As the sacred seal opens
ancient power flows,
forms that emerge
thin outlines
of the rising force.
Long furrows of the dead
and yet to be born
wait patiently
for the quickened touch
of the here and now
to break the chains of time.
Vultures carve winged forms
in the clouded sky,
creatures pause within the sea
and below the earth
stone layers shift and move.
With silence to guide
the gate draws back,
the mortal frame trembles
and the river of life begins once more
to shape its way through Eden.

photography by Jim Frid

Returning to this world
of terrain and shape
from the timeless
I absorb the morning
like a hungry traveler,
drinking in new light and cool draft.
I move arms and legs,
listen to a crow busy with the news
and put on the old harness
to enter the day’s furrow.
The soil grows harder each year,
long rows bent to the shape of the earth
as I walk along behind the plow of memory.
Perhaps today I’ll undo the traces,
find a fresh path across the meadow
to the clear creek running,
not sow or reap but cast my lot with the birds,
with badger and browsing deer.
Perhaps I’ll trick the dark form waiting
at the end of this long row,
leave the dream to cross the moving water
and climb the hill to paradise.

The tenderness of a soft breeze
dapples the morning sea
across the broad channel.
Seals break surface in their forage,
dolphins show black fins
in rolling breaths
stirring the silence.
On the wind, the water,
the trembling earth,
a new-day testament
begins again,
written without words
in the language of light.

The door creaks, the window opens
to light and air and what waits.
Geese bark, otter slide into the sea
and I sit beside the water, aging like stone
into rough textured patience.
Quick as hummingbird,
bothersome as goose
I listen now and hear more deeply
the unsaid word, the long lost feeling,
the call of deep rooted trees
in sunlight and darkness.
I range like a swift, gather as a bee
tasting camas in its purple glow.
Absorbed in silence, I hook on
to the great chain of being
and quietly pass through the mystery.

The trees I’ve walked beneath
these many years,
I still don’t know their names.
They must have them
growing in the moonlit dark,
reaching toward the sun.
There are grasses
here for a year then gone.
Someone must have named them,
millions upon millions
on this thread of rock.
The birds of course,
the sea creatures
and then the humans
who all have names
but who dares say they know.
I come in this unknowing,
an admirer of the tide,
the shape of water
and the glint of light
upon the morning.
Who walks in dark
and speaks to trees,
who dares to love
with all that means.
Empty and full
the parts of me
that do know
open like a sail
to catch the breeze,
seeing your name
for just one moment
signed in water
upon the sunlit sea.