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 I leave with the tide

or find strength in the wave?

I take inventory and forgive

following the way of Yom Kippur,

fasting from inner noise,

freeing the goat of retribution.

I go alone to the altar,

connecting to the deeper voice

as what must go is allowed to pass.

I descend and I raise up;

the color green astounds me.

I bring gifts to the space

that keeps us apart

saying Amen to this moment,

to the sounds of life stirring

and enter the garden

as if for the very first time.

 

There’s light on the headboard

from a break in the curtains

and the sound of you stirring;

alive to this life

the moment flashes

despite the list of tasks,

the burdens carried,

the curtain open

just a fraction but open

to the sunlight

and sound of life

from your sleeping body.

 

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 are light;

we grow, we live

then we leave

taking with us

food for the gods.

 

 

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 leave this place.
Even the crows don’t know
and if they did they wouldn’t tell
a two legged here for an hour
before the sun goes down
and the earth returns to silence.