Fed by sky

Dismantling a life.
Kicking off old shoes,
the ones given-
once useful,
always ill-fitting,
finally worn through.
Taking bare to the contours,
sole to soul,
every granite nib and dusty stretch
fed by sky
and the penetrating scratch
of salt air.
Reaching beyond you,
I carry the minimum,
my skin soaking in what surrounds,
untouched by
what has passed or yet to be found.
I’ve wasted myself on an appealing lie.
These bright eyes aren’t for any other
than this splash of sunshine
and that long drink of water.
Sand, trail, roadside-
Terrain changes
in winding tales.
Think I’ll keep walking…

Smoke thickens

Smoke thickens-
the matter of lives, burnt.
Sky can’t prepare for the soot
of curtain, letter, painting, bed pillow, tea pot, photograph,
weighting its blue.
Telling a friend his home is gone, eaten
by flames,
another unexpected duty.
Yet, mercifully, living words can be delivered
instead of the shock
of a middle of the night escape.
Drought.
Tinder.
Negligence.
Nature’s force, fueled.
Green becomes black.
The redefinition of essential.
Memory reduces
to what a mind can retain.
Celebrating moments,
understanding the past transforms,
in time,
like wood and metal consumed
by extreme and uninvited heat.
Humans skirt the fire,
narrowly, and
for this,
surging gratitude.
From the ashes,
magnificence does find grit.

Upward

Upward,
dry currents lift.
Time again for monarchs’ return.
Riding autumnal air, they flirt
between grass heads and needle tips.

Seeking quiet,
I look for you—

Once silencing the effort,
you show your face-
everywhere.

My exhale weaves with yours,
warm braided through cool..
eyes closed,
skin registering breath of wind.

Abandoning the search,
I found you.
Life stripped the longing,
beat out illusion’s yearning-
wool kilim struck until the dust stopped rising,
clean,
lightened of the burden that never belonged..

Close to mind,
an ongoing remembering,
the weightless flight of butterflies
reclaims.
Orange and black paper wings.
Buoyant bodies feeding on flowers.
May we all be so lucky.
And,
in truth, We are.

Take the hand offered

Imagining ourselves to be unlovable,
Knowing not our own expansive brilliance,
We swallow our own light
and hide in shadows of our own making.
Like a foot longing to be a fingertip,
loss.
And, at what cost? As we tumble up the first stair to the coffee joint..
How could the nose yearn
for the gifts of the ear
when perfumed steam from a cup of espresso visits
on its way to meet ether,
or when resting on the hair at the temple of our lover,
or sitting with a new book, cracking it to page one?
Had coyote visited but once before sunrise,
the turning of its rounded, black-tipped furry tail
would not have been paired
with a seated yawn-
a send-off into the riches of day.
Sometimes we like blindness
for its familiarity, yet
settling for impersonations of ourselves
robs this life of the jewel we each are birthed to be.
Let us take the hand offered,
Enjoy coyote’s satisfied yawn, and
Erupt with a giggle at each reminder to stretch
into the Sequoian grandeur
of simply being.

Yellows Browns and Green

Tall lush rounds dance,
in silence-
the lotus pond full with leaf and pod.
Frogs leap.
Up the hill,
dry corn and poplar
clap their yellows and browns.
Shooshing oak,
decisive in sound, still
holds to its green.
Owl and hawk
alternate the night with day,
same as home.

Between cemetery and resting field

Birds chatter in the walnut tree,
here,
between cemetery and resting field.
Butter yellow sunlight crosses
folds of canvas.
Mortared stones warm,
church bell rings.
The beagle’s collar jingles
as he circles a man-
hand-knit brown wool sweater,
dark trousers,
rifle hanging down from his shoulder-
slowly walking.
Today,
a hunt for rabbit and pheasant.
Through the open door,
a woman’s voice rises in song.

Dig in

There is a dance here
Between getting what we want
And not.
Often, not serves up the wonder-
What’s a life that goes to plan?
Uncreative, controlled, missing the unexplained sparks,
a parched abiding, inviting scant vision, inside an airless cave.
Blasting past the walls
Free falling-
Rather to have an unexpected journey than the tourist package-
Come
Dig in
We’ll get messy together.