Purging Ghosts

Purging ghosts.
Remains unknown.
Before the honest untangling
and exit, lies
sorrowful lies told and unquestioned.
Growing up isn’t quick,
or clean.
Longing tugs,
yearning twists.
And in the great redefining
of love
comes a self-mastery
more valuable than all treasures
sought and killed for.
My heart was yours,
our gentle laying natural and,
for you,
too unfamiliar.
Can’t hold the gifts,
passionate or otherwise,
without the water passing through the spaces.
Other waves,
long ago risen,
must also present themselves
in salt prisms and opalescence.
Where, after all,
would the sun set without definition?
Gaze upon that changing horizon line…

Initiation

A loss
A becoming
A walking away
The opening into…
Ruins of the expected,
tatters of the uninvited-
materials for another’s build.
Destruction,
this razing, a forgotten call heard-
Void,
her all,
Now.
These palms, soft cups of sky,
await
not only unstoppable but
full ocean strength.
Mystic union.
Awe of the inexplicable,
untraceable connection

This fig. With the plucking of this fig-
Initiation.

sea and sky

sea and sky hold to nothing

across and within them
Majesty has her way,,
the dashing and clashing
fold into rising color and lapping blue…

if water or ether
knew fear,
grasping would begin.
and no state of storm or still
could again be as free
as the liberated elements
giving endlessly
spirited breath
and enlivenment to all
who wish
to know beauty.

Fallibility

As we watch
the magician’s sleight of hand,
awaiting error
to show us his ways and fallibility,
the real show goes on.
Slow, slow,
sit and look from where the Paeonia scent
rises out of sleep..
the ants gathering in the folds of petals
tremble in her grace,
walking their tiny regimented paths.
The swoop of sky above holds its breath,
wondering if today
the full bud will open.

Thunder and vanilla

I wept into that creek,
threw my voice into the forest.
Held by rocks, shoeless,
a mothering container of mountain
offered cracks of thunder and vanilla,
the dry ponderosa.
Here, by coyote’s invitation,
song and word arose.
Safe to be cracked open,
the stars redefined boundaries,
bringing unguessable exploration
on two feet.

The River

The River
holds not
the rocks in its path,
but caresses along its winding way…
Were the water to stop,
the Song would be lost
and the work,
that steady gentle sculpting, left
undone;
Carry on,
carry on,
mighty River
~

Come closer

For every rejection
every refusal,
Say,
Come closer.
For every tear
and blemish
and tremble,
Say,
Come closer.
In jagged light when
all the the angles are wrong
and disheartening,
fall
in Love.
Be the tender one,
the present and caring one,
alone with yourself.
In that freedom
none can knock you from place,
your sway becomes a spin
becomes a leap
becomes a Song
to which others find
their own dance.

Full Possession

In the growing up
Vision clears.
With the bite of attachment
through hunger and loss,
Gifts-
Sap and nectar and perfume,
the rooted water finding,
nourishment gathering,
earth holding..
Blessings
present themselves
in an upwell of golden hour light,
offering full possession
of that which blindness said
didn’t exist-
A mighty, sweet
and inexhaustible
power..
Ignorance is a back turned to the east,
a mind believing sunrise
to be myth.
Turn around,
the sky blushes for you.

Rabbit at dawn

Meeting rabbit at dawn,
her form nearly a shadow in gold grass,
voices of three owls cross overhead.
Bat descends swiftly from behind,
grazes ground,
flies sharply up past my cheek.
Rabbit hops closer, stands high on hind feet,
bringing a clear river of scent to her twitching nose and,
with offset ears, sits, scratches, and
washes herself.
Dark full-bodied mosquitoes harvest breakfast
from my backside.
Red-shouldered hawk cries dominantly
from the west,
lands on cypress crown.
Young coyote trots past.