25 Thursday Jan 2018
Constellations on the ground,
stars underfoot,
snow falling in dark morning
on upturned face,
waiting hair, open palms.
Greeting a wide universe in winter-
its hush and hibernation beckoning on
hidden animals waiting
waiting
for a silent moment to show themselves
as weather weaves a way.
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.
02 Tuesday Jan 2018
Are you a border dancer,
never wanting fully to be here and
forever a passionate sliver of now,
sipping the drops, and drinking the deluge,
wondering what place you actually occupy?
It’s a slippery stick
meant for the ripeness of the forest floor,
unintended for adolescent hands.
What feeds does not come from you-
one so easily confused, acting comically small and guilty.
Real nourishment soaks in with time and respect
from Beyond-
origin of nectar and mystery, the breast milk
of endowed life in service to the Gods.
Leave the stick to its mushroom duff
where growth and decay follow ancient rhythms.
Dance there,
the place unnameable, infinitely creative,
and belonging to no one.
10 Sunday Dec 2017
And what if it turns out,
or turns in or turns about,
that you find yourself starting over
-o-v-e-r-
at roughly (obscurely) halfway through
-as best you can tell-
the life you’ve been given?
Did you miss something along the way?
A flowering path, a waterfall dive, a hollow
to watch stars fall?
A tricky switchback, a higher climb, a conversation
with a person you ignored
(or whose shoes you noticed but whose words you never met)?
The questions fill every available basket.
Meanwhile.
An unobscured landscape has poured itself out
before you.
Maybe there,
there is the place to begin.
20 Monday Nov 2017
Wanting to know what satisfies
an ancient hunger you’re not even certain is yours,
countless streets, endless questions,
bottomless pans, and tears of frustration
over a lifetime
have added up to a hillock of humus,
dark, fertile, and remembered.
The sought after whatsit, the toil of time and love,
may or may not ever amble up to you,
paws dirty with devotion.
The wanting filling your carved out places,
a blue, swirling smoke scented from the beyond,
is itself required elixir
drawing you deeper into life.
Cursing that desire away, and aimlessly trying to fulfill it
means trading your own gold for dull, already forgotten tin.
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.
19 Wednesday Apr 2017
Did you ever fall in love for the first time?
If not, I can tell you-
you’ll be changed.
The wind will be his kiss when he’s not
by your side,
colors will reach out with incredible loving hands,
the sweetness of a peach will impassion
every last one of your taste buds,
and music will have been composed, amazingly,
just for you..
Yes,
yes, that and more.
But that’s not what will change you-
not quite.
What will, however, rearrange your particles
after both the elation and inevitable suffering rip through,
what will wrap you up, enrapture your heart,
sing you to sleep, and bring you to greet each rising sun
with gratitude,
is a knowledge taught by your own body
that another’s adoration is not only not necessary
but that it was you who had to fall in love with you
all along.
But I don’t mean to ruin the game-
go forth
and fall.
03 Monday Apr 2017
Darkness, silence, brightness of stars,
silhouetted tree crowns,
the beauty of five a.m.
I’m not sure why we forget,
so readily forget,
the preciousness we participate in.
These troubles,
the wasting, threatening, destroying-
maybe turning ourselves right-side-round toward
birthing light
relies upon one task:
Remembering.
01 Saturday Apr 2017
Longing comes with the light,
and sometimes leaves with it.
That’s how it goes when
nobody’s looking.
But a quivering dog needs a soft gaze
to make it real.
Gentle,
gentle with your eyes
and any movement-
this pup can’t take a stare
or a jumping out of your seat to say hello.
Fill a small dish by the door and,
when its brown eyes and cracked nose part
the hillside grasses, sit visibly
but out of the way.
This little one is hungry.
More than that, though,
loving.
10 Friday Mar 2017
If suffering is the path laid down for us, by us
stone by stone,
How might we love
not only each one but
the trying burden of laying them
on the surface of this Earth
(could as easily be the moon. still, it’s not)
for our own feet to walk upon?
If meaning is found
simply
in carrying our suffering
in devotion
– not as martyr, but pilgrim
with full unknowing of why,
or even how-
to the making of a life,
by virtue of its having been given,
then
might we lean into the expectations
life holds for us
and do right by them
by our own true Selves-
that Essence buried
beneath all the heaviness requiring our backs, hearts, hands
which knows what it is
to burn brightly
for no reason
what
so
ever?
.
.
* with thanks to Viktor Frankl
Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone 