Winter Root
Rain settles like a wet glove, the air silver with fog, ground beginning to soften after the long summer drought. I finally sleep, my body waking with the gravity of stone, peace like an old friend come to visit with unspoken kindness. As leaves let go I begin the drop to winter root; no hurry […]
To What Wanders
“There’s always a place for an old horse Though it can take no more to the long road.” – Tu Fu, 768 Gunfights and gone lovers crowd into dreams wanting their stories retold, yearning to be remembered. I sort each night through their purgatory adrift except a dream, to give […]
Sidewalk Rose
What ails but thought of the big problem and right solution while morning slips away and the last scarlet drops from the climbing rose beside our door, a gift to the sidewalk and all who pass us by.
Yom Kippur, 2012
When inspiration fails the clock ticks and walls echo, music won’t play, voices annoy, bones ache, fissures open and the Earth groans; habitual and rigid yet afraid of this brittleness I look to dreams and find confusion. On this day of atonement something old must pass away for the new and vital to reappear. Will […]
Sound of Life
There’s light on the headboard from a break in the curtains and the sound of you stirring. Despite the list of tasks, and the burdens carried, the curtain is open, just a fraction, but open to the sunlight and sound of life from your sleeping body.
Gift to be Apart
We choose the paths we call our lives within the deeper longing; as sun and stars create the night and moon’s desire, we are what lifts the sky, descends to sea. The gift to be apart woven in a wider cloth; we are not ocean but we are water, we are not sun but we […]
Here for an Hour
The golden curl of sandstone rock, the sound of sea as it fills beneath a hollow ledge, the graceful line of her leg as she steps into the tide; answers to the many questions from the bones in my thumb throbbing in the old break to the hollowness in my gut as I turn to […]
Muttering of Crows
The crows had been gone for a couple of days. I noticed the bread crumbs hadn’t been eaten and thought they’d lost their taste for whole wheat but when a fresh salmon skin sat untouched I knew something was up, a crow convention or an earthquake coming. Thinking apocalyptic as the skin dried and the […]
Drifting Quietly
There are times in the month when the moon goes soft, her pull relaxed, diminished, leaving the sea to drift in a gentle whirl of sea bird and circling weed. A time when little moves, gulls cry lonely and questioning, moments to gather and reflect on what she has given and what may yet be […]
Speaking in Crow
Crows have taken the nearby point, dark shadowy forms against rough hewn rock, reed-like feet an after thought to their coal black feathers. Speaking in crow when one returns, with stories gathered from the sea, of how she stirs, lifting her veil, shocking us with her ancient face – us I say though featherless and […]
Something New
Everything continues as it has until it doesn’t, water flows downhill until it won’t, dinosaurs sleep in ice with green grass in their teeth, fearless armies march to Napoleon’s latest ditch. Then the long pause while power gathers within the sleeping earth, giants awaken and stars come to life with songs of something new. […]
To Walk the Ground
There are ghosts in every land, spirits the 1+1=2 world cannot comprehend, in the places of birth where elders watch our faltering steps. Whispering quiet music, shadows in the moonlight, calling us to live the life they hold in promise but cannot touch; needing our faulty vision and fumbling hands to write the words and […]
Alive to the Witness
It’s enough to be a man, to walk the path of suffering by the light of kindness, giving the gift of oneself however imperfect again and again; intimate with Her body, alive to the witness of the stars.
Returned to the Silence
Did I leave something behind on the far east journey, the now here out of focus and dreamscape so real? With old Earth close I should have thought about the part of me still at home, in the surge of desire, who may have slipped beneath the cover of a monk’s red robe and returned […]
Tiger’s Nest
The cave at Tiger’s Nest once birthed a Llama guarded now by fortress stone, jagged cliffs and scores of chanting monks. We climb the rain slick path, rutted and rough hewn, until the last flight of flagged steps pass beneath a spindrift waterfall, then rise into the blast of horn, murmured prayers and butter lamp […]