Fill our days

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?

Keep following

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.

New growth

After wildfire,
in the enclosing wood
where bend of bough, like tuck of wound, 
cradles loss in darkness- 
please, 
time.
Time to pause, to sense,
for paws and scents to know
of safety’s approach.
For repair,
beneath dust-breath layer after dust-breath layer 
of grey white ash, does come:
New growth.
Pain, when given its due,
becomes not enemy
but ally and
its own necessary offering. 

 

Any other

A rock stands in your path.
A big one.
It’s the same damned rock you’ve walked smack into countless times,
decade after decade,
despite the changing terrain.
You walk the mapless territory, silently, wondering… how on earth?
Do you go around?
Climb over?
Finally hammer the blasted thing to pieces?
Your choice, always.
Fun part is-
this time
your decision may be unlike
any other.

Its nature

Being an untamed tributary

of a river whose origin reaches far 

into depths unkown

brings twists of bramble,

leaping fish,

frog and cricket symphonies,

bats dipping low in twilight-

when settling into quiet lulls.

In rugged young churning-

escaping water

pulls earth, boulder, tree to itself

as passion builds with heavy rains,

filling banks,

carving hungry routes,

chewing civilized lands and

renewing plots left withering.

This tributary is this and more,

trading nothing away

in honor of its nature–

wild, strong and unpossessing.

The ride

know those times
when there’s nothing to hold on to?

but the brain tries,

oh boy does it try-
it clings to the past, to the future, to what is wanted, to what is feared, to what has been or may be lost,

to what ifs and oh shits and 

waaaaait what just happened?

that’s when it’s clear:

throw up both hands 

– high into the air –

the ride 

has already begun

Don’t hold on

Being sculpted

means

being thrown,

as clay,

first kneaded- no bubbles – then

spun

well beyond dizzy,

cut,

and fired to degrees

scorching

even by shuddering imagination

if 

your aim is to be a

cup,

vase,

bowl,

holy space ripe

for filling, 

able to offer solace, pleasure,

delight,

beauty, compassion,

ease,

and round reflections of sky.

Don’t hold on.

Be here.

In the dark

This cracked and dusty pain rested 

in a distant corner 

season upon season-

never gone,

napping at most-

waiting

for a fresh split

to draw bright blood.

Not to be resolved, or

fixed,

but lived

in

through

with

beyond.

Yet again, it is not mine

alone.

I live it for you, as

you for me.

A new light breaks

in the dark.