01 Sunday Jan 2017
The new year could be a prism,
a prison,
an ache and an embrace.
We just never know,
until at once a soft wind settles and we do.
Offer a kindly nod to the dark,
and an opening of arms to the light-
both will accompany us the whole way;
it is our work to acknowledge and learn from
the full spectrum every day.
May we remember to create Beauty
and move skillfully as we can
with the cinnamon dance of Mystery..
And, please, mind the tenderness of little toes.
01 Sunday Jan 2017
Stitching time with you
brought me to the end of a thread,
one unkowingly finite.
Pushing my hand through air toward
your warm forehead, lightly damp
beneath a short cascade of brown hair,
mixed salt sour scent, barely perceptible
and more familiar than any other’s,
in a last inhale holding no more frustration
with the snap of that thread
and a long, tangled, eventually satisfying,
wordless goodbye.
26 Monday Dec 2016
He felt it
upon walking through the door.
He met the spirit of the place
and, recognizing not his hunger but
the food that quelled it,
eyes searched piles and corners,
while feet took him further inside
than the visit required.
Touching countertop, dishing questions,
noticing, lingering, sensing, offering,
eventually the task on the roof-
the reason for the call-
pulled him back outside to search there, too,
for holes letting in winter rain.
A ladder leans against an eave
though his warm blood and yellow shirt
departed down cold canyon road an hour ago.
20 Tuesday Dec 2016
Roots set in frosty, frosty ground
hugged by grit and worm and mole,
the slowlystretchinggrowing silence of
tips touching stonewetsoft.
Ears needn’t hear, nor eyes see-
vitality cups darkness
and nutrients find pathways
up up up
to light of day, and sharp starry sky.
The underearth knows quiet
and no-hurry, no-worry.
Sit awhile atop roots and wonder
just wherehowwho far
your own earth arms wriggle.
17 Saturday Dec 2016
It wasn’t through torn paper
blackened shoelace
or scuffed wall
that I found You.
It wasn’t the constant push
circulating fear
or I-must-do-betters..
not even the inch between
the sidewalk and me
plus a bruised knee.
Not exactly.
Add the non-starts,
regimented dreams,
what’s-wrong-with-me’s,
attempts to fit when fitting fed starvation,
and the broken heart- birthday after birthday-
with one shattering
nearly beyond recovery
that, finally,
I found You.
The joke being
that I’ve carried You in me
since before the first sunrise.
Except now,
when I say hello
I can hear You answer.
15 Thursday Dec 2016
Riparian corridor
in orange and yellow
ribbons between greening hills.
Brown shaggy dog trots,
with pink frisbee flopping,
toward the river.
09 Wednesday Nov 2016
Black
is every color
crammed
in space too tight for light.
Our sickness
produces severe symptoms;
Projecting our own shadows on others
will keep us from finding our way through.
With the box now open,
the last of its contents spilled
into collective view,
comes the greatest need yet
for- yes- willingness and
a strong stomach (as it writhes),
but also
a softening of our individual, concreted ways and
an enlivening of curiosity and connection.
Where we go from here
is up
to all of us.
30 Sunday Oct 2016
What if we were as fierce
about seeing
finding
knowing beauty
as ugliness, fear, and lack?
Would we not become greater protectors
of the overlooked and precious?
Would our focus not
change
from what we want to avoid
to that asking
for further creation?
From being barefoot on rain-soaked earth
while sun breaks clouds overhead,
to cinnamon in coffee,
the perfect heat of a shower,
sustained note of a well-played cello,
to strangers reaching for each other’s hands,
and friends who have plenty to eat,
a car that starts,
the woodpecker we’d like to curse
for waking us out of sleep-only-
its tapping brought us a view of the sunrise,
and places in existence where peoples
are honored and heard.
Wouldn’t the goodness flood us
even if
nothing else could we sense but
the beating of our own heart-
wouldn’t miracles fill our days?
21 Friday Oct 2016
You
to whom strangeness is foreign
in the creative force of living
-from the bubbling,
biting smell of fermenting kimchi,
to the heated twisting of metal
in rough hands capable
of leaving can’t and wrong and won’t behind-
Keep following
those peripheral ribbons of inspiration.
The crumbs of the yeah-butts
couldn’t possibly do.
16 Sunday Oct 2016
Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone 