21 Tuesday Nov 2017
Born from uninitiated folk,
as most Westerners are,
creates holes in knowing that let icy winds enter.
Weaving oneself back together requires attention,
a briny commitment, earthly,
sight of an old fist-width rope tying the now to a millennia of then:
the family line.
Mostly invisible shoulders carry
the wobbling essential unformed
human walking known as you.
Start asking questions.
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.
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
08 Wednesday Mar 2017
Grass,
green, high, lilting..
Spring wears her tall rubber boots
and wanders through
from seedling to start, from birdsong to unfurling fiddlehead.
Crossing slopes slowly,
around and up,
She eventually meets their tops
having tapped every waking wildflower
with a wink and a sweet how-do-you-do.
Her hair trails behind her in post-storm breeze.
With a softened gaze, you’ll catch a snippet of calico print dress
somehow waving
from a corner of your own sunny imagination.
31 Tuesday Jan 2017
Eyes heavy from reading news,
a seemingly apocalyptic caravan of events
and, yet, spirited fires light here, there, and there-
in me, in you, over the next hill where soft glow flickers.
Hours on the phone, speaking up, speaking out, thanking,
and yet another heart lifts during great challenge.
Tend to that fire consistently,
have water always near to temper and moisten,
eat of earthen foods to slow, slow
into the long journey ahead.
All are precious in this global transformation,
take another’s hand in yours in pure reminder.
20 Friday Jan 2017
A silence is being called.
Not
a silence of submission, or
apathy,
shame or forgetfulness– but
an emboldened silence,
one for hearing voices drifting
through cracks
and memory.
Listen.
Dear God, Listen-
a new way demands a creativity
well outside the bounds of what has come before.
This silence is gentle, receptive,
immensely strong.
Recall, from the depths,
how it is yours, ours, and
not.
Bones speak, be certain
they are included.
07 Saturday Jan 2017
Those pesky brains,
the ones making a someone of a something-
who’s been serving them the kool-aid?
Settle them down before we cart them off
wearing special white outfits complete with ties
they can not undo.
We’ve categorized, cauterized, organized, familiarized
until the ize of the horizon is known.
Imagining may be cute when your feet are small
but now we must grow up-
taller, smarter, firmer in stance and action;
Up-standing people further things, uphold things-
We are the Someones of Somethingdom.
Reality has a timeline, afterall.
And, then, while we adhere and cohere
we’ll do something silly like have a child
who will see all we won’t
and giggle until she’s sideways
leaving at least one of us to wonder
just what exactly brings that spark to her eyes
and rolling thunder to her tiny, mirthful belly…
(Go ahead, It says- research that.)
01 Sunday Jan 2017
The new year could be a prism,
a prison,
an ache and an embrace.
We just never know,
until at once a soft wind settles and we do.
Offer a kindly nod to the dark,
and an opening of arms to the light-
both will accompany us the whole way;
it is our work to acknowledge and learn from
the full spectrum every day.
May we remember to create Beauty
and move skillfully as we can
with the cinnamon dance of Mystery..
And, please, mind the tenderness of little toes.
26 Monday Dec 2016
He felt it
upon walking through the door.
He met the spirit of the place
and, recognizing not his hunger but
the food that quelled it,
eyes searched piles and corners,
while feet took him further inside
than the visit required.
Touching countertop, dishing questions,
noticing, lingering, sensing, offering,
eventually the task on the roof-
the reason for the call-
pulled him back outside to search there, too,
for holes letting in winter rain.
A ladder leans against an eave
though his warm blood and yellow shirt
departed down cold canyon road an hour ago.
17 Saturday Dec 2016
It wasn’t through torn paper
blackened shoelace
or scuffed wall
that I found You.
It wasn’t the constant push
circulating fear
or I-must-do-betters..
not even the inch between
the sidewalk and me
plus a bruised knee.
Not exactly.
Add the non-starts,
regimented dreams,
what’s-wrong-with-me’s,
attempts to fit when fitting fed starvation,
and the broken heart- birthday after birthday-
with one shattering
nearly beyond recovery
that, finally,
I found You.
The joke being
that I’ve carried You in me
since before the first sunrise.
Except now,
when I say hello
I can hear You answer.
Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone 