How to begin a day

13 Monday Dec 2021

Posted by in abundance, beauty, community, flight, honoring, movement, nature, offering, poems, poetry, stillness, wind

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The storm is making noisy mouths of the shingles this morning,

and pom-poms of the pine’s branches.

Rain beads the panes,

droplets meet socially, gather in their weight

and river down, down towards wet ground.

A limy glow. Needles sticking long on fence, on chair,

all throughout lavender’s hair.

Yesterday at this time crows were dancing in sunrise light,

pink orange, sorbet swirl of clouds,

save one:

She sat still atop a black fir, staring.

Our four eyes, in settled bodies, soaked in the welcoming arms

of our rising Sun–

now, She knows how to begin a day.

Tiny frog

04 Thursday Nov 2021

Posted by in community, nature, poems, poetry

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Tiny frog visits

at the threshold.

Years have passed since she has come.

As much time feels past since this rain.

Her throat pulses against my finger,

our skins touching,

and the gold lining her eyes gleams.

I admire her form,

the soft wetness.

We are utterly different.

Warning her of the dangers of my swinging front door

I walk her to the altar

where water and succulent,

kind attention and beauty gather.

She knows her way around.

With thanks, we part.

Until her return

in the following young morning.

Languages

31 Sunday Oct 2021

Posted by in learning, light, listen, nature, poems, poetry, return, silence, wind, words, work

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I keep checking for messages.

They aren’t there, of course.

What sends messages these days

doesn’t use the language I grew up learning.

How many languages don’t we speak because of those

we had to,

pinning words down with force for

efficiency

exactness

precision

accuracy

literalness lopping off the Song of the universe?

There is light, instead, what trees eat,

reflecting on the full belly of blood-red

garden pot,

and wind talking the leaves high,

high up the towering eucalyptus.

Clapping faeries have flitting epochs to share,

and they await those willing to listen

to languages bodies understand.

More quiet than I yet can hold

is the ear that can translate for me.

God, I know what I would like to be

in service to what is far greater~

please, show the winding way…

Burial

29 Friday Oct 2021

Posted by in devotion, family, ghosts, Healing, home, honoring, poems, poetry, prayer, strength, work

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What’s it like to live the lives of the ghosts that inhabit you?

You know it well.

Ask the parts with poison in a syringe

ready to inject each time you step off their worn,

possessing and ever hungry killing path.

They seek–you know this, even without words–all light,

your light,

and they search with senses unimaginable,

like magnetism, or gravity, the tender flame

at the heart of you. And feed.

The very heart of you, the Spirit of you,

the stuff they, while living, could not tend in themselves;

the marrow of their being they nurtured with death ways.

When can the exorcism begin? How can you reclaim

your own Self,

that beauty and gift of which no one else is replica?

That’s in you,

still.

Reach for Her with every ribbon of strength

you thought you’d lost.

You are here, now, with feet on this sweet Earth,

not lost, no, only wrestling

with the ghosts your family left for you to battle.

Some warriors do not carry sword or shield,

yet they walk the battlefield alone, year after year,

collecting back the bones of those who were truly lost,

giving them, finally,

Burial.

From sleep into waking

29 Friday Oct 2021

Posted by in aging, approaching, community, devotion, digging, dreams, friends, Healing, honoring, poems, poetry, prayer, presence, weaving, welcoming, work

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A day arrives

during night dreaming

when you come to retrieve a child, an infant

in button-up full-blue onesie,

from a house expecting you

and, upon entry, you recognize the woman

whose house it is. She rises from a room sized table,

oblong, solid, warm and wooden. An enormous shined egg.

Around its edges sit monks, scholars, drummers–

elders all. It feels better than anything you’ve felt

in ages.

She not only welcomes you, while rising,

but asks you to stay.

Come join us.

She says that. . Come. Join us.

Somewhere, slung between infancy and elderhood, you stand,

at times barely, and then holy invitation is spoken,

warmly.

Keep hollowing out the space,

hallowing the place,

where the invitation can finally cross from sleep

into waking.

Opening the way

20 Monday Sep 2021

Posted by in new, poems, poetry

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Pot tipped on its side, dirt bits scattered,

monk man turned backwards, tilting away,

succulent rolled on pavement,

the one alive yet unplanted, no walls for its roots,

these greet me this windy, clear morning.

I suspect raccoon found the low bird bath

climbed on over and up

to wash–who knows what.

Funny,

since I’ve wondered about that nearly homeless plant

that keeps going

and thought I’d dig a hole for it once its neighbor

finished flowering.

Seems raccoon opened the way.

Righting things, welcoming them back, includes

reaching two fingers into less than dry soil

and joining the small green ones together.

Something new now can grow.

And that’s a promising start to a day.

Autumn

19 Sunday Sep 2021

Posted by in change, community, poems, poetry, water

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Today thanks also falls to the light;

Autumn light may be my favorite food.

Rain keeps trying to come. We’ve been without

the rains for far too long.

I can feel rain in the clouds, smell it,

though a little sideways.

The trees’ roots are hungry for it to fall.

They are far from alone.

The equinox approaches but, here,

Autumn stretches her paws in August. My heart feels

more full then, my bones begin to rest.

Maybe the big rabbit with wild eyes will come through

the fence again soon.

My bet is a different visitor will usher in

the first official days of the season.

Towards him

19 Sunday Sep 2021

Posted by in death, Hope, pain, poems, poetry, thanks

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Once there was a man

who stood tall at the head of the room

teaching numbers; he greeted us at the door

as we entered each day

and he called me Hope. But

it was longer and flowing and in

another language more musical.

He’d switched an a to an e in there,

making it a song closer to my birth name, somehow.

No one had ever called me Hope, only him. And,

truth be, it wasn’t exactly hope, but a name somewhere between

mine and more.

Between what is and what becomes, approaching without end.

Something between.

The man who taught numbers, years after I knew him,

he killed himself. The exact place where always now

enfolds him.

The man who called out Hope,

his pain outlived him.

My tears and thanks fall towards him today.

No one ever said

09 Thursday Sep 2021

Posted by in Loss, poems, poetry

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No one ever said,

Loss will remake you.

Again and again.

Loss will nearly kill you. More than once.

Ground down, burned to ash, you will have to sift through

the grit

for your own bones.

How are we to know?

The drumbeat death cry of what you hold to most dearly,

will resound out of your heart, out from your thrown open jaw,

that great river mouth of grief,

echo against lines of sinew, ripple not your blood only

but others’: Plants may bow,

may sneeze an offering of recognition and understanding.

Owl and Hawk will fight over the same food.

Your movement will tighten and slow to drink that in.

A shudder will go through the house,

making sleep a jumbled memory.

Hundreds of crows will shake the air with their passing.

No one ever said.

How are we to know?

Loss will remake you.

Thank God.

Day enters

11 Wednesday Aug 2021

Posted by in community, dark, light, poems, poetry, prayer

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Day enters, the birds have yet to wake.

Outside, settling in beside stone and succulent,

greetings begin.

First, to the distant trees.

My, they have much to say

and they know what it is to hold it

in silence.

To the white faces of flowers, turned up

towards a sky leaning in,

I whisper hello.

Hummingbird swoops through the half-dark.

Surprising to see her beside me on a branch

this early.

Are you here for poetry?

It seems to be so.

Owl hasn’t stepped into dreaming,

and he calls, and calls, and calls…