Until Like Water
In one bright hour the woman’s body supple and sure, quiet with the calm of early morning. Silent and still as ancient stone, testing every defense until like water we flow with ardor drawn from mountains of solitude, pouring wide into the valleys of her remembered embrace. […]
Casting Our Lot
Flickering flames in the dark disconnect, we hold to the good tenacious as infants; with so much undone in the downward spiral we cling like grass to serenity and the grace of this miraculous life. We’ll not speak of fighting, not in this holy hour. Curious as birds we look to what may yet be, […]
Something Will Change Me
I’ll grow a beard, live on the tide, turn to stone or dandelion, then become water; race in the ebb, grow talons, take flight, lay down as grass sun brown and blazing. Something will change me yet behind the faces I’ll be the one watching, rock shore deep, hummingbird fast back to the invisible. […]
Night World
The moon-laid path glistens on night water inviting a dance. Owl calls from the wood, the splash of a seal. I think to go within, conditioned by some long-ago cave, but the night is still and alive with the deep peace of silence. Moon awakens the land. Trees stand tall in the stars. I touch […]
Hallowed Ground
In morning light with wind on the sea you wouldn’t think of all the earth holds buried, the unremembered dreams and ambitions past. Bones of warriors in ships of steel, tusks of elephants, claws of tigers, all the sharp points of advance dulled by years passing in the great cemetery of earth. Over the graveyard […]
Ruffling Feathers
Silence in the sea; beneath the waves and wind quiet of the voiceless deep. Presence without words teaching change, mood and temperament, arriving full with joy, departing not a backward glance. Rocks drink this knowledge, creatures within and above, me as young as grass beginning the long courtship. Each day listening, watching as wind lifts […]
Age of War
The earth will rise, seas will part, across the vast land winds of change turn day to night and night to howling dark. Animals take shelter in the highland wood, birds in every brush and thicket. A moment comes silent and serene when clouds open and memory resolves. The voice that sounds rings upon the […]
Guarding the Door
A big city crow sagged the power line, giving me a one-eyed stare of dark caution. I saw a few birds, dogs on leash but nothing else spoke from the wild. At the party there were chances to stumble and fall, letting the wine talk instead of my better angel, but the outline of crow […]
Last Call
Down is up the final call when the great ship of mediocrity slips beneath the enveloping sea. The engine of geology moves the continents, biology cleanses the land, breathing life back into the ocean and the creation of sadness departs like an eclipse. From behind the shadow a new sun and moon appear looking down […]
Begging Bowl
Loss, grief and chaos advance; the desperate fall adrift as structures buckle under mounting pressure. Dispossession, ravaged land, and children lost to the flood, reckoned on the delicate scales of your tender heart. Breathe in the wounding, then breathing out, offer your begging bowl of gratitude for healing of this aching world. […]
Messages of Silence
Rising from inner earth, slender stalks of peace push against the hardened soil. Seeking open air of what may yet be, they sip on drunken light with the sobriety of darkness, their tiny uncurling arms sending out messages of silence like lightning in the sky.
Grubstake on the River
I have a small grubstake on the river where she breaks out of the high mountain sauntering like an unfettered horse, wild, unbridled and reckless, washing over gravel beds and stone outcrops, telling her own story before she drops into the cut channels of the towns and cities. She’s a woman how she flows falling […]
Makeshift Altar
Body and mind accept the peace of slowing down, as needing to do retreats in silence. Dismantling the throne of self the makeshift altar of being rises from the dark, satisfied as the evening sky with the joy of returning.
What Waits to be Born
The wind is sharp this morning, the few warm days of summer crowded like sheep into a small pen by the ocean air, cool off the Pacific. Clouds lower the ceiling, pressing down on the high hills, the channel stirred, covered in small wind driven waves, the grass bent over and yellowed as the rains […]
Mark of His Love
There’s only so much a man can affect, the cut of a board, a wayward child, perhaps so grand as the outline of a city but whatever he does if it is to bear his mark must be done with care, with thoughtfulness and the quiet expression from the slow spring flowing of his love. […]