06 Thursday Mar 2025
Sun vacates frost from its bed atop the roof,
deer, a chain of three, run through the trees,
one..then another..and another, limping,
in her way, behind.
Heat warms the room, click on,
click off, and trucks low
along the river rumble, rumble.
If the Spanish guitar stops sounding,
am I still here?
Can’t say it matters,
the castanets, listen to those castanets play…
21 Friday Feb 2025
A sister dies,
and in morning
the robin atop a bare-limbed tree sings,
and sings,
bold rusty breast full toward sunrise.
Frost clings to windows,
the fuzzy round-leafed plant beside the door,
and plans.
Nothing moves.
Arranging a future, an impossibility,
a flourish at the end of a dance
not being danced.
Coffee, a book, clean water,
a quiet night,
follow the small blessings.
They are, really, thousands of rocky miles
from small,
tall as the crown of a tree attracting music
to the cold, restful,
fading dark.
03 Monday Feb 2025
Lightest snow falling,
earthward stars drifting,
fireflies curious to kiss the ground,
and a new birdsong has joined dawn.
Migration keeps on,
my breath expands with the music
and I smile.
The art of waiting requires immense courage,
no panic at the unknown can fix it,
choices wrenched from an undeveloped state
only put off the inevitable.
Wait when the waiting asks.
You’ll see its velvety cloak swish
from the corner of an eye.
Wait.
Dissolution and decay create the fertile
in darkness.
Until a yes, an enoughness of a way, opens,
no right action.
Seeds know when,
now is for tending inner terrain
and now is for trust.
In the waiting, the fruit.
31 Friday Jan 2025
Rain through the night
and blackening ponderosa bodies rise
in thick, wet sky.
Their darking green, needle plumes and pompons,
shake dripping day.
Lately, a mystery cat laps within the boundaries,
hunting, romping, eating,
skittering away–just enough– at my voice,
her cream color like the stones,
her eyes wide and assessing.
Ice approaches after today’s relative warmth.
What’s already out there is here,
pattern of time a rounding, reason-breaking
all-at-once.
We are all there,
now.
What will be,
is.
27 Monday Jan 2025
Bound, and squirming, in the binds
of our own stories.
Brain picks them up, gut tightens and writhes,
unceasing but for moments:
Drop it.
None of this is true.
You are not this.
But the ego likes its house.
Even if the water’s shut off, rafters tilt,
light obscures through unwashed panes.
Repetition of story
and the prison story makes.
Comfortable? No. Familiar? Yes.
Dismantle the house, it is not you.
Brain picks up the story
and You put it back down.
Over, and over, and over, and
over.
15 Wednesday Jan 2025
There’s a coyote
who prances for prey, alone,
bushy tail and quick jaws,
out by the downed orchard ladder,
knows
each morning,
to amble by, crosswise, unhooked fence
to closed.
I don’t know where he wanders but
his visits thread the world,
animal to animal,
and my mind follows full marled fur
beyond the wire and through the long field
of thin-armed oaks.
The next meal is plenty to concentrate on
with wide openness,
allure, risk, and slow lichen growing,
a bounty of waiting.
04 Saturday Jan 2025
Clumps of feather snow drifted heavily down
hour upon hour
and the whole of the visible world softened in white.
A surprise storm cupped the riverland,
suspending life in sweet and requisite slowness.
By late afternoon,
a collective inhale–wind change
and the vanished birds flocked in,
lilting through air, hopping
branch to earth and
back again,
their celebrations begun.
03 Friday Jan 2025
Posted in Deliverance, poems, poetry
≈ Comments Off on Gave way
Frozen beads drop on fallen snow,
an unusual morning music.
Overnight, the roof of the shed
gave way,
resting now on domed forehead of the horno.
Deer turn to stare at my presence.
Ponderosas, no longer white,
burn their reserved green.
Today’s another passing without any humans,
I continue listening.
02 Thursday Jan 2025
Posted in abundance, approaching, beauty, becoming, companion, courage, dark, devotion, discomfort, dreaming, fertile, food, Found, freedom, human, Love, loving, medicine, movement, night, offering, Opening, pain, poems, poetry, prayer, presence, receiving, release, return, storm, water, welcoming, wonder, work
≈ Comments Off on Mettle
Withstand the Void.
Please.
Be upon your own two small feet,
at the edge,
darkness cloud-forming,
ledge a tipping perch.
Night ocean crashes on rock straight below,
the rhythmic waters moon-guided, rich and dangerous.
Call forth in echoless open and
wait,
the wind will snap and take it up.
Let the Void offer
all your fears, inadequacies, foolishness,
rage, grief, shame and sorrows.
Be with them.
Sense their intolerable
movements in your one body–
these are the monsters
you are to marry.
In union, living through and beyond
your exiled, an invitation
to what Beauty is yours deeply,
the gift to be offered back.
Leave no aspect behind–
you are here to love the denied.
Blood needs circulate.
Bones need grow. Air must enter.
Bring the outcasts and castaways under
warmth of your grand cloak.
Allow them refuge of your beating heart.
Welcome the unwanted,
a feast-filled table is set to feed everything
in dawn of this new year.
22 Friday Nov 2024
Salt, Smoke, Water and Stone 