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.
Let the Shaper Shape
I should be changing the world one inner voice keeps saying but I seemed to decide some time ago to let the world change me, an horrific thought when courage demands preserve the self at any cost. Not the world of block and brick but the hidden fire within the leaf, the whale’s eye alive […]
Winter Corrido
I feel it in my bones, the depth of my gut; healing taking hold, pushing out the poison burrowed in the marrow, stealing summer fat stored against winter. I’m empty now, not strong enough yet for the months ahead but getting better. I’ll stir about, see what waits in the dark. The old ones were […]
Bird Nest
In a nest inside my heart a tiny bird lives, peeping out to the world, ready to fly into the unmarked sky. Who I’ll be when the bird leaves is the writing of a poem, words left beside the sea tasting of salt, touched by the wind. […]
Winter Journey
We leave under bare trees, the crunch of frozen ground startling the birds, reminding us again of the long way to go down the old road of memory, to the wood clad shelter in the deep forest, where wounds will close in the lightless winter, the dark a healing blanket, the pure black night sky […]