Ancient Bark and Branch
I don’t recognize myself in the mirror, this profile of an old man; not the one I think I am or feel in the bones of my face. He seems to be sinking back into the earth. I love the earth but I’m not going down, not yet. My roots go down; I know them […]
Winter Turnips
I furrow the ground for a few words, turning them up like turnips plumb and round and white from the dark, waiting for this moment of cool air and green leaves to awaken into light and rise with desire; food for the soul in the last days of winter. […]
Green Earth Prayer
Let me rise with the morning to join the day as it begins, the long cover of night pulled back with a prayer, lifted from the green earth of my own body to life, once more to life.
Robin’s Egg
When the noise becomes too great and the strain of divisions multiply return to the silence, the spring of renewal. Let the cloth of ambition fall away, the armor of protection and attack become a robin’s egg, blue and trusted to the world on a spiraled nest of slender grass, the paper thin shell holding […]
Order of the Golden Ball
In their last great meeting, medicine chiefs rode down from the mountains, bears crossed the wide rivers, eagles left the coastline, beavers their dams, trees pulled up roots, birds took wing, whales swam upriver and salmon walked the shore. From the furthest horizon Incas, Aztecs, ageless monks, Sisters of the Silence, and the Order of […]
Circle of Two
We live within a circle of two, not straying beyond our home for a night and a day and another night; the intimacy of life enough to feed us, the food of our camp what we’ve gathered from the clearing of our hearts. Holding to each other beneath the arc of sun and stars, in […]
Face of the Ancient Gods
Most of the animals are gone, fled back into the brush thick forest under the green cloth of nature’s cloak, out of sight to those who want to be the only actors on the stage. We forget the power creatures provide, neglect to honor the wild face of the ancient gods alive within their form. […]
Wildly Pouring
I learned bad words about your body before I knew what a body was in language harsh as cutting meat. Broken like sidewalks, separate as the river across barbed wire and maze of railroad tracks, separate from you with only the yearning, the blind desire I’d turn into fight, driving my fists into another body, […]
Touch of Providence
He walked alone with the future packed in his rail thin body down the long road to Cork, in his bloodstream my life, my daughters and grandson, my sister, her children and grandchildren, taking us to a place he had never seen, sure it was better than where he’d been. He wasn’t much of a […]
Path to the Sun
What grows to the light will not be deterred by the buried emotion of history’s trauma, the path to the sun having roots deep set in the dark soil of heredity, the minerals of forgotten pain drawn up to the open sky by unwavering faith in the unwritten future. […]
Drape of Winter
The sky breaks open above the valley, birds fly out from their hunker, buds swell on the flowering trees and the wet drape of winter pulls back on the upwell of life rising from the ground to meet the coming light.
Life’s Desire
Somewhere in the deep forest with only a slender trail beyond the reach of roads, old growth trees stand in silence as the mountain creek bears the weight of winter down the steep walled canyon. Alone in that quiet the desire of life speaks without fault, gravel bars and thorny brush keeping her company as […]
Medicine
Desperately alone depression galls, in isolation imagination fails with nothing but surface below the wave cast sea, behind the dark night sky only emptiness and void. Such is the path carved by mind into the soft grain of earth, as if against it all we might become something. Like an errant child we may stumble […]
To Lead and Guide Us
No use hiding once the sun’s come out though we’re quite a way from summer; we’ll crawl from our winter cave, the inner life slowly awakening, the dream time pulling us back but losing gravity as the bright star calls. With melodies of the night sky and the knowledge of darkness we must let go […]
Free from Hope
Winter clouds brood close soaking the land, stripping the last of summer’s weight as the earth breathes free from the hope of flowers, settling into root and descent under the cold rain, while we dream of bear and find our way with darkness guiding.