23 Sunday Apr 2023
The snakes are waking, I feel them
stirring below ground.
With each step through dry arroyo,
around sagebrush, around stone,
I prepare for the sliding S–
Sssssss.
Warming earth holds us both,
one oval hole under plump cactus,
one casita on a hill.
Hello quiet ones,
we two stretch ourselves toward growing light.
23 Sunday Apr 2023
21 Friday Apr 2023
With one slow turn of the head
eyes sift softly through glass and
who should appear but the swallows;
The swallows are back,
zipping and gliding and making mirth–
they are the mirth-makers–
and my heart goes lightly, up and out
with them.
They emerge from a crack in the world,
from beyond there to right here.
How lovely to be with them again.
Together, as sun says goodbye this evening,
we will cut the sky.
We will cut silent sky,
and pull down a net of stars
to sprinkle dreaming
across a blooming desert night.
20 Thursday Apr 2023
Troubled by this cultural grab for legacy
that older people writing books and making speeches and
facing death
fixate upon,
the strange ego javelin
aimed towards making a lasting mark–
with their initials starkly upon it–
I pull my head out of my own ass and look
at a simple and wondrous case in point,
the early spring burst of a small crabapple tree:
With first new leaves gathering food of the sun,
and deep pink buds tucked between pale open blooms
offering food to the bees in pollination’s blessed exchange,
not a cell in that tree requires recognition
or hungers in desperation to be remembered
once it’s gone.
She is born, feeds, is fed, shelters, shades, and grows,
creates new life, diminishes, and becomes earth.
That is thanks enough,
perfection enough,
selfness enough.
Enough.
Like songs of sparrows sputtering in wing flutter
all about the garden,
this gift and given
of spirit to form back to spirit,
in this, how can we forget
no loop of the Divine
could ever
go wrong?
15 Saturday Apr 2023
The vultures have returned
from distant winter shelters,
their broad arms now stirring pale spring skies.
Between mesa and hilltop, there’s a valley
and her thighs cradle winds
soul-driven to buoy those dark ones,
to bring them in circles, mixing pollen and dust,
whisking insects far below
to petals low and wide.
The languages spoken meet human ears
only as whistle and snap,
but the Others, they carry conversations
over whole continents.
It can be seen in outstretched wings,
high in leafless cottonwoods,
of vultures at sunrise.
In silence, before the world wakens,
if we stand with the trees,
our bodies hear their words
and join in the call and response,
without thought, instinct recalled.
14 Friday Apr 2023
Medial Woman,
I place my trust in you
who reweaves the world in vision, web and pearl.
Stars offer themselves to your old and nimble fingers,
music of your silent imagination.
Cradling myself in the timeless,
the wide, stable feet of your journeying,
I pluck feathers from the western wind,
forage in fields, in forests, spanning forever.
There’s not an ocean, in singular swirling,
that together we’ve not swum.
Beneath your gaze, egg-filled nests become visible,
rising springs share their voice
and solace of a kindness of words flows
through your unmoving lips.
I train my ears,
I train my eyes,
I allow the knowing in my hands
to find their joyous, wild and original way.
11 Tuesday Apr 2023
Surprising
what we cling to
the stuff and ways
that serve us no more.
Time comes
when what must break
will be broken
and the methods once keeping you alive
those now killing you
ask for burial.
Honor them..
No easy terms to dodge.
No simple way out.
Break or be broken.
Give over, give up, give
to the starving one in you
who can no longer live unnourished.
Let die
what must die.
Your flourishing life depends upon it.
11 Tuesday Apr 2023
I live at the borderlands,
between mountain and grassland,
river and sea.
Here, vultures gyre above the hollows, high
as the peaks
in gliding circles,
where death meets light
and darkness greets the sun.
I live the in-between,
not expected, not sane, full
in constant emptying,
I rise as others fall, gather while
the confused lose.
Accompanying all, I am ever ready
to catch the tender hand
finally opened
by life.
I can not be held,
you will never be without me.
In cracks cursed for tripping you up,
that’s my nestling place.
I can not be found where money buys me, nor
in the thing anyone else swears will conjure me–
but my laughter will.
Eventually,
you will feel within
the kindness in those peals
and the years of loss, confusion, pleading
shall mulch the most fertile ground
you could set restful, strong,
willing roots into.
Welcome the borderlands,
for in them I dwell
ungraspable.
09 Sunday Apr 2023
The Wind is up
and her voice big. She sweeps
and dips, grabbing and forcing flee–
her humor boundless as her movements.
She carries tale from far, far away,
distance being her spirit flying,
and your ears are the intended settling place
for the riches of that unique story.
However we have cuffed our own ears after
having them cuffed,
we need remind them gently,
open,
yes, open–
gifts are coming and
we must prepare.
08 Saturday Apr 2023
Funnel spider rests in his high hammock,
rain clouds gather
though it could not be more dry,
the sagebrush and last year’s sickle grass whip
in intermittent blasts of wind.
I sit on the brick floor eating sausage,
wet hair blunt after the cut I just gave it,
admiring this spot, its drastic seasonal shift,
and the birds firmly in their nests.
Compared to where I’ve been,
this is a whole other planet.
Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone 