27 Sunday May 2018
The transformed steals the love-light,
not for greed
but for our preference.
What’s left behind in grit and dust,
even discarded in rank alleyways,
is the work of the chrysalis.
The
cramped
confused
identity-erasing
dark
of wrestling for the next life form,
of flight,
of nectar,
of tumbling in gravity’s wave
among flowers, bees and blue.
Remember what beauty lies in ugliness
before walking away from the misunderstood.
08 Tuesday May 2018
What name can be given
to soul hunger for nature,
for bodily starvation of slow rhythms ancient
and known?
Waking, sleeping, sunrise, moonset,
yes
even in the most stricken times we can find ourselves there
part of the ever-larger cosmos,
not pinned tight to trivia and misbehaviors.
But
skin suffers thirst for soil-
this hard concrete place rebounding with noise
can’t feed what does not eat the civilized.
Sit down with me, here,
let’s break sidewalk together,
chip away until earth smiles again at sky-
silent seeds await their patient growth into trees.
04 Sunday Mar 2018
Posted in adventure, change, discomfort, home, poems, poetry, transition
≈ Comments Off on Displaced, longing, spent
If displaced, longing, or spent
a gnawing twistiness of home
erupts
with an ugh, tug, a grrrrmph
and out tumbles a wish-
well, a need-
for a spot, covered nook, a nest or wee corner
stocked full of warmth, quiet, books
and visiting songbirds to the window ledge
but
an illusion of safety, the net many speak of
(what, again, is the fabric of that?),
mocks such steady states in a mind
abuzz with too much time
and hunting
for the next place to call one’s own.
06 Saturday Jan 2018
At a beginning,
with the closest solitary prayer being
“I don’t know,”
my hips work to keep the rest of me in the saddle.
Movements in the sky-
valley fog, and clouds weaving high through the hills-
live their nature in waves, currents, and vanishings,
grand teachings of the cycles of continual change.
Sometimes, I wish I knew.
But, unintentionally, artfully, that greatest illusion
has been set on the shelf-
a furry trickster friend
who flashes me a smile, and snaps his tail
at the most wicked, and absurd times.
I don’t know becomes
a delicate, gritty daily worship.
03 Wednesday Jan 2018
Through the night, and every inch of its darkness,
you keep trying to get home.
Missing buses, the next being the last
before a no service emptiness of midnight.
And the priest you met was no priest behind that supermarket,
but a desperate man wearing inside out shirt
with black short sleeves and shabby collar.
Waiting, waiting, wanting and anxious
with one goal in mind,
standing alone at the bench eager
to get to the end of the line when you can start walking
a long stretch of highway
in the wee hours
to a home that no longer exists
yet is the one place to which you know the way.
31 Sunday Dec 2017
Posted in movement, poems, poetry, transition, welcoming
≈ Comments Off on Underground wiggle
An underground wiggle,
earthworm-sized, easily missed,
and loud enough to wake ears primed
for uncivilized silence, whispers
in the last hours
of a year angling for its restful grave.
Without words,
the new year spreads vital language
through gritty, and fungal layers.
A hibernating, loved and longed for
movement in recent seasons
promises to return-
and the buzzing, flavorful potency builds.
07 Thursday Dec 2017
Posted in abundance, adventure, change, discomfort, dreams, light, nature, poems, poetry, transition
A lopsided egg of a moon
invited me into sleep
even after shutting the curtain against her light.
She stirred wakefulness,
and a sloshing fancy of dreams,
dreams of time travel and remembered people,
an upsurge of unknown futures and staccatos of history.
New land, an unwritten life, and no one to catch me
disturbs digestion,
but moments come when slow, long-distance swell
breaks overhead,
washing my shoulders, sucking at my ankles,
shifting immense vulnerability to a salty, and fresh excitement.
14 Tuesday Nov 2017
Being caught by gratitude
between yes and no, by was and is,
between having and not,
brings the dance.
Heart suddenly solid, present and strong
like stone, not ice, with loving-
goodbye floods body with needed nectar
for not an awayness or an isolation,
neither a grip nor a grab,
not a mine or a missing or a fright,
but a moving of grace
onward.
30 Saturday Sep 2017
Sorrow pools,
tears break the rim and,
with them, shadow of knowing
that salty drops rise when it matters-
any thing,
something,
this thing-
and a quarter turn brings
appreciation,
saying
stop
in this place, now-
where old meets new
gently
and slow.
17 Sunday Sep 2017
The river turns here,
around a mountain- one ancient, familiar, not to be forgotten.
From mature, back to youthful, thick water tumbles on
toward old age.
No guessing when, nor how, not even what awaits
on the other side of the mountain,
but slowing into transition, touching each passing stone,
scoops up now drop by sweet drop,
the flavor of entry into great unknown.
Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone 