21 Friday Oct 2016
You
to whom strangeness is foreign
in the creative force of living
-from the bubbling,
biting smell of fermenting kimchi,
to the heated twisting of metal
in rough hands capable
of leaving can’t and wrong and won’t behind-
Keep following
those peripheral ribbons of inspiration.
The crumbs of the yeah-butts
couldn’t possibly do.
30 Friday Sep 2016
A rock stands in your path.
A big one.
It’s the same damned rock you’ve walked smack into countless times,
decade after decade,
despite the changing terrain.
You walk the mapless territory, silently, wondering… how on earth?
Do you go around?
Climb over?
Finally hammer the blasted thing to pieces?
Your choice, always.
Fun part is-
this time
your decision may be unlike
any other.
22 Thursday Sep 2016
Being an untamed tributary
of a river whose origin reaches far
into depths unkown
brings twists of bramble,
leaping fish,
frog and cricket symphonies,
bats dipping low in twilight-
when settling into quiet lulls.
In rugged young churning-
escaping water
pulls earth, boulder, tree to itself
as passion builds with heavy rains,
filling banks,
carving hungry routes,
chewing civilized lands and
renewing plots left withering.
This tributary is this and more,
trading nothing away
in honor of its nature–
wild, strong and unpossessing.
24 Wednesday Aug 2016
This cracked and dusty pain rested
in a distant corner
season upon season-
never gone,
napping at most-
waiting
for a fresh split
to draw bright blood.
Not to be resolved, or
fixed,
but lived
in
through
with
beyond.
Yet again, it is not mine
alone.
I live it for you, as
you for me.
A new light breaks
in the dark.
13 Saturday Aug 2016
And if the stars are talking to you
through closed sash and latched window?
And if the tree sway would catch you in a dance
were you only to step outside at dawn?
And if the thick green pond might turn blue
if you’d catch its eye while passing by?
And if the coyote call one ridge away
could reach your naked aching ear
were technology not wedged tight,
filling the cracks where nature could get in?
And if the ducks recently born,
hiding beneath the bowering bracken
edging the water
could gather your attention as you do theirs,
would this love affair ripen
and our wild and sacred
no longer be made into amusement parks?
There is a begging for fidelity here-
make this wild love affair true.
It is our one way through.
21 Tuesday Jun 2016
A black and white world
hasn’t any lines to blur-
what relief to fearful minds.
And if a smudge
tangoes with reason,
snapping the bra straps of rationality?
Waters might move in,
fill bleached arroyos,
and offer liquid to dry, cracked,
sorrowful lands.
Take the risk.
Invite chaos to play.
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 Tuesday Jun 2016
If dreams rise
of planting marigolds in snow,
yet the spiders that plague you still
have not yielded
understanding,
can we love each other in our differences?
While you wrestle with your ghosts,
and I with mine,
is there a golden bridge between us
where
the songs we sing,
the tears filling our eyes,
the breath aching our lungs,
the laughter erupting before placid waters
may join?
We mustn’t forget
how many languages we share
even without knowing
any of the words.
14 Saturday May 2016
Bending over to pick up pennies
lost pocketfuls of change,
and left the pavement littered with leftovers.
No longer affording such loss,
I remain upright and accept only dollars.
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.
Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone 