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Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone

~ a wild and sacred journey

Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone

Category Archives: welcoming

Tyranny over

03 Friday Feb 2023

Posted by feralpoet in beauty, becoming, break out, devotion, discomfort, fearlessness, freedom, honoring, Infinite, movement, poems, poetry, water, welcoming

≈ Comments Off on Tyranny over

Tyranny over self,

Tyranny over body,

Tyranny over the Land.

Carve mountainsides, slash prairies, pollute valleys, hate,

hate and control, cellulite, humps, wrinkles, and jiggles.

Hide and hate, turn upon the landscape inner,

the landscape outer–

one and the same.

Within this domination resides

everlasting distraction from the rhythmic pulsing

of our own heart’s rivers.

In service to the status quo.

As Earth’s waters are Life,

our blood is Life.

Break the shaming silence–the waterways know

to indulge their curves, bumps, and depths

singing praises through movement,

of tree roots, reflected sky, grating rocks

and wriggling fish.

We have only so long to celebrate and dance

our one beloved Body:

Skip the contempt useful to maintaining outdated ways.

Jump straight into dark waters full

of more Beauty than any one lifetime can hold.

Welcome

02 Monday Jan 2023

Posted by feralpoet in movement, poems, poetry, slow, welcoming

≈ Comments Off on Welcome

Grasses bow with snow,

Sky holds close in devotion.

This new year begins slowly, quietly,

in movement of winter’s own way.

Without parties, or any others around,

it is I and the paw print makers,

the wing song creators,

and a settled wind sure to stir again.

Welcome to another turning,

may Spirit and Soul be our guides–

much rides on our every decision,

our orientations carve our shared future.

What, then, is born?

28 Friday Oct 2022

Posted by feralpoet in Body, devotion, Loss, offering, pain, poems, poetry, presence, slow, unlearning, weaving, welcoming, wonder, work

≈ Comments Off on What, then, is born?

What, then, is born

of disconnection that bleaches the Soul,

fragments Spirit and sends it flying

never to land,

to land in place where it may feed and be fed,

stoke the tender embers of Beauty herself?

What have we traded to get

things?

Things.

Paper money and all the rest, what is it

but nothing,

nothing, especially

when we make it everything and carve ourselves

and one another up

for more of it?

Call back,

Call back,

Call back yourself.

Call back every shard and ripple,

each precious drop, and voluminous chunk.

None but people bringing themselves back toward wholeness

can right this ship we share.

Please, let us remember,

let us remember all

to bring ourselves

Home again.

A place I have become

12 Saturday Mar 2022

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

≈ Comments Off on A place I have become

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.

Enter the River

23 Wednesday Feb 2022

Posted by feralpoet in honoring, learning, movement, poems, poetry, receiving, transition, water, welcoming, wind

≈ Comments Off on Enter the River

A new movement is afoot,

with steps unknown. There are none.

Enter the River, whose banks

support you now.

Fear may be stripping away, removing the old,

debriding the wounds, a turpentine in the veins.

Let it be.

She beckons. Enter, and be moved.

You will learn–they will teach you.

Call up faith, rebuilding the trust you think

has been lost.

When ready, your own feet will guide and

root you deeply in place where waters and winds

may dance you, earth holding close.

In time, in time,

the Way emerges…

This is your life

19 Wednesday Jan 2022

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

≈ Comments Off on This is your life

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?

From sleep into waking

29 Friday Oct 2021

Posted by feralpoet in aging, approaching, community, devotion, digging, dreams, friends, Healing, honoring, poems, poetry, prayer, presence, weaving, welcoming, work

≈ Comments Off on From sleep into waking

A day arrives

during night dreaming

when you come to retrieve a child, an infant

in button-up full-blue onesie,

from a house expecting you

and, upon entry, you recognize the woman

whose house it is. She rises from a room sized table,

oblong, solid, warm and wooden. An enormous shined egg.

Around its edges sit monks, scholars, drummers–

elders all. It feels better than anything you’ve felt

in ages.

She not only welcomes you, while rising,

but asks you to stay.

Come join us.

She says that. . Come. Join us.

Somewhere, slung between infancy and elderhood, you stand,

at times barely, and then holy invitation is spoken,

warmly.

Keep hollowing out the space,

hallowing the place,

where the invitation can finally cross from sleep

into waking.

The River

25 Friday Jun 2021

Posted by feralpoet in devotion, poems, poetry, welcoming, wonder

≈ Comments Off on The River

And if the River guiding you IS the ache

bruising your deep, seeming no end,

where might She be bringing you?

Taking you, I mean?

It feels to be a taking, I know,

but come a day,

come a day,

there will be a giving to this blind journey

and it will show

the Becoming of who you truly are.

Let be with the River,

She is holding you…

At no distance at all

24 Thursday Jun 2021

Posted by feralpoet in abundance, beauty, home, learning, nature, poems, poetry, welcoming

≈ Comments Off on At no distance at all

Today is the wagging tail of a red squirrel,

and an open door.

It doesn’t close now, outside being home,

inside being a storage place.

Yesterday two hummingbirds chased hawk,

funny youngster learning her way,

an iridescent green-backed fly sat still

at the center of a jasmine flower

and I laughed in the toppled, strong arms of a ten year old,

who pushes me always to the floor loving

every taboo body part and happening of hers

as she, too, learns her way.

In the tumbly, bumbly flight lessons

of the two towhees

I witness a desire to enter through the propped door

after hopping the limits of the garden perimeter,

speaking confusion and discovery.

Here, together, the sky-reaching cypresses,

the eucalyptus bird hotel

and the sweeping vultures,

all of us, we are finding our way;

some heavier with faith and knowing

bring needed weight into the feet of those

easily tousled by winds blowing hard.

What must it be to be full

each day

with relation, within the great motions,

settled during movement

and drinking in the finite, ever-renewing Beauty

at no distance at all to a single one of us?

Light the flame

06 Saturday Mar 2021

Posted by feralpoet in companion, Fire, listen, poems, poetry, stillness, welcoming

≈ Comments Off on Light the flame

If your animal rhythm is faltering,

light the flame.

Light the flame at the altar.

Allow Her pulse to fish swim and bloom

back into skin, through muscle,

through lung;

that fur rises, ripples, musky and thick.

She contours your breath when breathing

can be forgotten.

Light the flame

sit

sniff;

Her rhythm returns to guide

along paths stony, unmarked

and yours,

to wander and learn

alone.

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