sound bouncing, all warps and echoes and dives–

who raises it may be behind, ahead..

Impossible to say.

So you must sit where you are,

without guidance or plan,

steeping in agitation, discomfort, a readiness to go,

still,

while the journey approaching may be next week

or a year from now.

Alas, where you are is what you must be.

And to what will that bring you?

Wah, there rests the unanswerable.

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.

At the Crossroads

12 Sunday May 2019

Posted by feralpoet in break out, change, family, learning, light, movement, mystery, nature, poems, poetry, transition

≈ Comments Off on At the Crossroads

Tension builds

where the incomplete blow

as storm winds

toward completeness.

With worn boots and ragged clothes

after years in the woods

a brightness comes.

What had been too frozen to speak,

let alone move,

imprisoned by experiences of youth,

is warming with daily lighting of the flame.

Who had been silenced

who had been harmed

who survived by freezing in time

and not breathing to avoid giving herself away

is no more a fossil

a casualty

a repetition of a story too old to tell.

With spark, a light in thick darkness,

a new way forward.

Without knowing, or plan, or shape

to follow,

entry into another world–

full capacity–

at the Crossroads.

Solstice

20 Thursday Dec 2018

Posted by feralpoet in honoring, light, movement, nature, poems, poetry, transition

≈ Comments Off on Solstice

We’re stirring the cauldron

the thick and sticky

syrup and grit

the mud pulling at our heels

not the bright spring sprout

with nodule of dew

but the dark, obscured, unformed

and weighty partner

the feeding stew

of shit, and fears, unspoken grief

broken tears

and mothering blood

offering slow-cooked nourishment

to the sprouts

that invariably come

here, there, we know not where.

Winter time,

soul, hearth, slumber and pie time.

May we hold growing light

tenderly

with encouragement

of the winter to come.

New moon

06 Saturday Oct 2018

Posted by feralpoet in change, nature, poems, poetry, transition, welcoming

≈ Comments Off on New moon

A phoebe sings now

from the next rooftop,

pumpkins are stacked upon hay bales,

and sunrise lights the sky in spreading fires.

At last, moments between tourists lengthen

and first drops of rain rise earth scents up,

up, around, and beyond.

Sleeping things wake, traveling ones return,

the cold sneaks back in cover of night.

More stars will be visiting

with the approaching new moon.

Dawn met night

29 Saturday Sep 2018

Posted by feralpoet in gratitude, lovers, movement, nature, poems, poetry, receiving, transition, welcoming, wonder

≈ Comments Off on Dawn met night

Dawn met night over the water

long stretched, iridescent and calm,

between the two.

Flying above the waves, sips small and lapping,

flushed a morning smile to lips

already turned up at the sweetness of fall.

Light casts red

08 Wednesday Aug 2018

Posted by feralpoet in change, community, Fire, home, learning, listen, movement, nature, poems, poetry, transition

≈ Comments Off on Light casts red

August,

the light casts red.

Dry season wilt and crunch, yellow

becoming brown,

and hungry fires chew acres

to miles

of hillside and range.

Fire’s satiation point moves further out

each passing year

as our own deafness to species and spaces

beyond our own grows.

Dim the constant noise of phone, computer,

bottom line, app and sale-

play a role smarter than consumer-

and how life continues from here may

be more inclusive, open, mindful

and naturally sweet.

The fires have much to say.

Now

01 Wednesday Aug 2018

Posted by feralpoet in abundance, adventure, becoming, courage, devotion, discomfort, dread, fearlessness, freedom, honoring, learning, movement, mystery, nature, pain, poems, poetry, release, stillness, strength, transition, welcoming, work

≈ Comments Off on Now

He slams the door behind him.

You think, Good riddance!

When next your heart stops and breath catches,

out comes a gasp, What have I done?

Melting down, falling to bits, the world goes

from complete sense to non-sense,

and it is on that iceberg of moment

(and each drifting ice island following)

when wondering, Is this true?

might most gather you back together in a form

strong enough,

wise enough

to hold all the sensations and feelings

threatening to tear you to pieces

to be with Now,

an actual fullness of Life

for which you have the grandest capacity.

This day

31 Tuesday Jul 2018

Posted by feralpoet in aging, becoming, Body, community, fear, honoring, learning, Loss, nature, pain, poems, poetry, transition, work

≈ Comments Off on This day

This day he walks slowly,

approaching in nearly a shuffle.

Handing me a candy- the kind once known as penny-

saying, this aging stuff, not so easy.

I used to think, he shares with a soft shake of his head,

I could stay a perpetual teenager. But not so.

His health, not good,

the poetry, music and culture

having always fed him

no longer enough.

Or so it seems to him, on this day.

Clutching a small handled paper bag, one somehow

always carried,

he steps away, looking emptily into distance

not physically there,

leaving me with a golden,

foil covered chocolate coin never to be eaten

and an appreciation for his difficult facing

of what he long imagined

could be outrun.

White on blue

12 Tuesday Jun 2018

Posted by feralpoet in poems, poetry, transition

≈ Comments Off on White on blue

At dawn

a church steeple, white on blue.

Down metal pipe railing

bathing suits and towels, ocean wet,

drape pink green red.

Hour after hour,

into day following day,

these months fill with surface disturbance-

construction, scheduling, maintenance,

scramble scramble scramble while

low currents move unfelt.

Details have a way of eating time.

Sitting by the water before sunrise

dips mind slowly back into mind.

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