12 Sunday Feb 2023
Movement of a bone.
Suddenly.
A gate I never thought I’d walk through
swings open–
access to land traversed by others
but never by me
spreads wide and borderless.
Vast, a savannah,
broad, an ocean,
hidden, intricate, bold–
a cave, universe of a moss, storm cloud.
Speechless, held still and utterly restless,
I do not know what emergence now includes me
but this smile keeps flashing across my teary face.
06 Monday Feb 2023
Eagles have been visiting.
One Golden.
One Bald.
Their flight cups the sky in feathers,
wings like hills undulating in earthquake–
broad, liquid, generous,
a strength and self-possession of mountains.
Excitement, a sparkling water spring,
surfaces with their arrival.
Lifting my eyes to greet them,
my heart fills,
and I lower forehead to Earth.
06 Monday Feb 2023
Mud’s come
but you wouldn’t know it
until your foot is three inches deep.
Or, god forbid, your tire by far more.
That’s the thing about this place–
dry as the brown cracked skin lining the arroyos
but a certain season arrives
and the steady, hard, rocky road you’ve trusted
decides to gulp you and whatever force is moving you along
straight into its earthen gullet.
I can understand that kind of gluttony.
Maybe it’s best I slow down and prison-break my shoe.
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Skip the contempt useful to maintaining outdated ways.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.
Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone 