23 Sunday Aug 2015
Wanting to eat blueberries in peace,
I continue walking.
“Welcome to the Labyrinth.”
As if I needed the sign.
Parking bum on stone
among alyssum, chamomile and
orange blooms of nasturtium,
bees waft in and buzz by.
Sun warms back, verbena wavers,
dragonfly hovers a while.
Between lavender and me
a garden’s worth of world greens up
in the closing weeks of summer.
23 Sunday Aug 2015
Posted in death, nature, poems, poetry, transition
≈ Comments Off on Holding body
Holding body
of dead hawk still warm,
the day’s tedium and irritation forgotten.
Death throws light, as life offers life.
Carrying bustle to calm
one of feather, talon, beak and bone,
expired oak reaches out arms.
Here, by trunk split to earth-
as if through lightning visitation-
raptor rests to place
without roadway and hustle,
whole in transition.
Scavengers will find their next meal,
minerals will return to dust.
Envisioned flight prepares to come again.
13 Thursday Aug 2015
And when you have to tuck your beauty away from the world to be left alone,
Or don barbs to let it be known you can be armed,
questions come-
do you engage, or duck and cover, or walk away?
Do you laugh or poke back or disappear?
In the freeze or fight or flight, where do you hold?
Words
stumble.
Momentum and strength kept you moving yet
look
look hard at the toll.
What you thought you could take,
and exactly what you have taken,
carry a cost your body will explain.
Body speaks loud.
Drop a sledgehammer on the used way,
watch a smile curl at the sight of its destruction.
Tools this grand, and in capable hands,
will topple the castle the dream
along with those miles of manipulation.
What you’ve got here doesn’t come free.
And it’s yours.
11 Tuesday Aug 2015
Tumbling into
an underworld.
Sound stolen in the descent,
movement coming from
an unknown what.
Vanished light and a search yet begun.
A wisp of swirling wind.
Inhabiting a different body,
a novice of winged creation must
forget the familiar.
Hanging topside down from leafless tree
amid dark layered upon dark,
sonar registers obstacles and surfaces
of a territory
summoning,
expecting
arrival and exploration.
Travel here is not optional.
Curling claws around smooth limb,
with wings wrapped securely,
head dangling,
blood circulating,
there can be a reaching
for nothing.
Required senses develop.
Survival.
Still, suspended, and waiting
in dangerous territory
while skills emerge.
Quieting impulse,
lets
a silenced knowing
arise
for one newly born.
09 Sunday Aug 2015
Enter the woods, Young Woman,
and know
the Devil hears every footstep.
Each snapping twig signals
your approaching Light-
and stirs
His bloodthirst.
Whether your flame flickers,
or extinguishes,
He cares not.
This game is
Possession.
And without your eyes open,
you are prey.
The seduction will dance you
until your feet bleed,
and your heart tears.
But
with instinct, wild watchfulness,
and a night-march gathering
of your oceanic value,
his charm cannot destroy
the most tender and loving aspects
your clear spirit offers this woolly world.
Stake your boundary
and protect
what you long to give away.
Leave the woods.
Trade, dear Beauty,
youthful innocence,
that dwelling ignorance,
for the Power that awaits you-
something His nearness would never
allow you the sovereignty
to have.
02 Sunday Aug 2015
Drove the twisting road,
wound blind curves,
to somewhere once called home-
a place sweetness and tragedy meet,
a location of extremes.
Towering oaks with lobed leaf arch
toward golden grass whose seed heads nod,
obscuring the path bobcat walks.
Sky,
in blueness or star,
remains sharp.
Flies enter nose and ears,
fiery poison oak berries.
Frost will make its claim,
will lay this landscape bare.
Returning marks a turning.
The hole I’ve fallen in,
with earthen walls solid and cool,
holds today’s bones and muscle.
Eyes train upward,
restful,
knowing, this time, the visit
washes memories out
without carrying me away.
26 Sunday Jul 2015
In the dark,
long-term watching.
Blackness rests eyes, brightens
imagination.
Tip into a curve
of ear and mind.. soundlessly
whispers rise and define,
even foretell.
Clarity-
a distant brass bell-
and color emerge,
erasing all penitent dreaming.
Within a container extending
far
into day,
light continually bears witness.
17 Friday Jul 2015
Sunrise after sunrise,
invitation
to tend to the undeveloped parts,
the living but forgotten
blinded and crouching animals left
out in the cold.
Sidle up to crackling fire and
look softly-
the shadow-dance and light castings and warmth,
ease a chronic, unnameable tension
nibbling at the corners of mind.
14 Tuesday Jul 2015
chasing light
entering shadow
more rises in the non-scape
than the known-scape.
strings become ropes become chains,
careful what you attach to
you’ll have to drag it alone.
if image and sound, sensation, scent
and a sip of watermelon juice with lime and mint
aren’t plenty,
how heavy we all become.
time’s short,
selling freedom and wild soul, long.
with camera, notebook and #2 pencil
these steps brighten.
heart finds nourishment in embodied moments.
body is, through it all, home.
04 Saturday Jul 2015
Contain the heat,
the movement,
the sound.
Toss fingers wide,
and dip
chin,
blades..shoulders..elbows..palms
into a spin…
Pound
thoughts
down,
down from helter-skelter mind
through music-hugging hips,
willing knees, flexed calves, splayed toes,
beyond, even, supporting ground-
move ’em out
until sweat beads, glass fogs
and your heart and smile rise.
Once a giggle finds voice,
throw open the windows-
mimic your every pore-
invite the wind,
and
slow
the swirl
into a sway
into a collapsed puddle of joy
with eyes fixed
on boundless
sky
Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone 