04 Saturday Feb 2023
A note to any who would like to follow Salt, Smoke, and Stone,
and to the many who already do
{A gracious hello to you.}.
Today is a significant day–
No more ads.
Phew.
And yay!
So. Cheers to this renewal of an invitation,
an invitation to join in relationship with the words
and alllll that underlies them;
more is now possible.
03 Friday Feb 2023
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Skip the contempt useful to maintaining outdated ways.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.
02 Monday Jan 2023
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.
16 Wednesday Nov 2022
Sun fog fills the valley,
white upon white within white;
snow ice holds to even the air.
I woke feeling my womb,
warm, moving, red–
her warmth and my heart one.
Life doesn’t hold us for long,
best to make room for all her aspects.
15 Tuesday Nov 2022
Posted in approaching, night, poems, poetry
≈ Comments Off on Edge of the storm
Blue spruce holds in her generous arms
the whipped cream snow junco ushered in
two nights ago.
In deep dark came his hooded head
and spread wings at the window glass.
As the wind changed, from still
to sweeping, he danced from the blackness
all flutter, gentle and strong,
up the door pane, over to full window beside
and back again.
Back, forth, up, down,
when do songbirds ever enter the night and dance?
Here, at the front edge of the storm,
he arrived, to sit
finally on the low lip of the door frame
and look in with yellow-orange beak
and open breast.
After his hilly flitting away
the snow began falling.
And I smile at the generous arms of the blue spruce
who perches the birds every day.
12 Saturday Nov 2022
Chittering morning birds pull me from the page–
eyes move from word toward sound,
where their light hopping feet bring me to flight
from bare branch, through 17 degree air,
to bark-covered lattice above the front door.
Frost, like gold flakes, falls from their trail in sunlight.
They have such great conversations.
11 Friday Nov 2022
We find ourselves
eventually, or again and again,
at the thought–“I’m this old and
still
I’m not over it.”
Whatever it is.
But with that tiny cruelty and judgment,
if we’re honest,
we can feel the rope tied about us and yanking from
without;
The culture’s voice and ultimatum,
no doubt familial message too,
tugs invisibly and hard.
See the rope for what it is,
make it visible.
Then, only then, can we find ourselves
eventually, and again and again.
28 Friday Oct 2022
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.
20 Thursday Oct 2022
Posted in approaching, beauty, poems, poetry, return
≈ Comments Off on Singing through dawn
Coyote’s been singing through dawn,
calling sun back
from behind the mountain with quivering jaw.
She sounds young,
experimenting with her prowess.
Golden locust leaves hang silently, cold,
awaiting their restful drop.
The pale grasses sing too,
while sagebrush sustains Earth’s bass notes.
Turning of a new day can hold us,
more steadily than any mother..
we need only remember.
19 Wednesday Oct 2022
Yesterday time gulped back on itself,
this existence a beautiful nothing amongst endless
somethings.
Hearing my mother speak for the first time;
The voice of a friend long dead and gone returning
after decades.
Wind of another eon rose up, up,
rose up tickling the inside of my ears, neck, head,
vibration forgotten here, forgotten and now remembered–
How to find my way back? No.
Not back.
How to usher forth life from there,
origin of all creation
humming harmonious,
honey of blossoms never seen
but felt and heard.
Honey flowing slow, slowly, from cracks
in ancient enormity of stone.
Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone 