Twenty-five years on

19 Saturday May 2018

Posted by in adventure, becoming, break out, dark, devotion, freedom, friends, gratitude, honoring, Infinite, learning, mystery, nature, night, poems, poetry, receiving, release, the road, welcoming, wonder

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Not until the attentive itch

do they exchange glances to mean

It’s Time.

And off we pile into the car, heading deep

into night and whatever flight waiting

with breath, rolling, in the wings.

Winding round and up and up and round

through dark and sensation

into rolled down window sweetness of valley grass and oak,

Stumbling, graceful, grit of dirt road scuffing,

spinning under 2 a.m. sky and flopping across hillsides,

the stars, sharp and grabbable,

become a spiral

spiral

spiral

as alive to be tucked in a pocket,

as hover, massive and in reach, directly overhead,

as rest in mind twenty-five years on.

At the door

15 Tuesday May 2018

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A kitten knocks at the door.

In truth, a word behaving like a kitten,

soft, sweet, riled

from chasing a baby squirrel along the avenue.

Baby tore across the asphalt, tail barking,

no visible sign of what gave chase.

Course, words are like that,

and now one has followed me home.

A fur-lined nook between the armrest and my hip

awaits her.

Curious what mischief we can achieve today.

But first,

a short nap.

Stumbling

10 Thursday May 2018

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Stumbling,

having missed a pebble for the story in your head,

breaks the monotone

in favor of dripping notes tangled, soft,

attentive.

Dipping into that honey, the stream beneath the firehose flow,

entices a hidden music into the aching

and sharp places, wounded from too much narrow focus.

Broadening,

that song- touched by your welcome-

changes things.

Ancient and known

08 Tuesday May 2018

Posted by in break out, community, Creating, honoring, nature, peace, poems, poetry, transition, work

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What name can be given

to soul hunger for nature,

for bodily starvation of slow rhythms ancient

and known?

Waking, sleeping, sunrise, moonset,

yes

even in the most stricken times we can find ourselves there

part of the ever-larger cosmos,

not pinned tight to trivia and misbehaviors.

But

skin suffers thirst for soil-

this hard concrete place rebounding with noise

can’t feed what does not eat the civilized.

Sit down with me, here,

let’s break sidewalk together,

chip away until earth smiles again at sky-

silent seeds await their patient growth into trees.

The rest

06 Sunday May 2018

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An initiation ritual,

in the dusk-scape of dream,

of shared finery, costume, camaraderie,

and non-blood family

emerging from here, over there,

here, here, there

unexpectedly,

for the me before me,

with a gathering of eager others,

to mark time with life.

Saying no, no but I am not she

not anymore

no–

But as beads pass over head, and colors add up,

layers of feather, bone, cloth

none mine

each display on this body

currently

a light in mind shifts-

not for me

but she

who may pass through, closing

beginning years, finally,

in step with those knowing when it is meant to happen.

Dressed, prepared, without doubts,

I walk the procession.

To celebrate.

To say goodbye.

To welcome all the rest.

Something has to be old

02 Wednesday May 2018

Posted by in aging, becoming, community, poems, poetry

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Something has to be old,

not this eternal new, no scuffed corners or

stories to tell.

Without scratches and scars of history

what are we

but endless remakings missing the one ingredient

making us us.

That old floor, concrete, painted red

once

holds, simply, the scent and memory of red

the countless footfalls and dropped coffees

words, silent songs, and resting weight

of decades of loved use.

Old meets time

where novelty hasn’t the guts

to leave its natural mark.

That kind of alone

20 Friday Apr 2018

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Nothing to hold onto,

the castle crumbling,

narrow a ledge, heavy the stone, cracking

walls and the mind hunts

for where to land

and it leaps to worry, no,

Fear projected onward, forever, helplessly.

Alone, like this, a sore eating away flesh-

and not real.

Grasping does haunt,

bite in and seep out, a rising fever.

But

it is a snarling shadow dog.

Sit,

solid, alive, and watch the demolition-

you’ve brought about the Fall,

soak up its awesome, fleeting

magnificence.

Waiting

17 Tuesday Apr 2018

Posted by in listen, nature, poems, poetry

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A hurt grows

of missing meaning

and nothing but letting it

will answer the call

until I know what she’s asking.

Waiting

in longing

discomfort

may last

through spring,

a windy season punctuated by screaming gulls,

rotating buzz saws of this coastal spit.

Clearing the pasture

17 Tuesday Apr 2018

Posted by in aging, change, community, home, movement, poems, poetry, the road

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I’m surrounded by endings here.

And I came back,

came back

to where what can grow

I don’t know.

The ties, bindings, wrappings and scenarios

they’re old,

done, hardened and strange.

Perhaps the ghosts need herding,

finally clearing the pasture for

what belongs beneath this patch of sky

of salt, and pine, cypress and stone.

Too much concrete dulls the senses-

Sun aches to touch earth,

it may be my time to help her do so.

Passing by at any hour

15 Sunday Apr 2018

Posted by in beauty, movement, nature, poems, poetry, welcoming

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Beauty is

bird suspended, waves breaking one

in to another,

hills woven of shoulders, hips, toes,

clouds sliding across blue..

It is not the

must possess, perfect, expensive, mechanical conquest

mine,

but

connection, relationship, tangle of bouncing language, laughter song around the twilighted corner, and

being followed softly home.

How did we confuse it with a thing to buy,

an object to have,

a keeping to be kept by?

She tells her own story,

never upon command, and

if meaning vanishes the crease between our brow,

planting our feet more firmly on this earth,

we are in her Presence, an arrival of moments

passing by at any hour.