24 Wednesday Aug 2016
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.
23 Tuesday Aug 2016
I can’t speak to you from here.
From here where I don’t listen.
But if I stop
circling and
running and
dodging
and
reaching..
If I lay down armaments
and armour
both weighing, separating,
isolating
me
from
me
and
me from you.. If
I lay myself down
upon your buried curving roots,
this bodily circulation
will remember
a tree-based rhythm,
an earthly pulse.
Without effort
the music changes.
13 Saturday Aug 2016
And if the stars are talking to you
through closed sash and latched window?
And if the tree sway would catch you in a dance
were you only to step outside at dawn?
And if the thick green pond might turn blue
if you’d catch its eye while passing by?
And if the coyote call one ridge away
could reach your naked aching ear
were technology not wedged tight,
filling the cracks where nature could get in?
And if the ducks recently born,
hiding beneath the bowering bracken
edging the water
could gather your attention as you do theirs,
would this love affair ripen
and our wild and sacred
no longer be made into amusement parks?
There is a begging for fidelity here-
make this wild love affair true.
It is our one way through.
13 Saturday Aug 2016
Sometimes
one who entwined fingers with you through the night
departs as
quickly
as he arrived,
and kisses left on on the back of your hand
mark his passing.
Sometimes
that is
plenty.
03 Wednesday Aug 2016
How is it your lips found mine
from a thousand miles,
in that sudden night warmth that wraps a person
in some late, dark fogs
while salt foam hisses closer up the sand?
How is it, stranger,
there’s familiarity in the creases on your face,
the new color of your eyes?
Proper ones on a beach
may never know
what every particle of sand and
hidden star understands.
There’s this,
now,
nothing more-
the breaking, dying, spinning, softening, flowering..
It doesn’t get easier, or more beautiful.
Following fear
knocks agony into coves where
it never belonged.
Thank goodness for wind.
29 Friday Jul 2016
Not leaves
but ashes
fall.
What bits land,
finding their way through closed windows,
into lungs,
are the remains
of your house,
your physical memories blazed.
I hesitate to breathe,
resisting
what is true.
With each opening of the door,
grief swirls,
covers the floor,
in grey, white, black.
It, too, will one day join this soil,
grow new forest,
stronger community.
But now,
staying inside,
I watch what has replaced rain.
13 Wednesday Jul 2016
The season of talking grass brings rattlesnakes,
grasshoppers blooming out each foot fall,
the head of a rabbit left by a skilled carnivore-
this, and more,
among seed heads clapping in the wind.
Moisture snuck deep underground,
like the losing end of relating.
Still,
it’s
simply
promise
of fecundity yet to come.
09 Saturday Jul 2016
Tree stories…
09 Saturday Jul 2016
Were I to cull a story,
cut off its wings to still its tongue,
would you be any safer from the past?
The chills walking your spine are not
exiting belief but
sashes and
passages of truth.
Words have no allegiance
once the fire is struck,
and winged shadow escapes, up,
out, beyond-
toward a second
a third
an eleventh
pulsing heart
with ears to hear.
Practice your listening-
what you fear most may be
the balm of the deep.
25 Saturday Jun 2016
I have searched, reached,
spoken, cried, and delivered.
My arms have ached in fullness, emptiness
and longing,
my legs have quaked miles into the journey
with nowhere but onward
left to go.
Muscle blood bone
register waking
like petals opening toward light.
What I now carry will remain behind
in this daily offering
of God
back to God.
Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone 