The tumult is our own

10 Wednesday Jul 2024

Posted by in generations, global, human, poems, poetry, welcoming, work

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The tumult is our own.

It happens out there but in here the real storms play out.

We take action, response comes, repeat.

Sometimes a looooong stretch of waiting shows

what changeable beasts we are;

How to set down outcome

and reside in the lively space between this and that…

Sturdy land goes liquid, tables collapse, chair tips over,

the cat catapults herself to the top of now crooked refrigerator.

Yes, the happenings.

But, oh, the tumult.

Work with the shiftless, restless, beautiful

beast.

The rest takes care of itself.

Heaven & hell

29 Saturday Jun 2024

Posted by in Body, Elements, poems, poetry

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I’ve been contemplating heaven and hell,

while chewing an apple slice,

staring at where

the sweet dry hills meet sky.

I think it’s kind of like that.

They come together, an uneven between,

the elements can be explored, felt, seen,

drawn, smelled, poked:

they’re in sacred relationship.

And we have to learn, each within ourselves,

our relationship to them.

Both teach. Both burn us to essence,

if we let them.

We can enter one and take the other

right along with.

Wherever you stand, sustenance can be found.

Where’s your heaven to your hell?

Are you the same within each?

Marbles

27 Thursday Jun 2024

Posted by in flight, mystery, poems, poetry

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I have decided I may be losing my marbles.

But that’s not really the problem,

finding the hole they seem to be tumbling from is.

Were I able to locate that,

at least then, when I’m light enough to fly,

I’d know where the wind is whistling through.

Stretched

27 Thursday Jun 2024

Posted by in Opening, poems, poetry, still

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Stretched thin by uncertainty,

by loss,

now an inseparable blend:

A gossamer veil.

Another world, active as this one,

signals faintly,

in blurred sound, through garbled sight,

from the other side.

I sit on dead calm sea

in my little light boat, just me.

No waft of wind, or lapping tide..

I squirm inside knowing nothing

can be done.

Sitting here while the surrounding world

holds its breath

I look about at the shorelessness

wondering,

what could possibly be next?

For now, I sit

reminding my lungs to expand,

to release,

to expand,

to release…

other worlds can’t communicate

without a hollow

for silence.

Twisted linen

20 Monday May 2024

Posted by in generations, movement, mystery, offering, pain, poems, poetry, the road, weaving

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Twisted linen in the closet:

rumpled skirt, wrinkled vest..

Who would imagine shirts

could dent.

Comical to even consider remedying that.

Seems I can not stay put.

A magnet polarized from place

when place is done.

Not that I want to be washed from the creekbed.

I’ve bolted, leapt, flown, jumped and been

catapulted;

I’m praying for a gentler crossing

this go round.

The hanging lines held in linen

are a telling road map

of more to come.

Cafe

17 Friday May 2024

Posted by in abundance, beauty, community, poems, poetry, welcoming

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She barks at him

bitterly

across two tables and a faux fire

(real flame, no wood),

he nods,

yuh, yuh,

nose angled toward his paper.

They’re married,

the cafe their living room.

Meanwhile, Nina Simone

and a squealing cappuccino machine.

A man, clearly successful,

speaks at air,

bluetooth lodged in both ears.

Opposite,

women burble of this and this,

while another couple, thick grey locks

lidded by heavy cowboy hats,

laughs together.

At a single,

a young one,

pale and half asleep, sits alone,

the lower half of her face parked in her palm.

Two dogs, wide eyed,

wait.

Spanish wafts over from the counter.

With warm cup held in both hands,

I drink it all in.

Kindleless fire

15 Friday Mar 2024

Posted by in confusion, Fire, heart, poems, poetry

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You lose your beauty

and the sky turns pink.

It’s not yours to lose.

What twists us in knots

keeps us,

an unholy marriage,

from the divinity shining

within our own eyes.

Who says what is beautiful,

he, she or he?

Meaningless judgments aimed

at raising one, at undermining another.

Recall the kindleless fire

and your heart will know none

but love threading song.

Vanishings

08 Friday Mar 2024

Posted by in death, poems, poetry

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When death meets you

long before memory remembers,

wrapping tender and dark tendrils

around your heart,

a shadow casts upon all that follows.

Inexplicably.

Without reason the most beloved people,

one after another after another,

disappear.

And the pain nearly kills you.

Vanishings become a lifetime of dancing,

red shoes stuck to your tired feet,

exhaustion pulling your heart toward the edge,

right up to the moment when you find out:

The she you could not have named,

She died.

And you were with her through the end.

Ghosts haunt lifetimes.

We reach back

17 Saturday Feb 2024

Posted by in daughter, generations, poems, poetry

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We reach back in the generations,

untangling threads,

and wonder over familiar terrain,

hunting fruit-bearing trees never noticed

before.

But before

was when the wood was too green,

flowers knocked off by freeze,

bees unable to work their magic–

harvest waiting for the right season.

I wander the woods

after sharing those stories again and again,

ones asking unanswerable questions,

sensing the complexity of things.

I did not know,

until now,

I am the winged one

returning to the grove

to hum between pink petals

and play my part

in the fecundity of my ancestors.

Ancestors

whose bones move beneath this skin,

whose bones make blood

carrying me to the end of my days.

No other way

17 Saturday Feb 2024

Posted by in offering, poems, poetry, transformation

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Watching the weather come in

through breaking light,

February flowering trees moving

below with the wind,

I can’t recall the bird I heard last night.

Sleep dropped hard–thank god–and

dreams of a friendly pockmarked face

and who he was.

I’m small here beneath swirling sky,

flea to the breathing animal I try

to rest upon.

I’ve no idea what’s coming.

Somehow, with birth arrived a tossing of

security

for a life that wouldn’t crush my soul.

I know no other way.

And don’t think I want to.