20 Tuesday Dec 2016
Roots set in frosty, frosty ground
hugged by grit and worm and mole,
the slowlystretchinggrowing silence of
tips touching stonewetsoft.
Ears needn’t hear, nor eyes see-
vitality cups darkness
and nutrients find pathways
up up up
to light of day, and sharp starry sky.
The underearth knows quiet
and no-hurry, no-worry.
Sit awhile atop roots and wonder
just wherehowwho far
your own earth arms wriggle.
30 Sunday Oct 2016
What if we were as fierce
about seeing
finding
knowing beauty
as ugliness, fear, and lack?
Would we not become greater protectors
of the overlooked and precious?
Would our focus not
change
from what we want to avoid
to that asking
for further creation?
From being barefoot on rain-soaked earth
while sun breaks clouds overhead,
to cinnamon in coffee,
the perfect heat of a shower,
sustained note of a well-played cello,
to strangers reaching for each other’s hands,
and friends who have plenty to eat,
a car that starts,
the woodpecker we’d like to curse
for waking us out of sleep-only-
its tapping brought us a view of the sunrise,
and places in existence where peoples
are honored and heard.
Wouldn’t the goodness flood us
even if
nothing else could we sense but
the beating of our own heart-
wouldn’t miracles fill our days?
18 Saturday Jun 2016
I am a shooter.
In all the ways I hate myself, in all the ways I hate others,
in any destruction of life in which I partake,
in my cruelties and holding on to misunderstandings,
in any willful resistance to seeing difference as beautiful,
in my own brokenness, impatience, refusal to love,
I, too, am a shooter.
And how
may
my life-
this singular life-
be a devotion toward loving and mutual living
on this planet,
the one inhabitable wondrous place
we all share
and call home?
Born into violence and out of grace,
how may my breath move
from the one toward
the other…
With each day
I ask,
in the face of violence,
for grace.
14 Saturday May 2016
An open chair awaits you.
Clearing it of a tumbling-height stack
of NOs
took some doing.
Approximately four decades worth.
And now that the rich, carved wood and velvet
of that high-backed chair holds nothing of mine,
there’s space for you at the table.
Admittedly, food hasn’t been cooked…
Uhm tea, however,
I’m ready to commit to.
Candle, flame and flowers adorn
ridged lengths of milled tree
where our cups may sit.
Breath hasn’t yet dropped to belly-
waiting on your arrival out here in the valley
has caught it between Yes and Oh shit.
A place here, with me,
at a royal oak table welcoming us both
is the stretch of generosity and strength
born thus far.
24 Thursday Mar 2016
When things fall apart,
rest.
Pieces
litter the floor,
and probably your heart.
Let them.
A new equilibrium
finds itself
in the passing of light into dark
and back again.
Art gives time
another meaning.
The brokennesses-
curious remnants of another life-
are nothing.
Simply raw material
for the most exquisite
mosaic
and
your next offering
of soul.
15 Tuesday Mar 2016
Being a canvas
life- God- paints upon,
wouldn’t you say it’s only right,
natural,
to celebrate
each bit
from soft eye, scar,
scratch divot curve and curl,
shorter leg and smaller foot
to brisk brilliant sneeze?
Divine art doesn’t exactly
deserve
a critic like you-
or that guy from the coffee shop-
in the end,
does it?
15 Tuesday Mar 2016
I am not your secret,
a thimble to tuck in a pocket.
Entire universes buck
at being diminished thus.
Fires rage, planets tremble,
stars burst into being.
If contracting a life into bite-size squares
soothes your longing,
please chop yourself to pieces instead.
Thimbles protect.
Creation expands…
12 Friday Feb 2016
What comes today
is a certain vast unknowing.
And not the passing everyday variety of
hmmm
what might i have for breakfast?
But of dipping flight of bluebirds
and the melodic chants of meadowlark.
I don’t think the lady bug hitching a ride on my calf
had less than the feeling
sweeping spring grasses before god.
Please call in
what you fear will destroy such a small house.
You deserve what undulates the desires
of entire galaxies.
09 Tuesday Feb 2016
Possum climbs,
turkey flies,
mountain lion scales
the world tree.
Let not the abstraction keep you
from seeking roots and canopy
joining here and now
to everything.
Rainbow’s colors extend beyond the range
of simple sight.
Ready your claws, flutter the brush tips of your wings,
and remember dangling from a curled tail
is familiar as waking with morning light.
Bark against fingertips,
each with their tiny circle of identity,
will become a welcomed roughness
softening into skill.
05 Friday Feb 2016
In sustaining fire
where we both met
what becomes smoke is not the matter.
Essence
doesn’t burn.
If, in flame, you see only loss
merely mettle takes the test.
And if, beyond even that, your heart cries
More,
the task, the unchanging call,
will encircle
with leaping light
and silent whispers
to say,
You are enough.
Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone 