Long missed and calling

24 Monday May 2021

Posted by in change, land, movement, nature, night, poems, poetry, story

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Today, finally, I can sit in the sun

and let tears run their river course down upon

this new place I call home.

Walnuts in my teeth and blueberries in my belly,

I’m meeting the many pincher bugs residing here,

the flies and bees, jays, roses, swallows and eucalyptus.

I awoke suddenly night before last

not knowing what hit me until my senses explained

skunk had a nocturnal exchange with an uninvited guest

and the room had filled with the intensity of her defense.

I understand.

At times I could lift my tail and release my own musk

if I had it.

And then the neighbor whose

sexual escapade she sustained for nine hours

straight

left me crooked and grumbly for, well,

hours more than that.

But the mission bells ring, the hills that held me as a child

hold me once again.

Much will come of this, here, together

with land that made me work to the distant edges

of my heart’s own end.

Stories and word shall find matter,

yes,

and maybe my heart can rest and open again

in the constant cricket song and salted wind

of ground long missed and calling.

Between prayers

23 Sunday May 2021

Posted by in abundance, aging, becoming, giving, growing, Infinite, land, learning, poems, poetry, prayer

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The fourth decade

walks me between prayers,

of one blinked forth twenty years ago,

a blessed ‘Fuck it’ rising from the earth

to cup and guide and split open, and

of another gathered in the thirties–simply

‘Thank you.’

With solid scaffolding of experience under me

I can walk with the first tucked in a back pocket,

the second, on more able days, held in heart,

and the infinite wanderings between

growing a garden of ripening fruits and blooming flowers

with seeds maturing slowly toward ground

rich with Life ready to receive them.

Light the flame

06 Saturday Mar 2021

Posted by in companion, Fire, listen, poems, poetry, stillness, welcoming

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If your animal rhythm is faltering,

light the flame.

Light the flame at the altar.

Allow Her pulse to fish swim and bloom

back into skin, through muscle,

through lung;

that fur rises, ripples, musky and thick.

She contours your breath when breathing

can be forgotten.

Light the flame

sit

sniff;

Her rhythm returns to guide

along paths stony, unmarked

and yours,

to wander and learn

alone.

The sound

24 Sunday Jan 2021

Posted by in abundance, break out, digging, fertile, light, movement, poems, poetry, Sight

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I’ve love for things I can not see.

I’ve been destroyed by things I can.

If all in its existence might bloom

into beauty we can know,

what holds us back from knowing?

Not wondering?

Not admiring?

The blows of living a human life on this planet?

Being like a mole now, head and wide webbed paws

digging towards light,

I’m throwing off weight of earth

to find a way of nourishment, instinct

and abundance.

Who needs strong sight when every cell reverberates

with the songs of the universe?

I might place a pair of tap shoes on my feet

and make some noise

because the rhythm of having been born

quakes again inside me

and, this time, it might be building until

no one can mistake the sound.

All along

22 Friday Jan 2021

Posted by in abundance, fertile, giving, listen, offering, poems, poetry, receiving, welcoming

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Grieving the grandchildren never to be had,

I step back downward on the path

away from the peak wondering

what unborn children might become

among seeds of the treasured and unsung.

Tomorrow,

I’ll pick up a brush and dash color across

textured cotton and dried pulp

to interview an inner nobility I’ve yet to know,

to praise a blooming that’s still to come.

Come,

come unnamed seeds and show me your way,

we can cross the river, a bridge to stay,

at least until your voices are heard

whether in color, sound or word.

Sleep, you blessed ones,

a womb welcomes you now

whatever your form;

Sleep for now, you blessed ones,

fertile ground awaits you,

your brightness a bell, an arrival

celebrated ever and always along.

To the hills again

11 Monday Jan 2021

Posted by in friends, land, poems, poetry

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I’ve taken to the hills again,

pressing palm to oak trunks,

twisting dried flower from artemisia,

rubbing leaf of umbellularia.

Finely felt in muscle short and long,

a humming soreness blooms from steep terrain

and welcoming climbs toward sky.

How I’ve been so remiss from my friends,

the strange and strangled choices made

and sad distorted hold of events beyond control,

I do not know.

Leave it to the land to call me back,

to breathe life in

to one who still has it.

Faster breath and heartbeats

bring me round again to being human

with a rooting itch of vitality.

Perhaps that is the water

26 Saturday Dec 2020

Posted by in change, poems, poetry

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The song of your voice rises,

one none but you can sing.

In dry winter when the pond hasn’t filled

memory of full banks and amorous critters rises.

I think of you and wish.

Perhaps that is the water,

the falling rain that swale of earth calls

as seasons become unseasonal

and our world changes.

Allow her to move

24 Tuesday Nov 2020

Posted by in abundance, devotion, grief, movement, poems, poetry, rage, welcoming, work

≈ 1 Comment

Grief stagnates

into rage.

Allow her to move;

Plant a stone,

Bury a broken song,

Sing another to a place on this earth dry

with sorrow.

Open to the endings,

without them nothing begins.

Unimaginable are the possibilities

for they

have yet to meet their own conception.

Offer the moistening river

your enormous grief.

Follow its movements,

dances are born in the currents.

Much has been taken,

now much can be given back;

Return grief to the Beauty–

tender Life may run again toward you.

Allow her to move.

Life is saying,

she needs her juice back

through the body of you.

If then

23 Monday Nov 2020

Posted by in poems, poetry, presence, welcoming, wonder

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And if God moving in us is

n o t h i n g

like we expect?

Not sublime or transcendent or ethereal,

but exactly the unrelenting pains and grief,

the dark slogging through what we hope

to shed, be done with and grow beyond?

If that confusion is the way

and all that separates us from God

is our rejection–

If then . . .

what?