Autumn Dirge
Baseball’s over and the olive tree mourns with faded colors falling into rain wet ground, forgiving the hope of soft air and summer nights, no wanting but warmth as the sun drops south and winter approaches.
Face the Wind
Winds are blowing off Elliot Bay, rain in sheets on the hills; old Seattle waking up to black coffee and the sound of another storm. I’m heading out to find an egg in this town, maybe some bacon and bread. Gusts pound off the buildings challenging their insult; sea birds hunker down tucked into their […]
Journey On
Light slants across the channel burning away the clouds and early morning fog. I sit and watch, my food the slow thoughts that come with the tide, filling each crevasse with the softness of the sea, lifting me, a weathered log weightless on rising water, ready to journey on. […]
Look into the Aloneness
We punish each other and punish the earth, separate from the land that’s our story, volumes of cruelty with a few gems of grace buried in coarse gravel. I write to the sleeping though they don’t often stir. I write to the awake to give them solace. Today I write to you remembering the rejected, […]
High Tide
Calm water slack, two seals float and fish, eagle perches in its green fir tower staring into the distance; no sound but a solitary bird, still as the mountain, deep as the sea.
Vanishing Order
In the quiet of dusk the bugling sound of an elk herd over the grassland, the shadow of a cloud vanishing in this valley sliced into the foothills. Their flowing browse echoing wildness through the twilight to their home in the night.
Quieting the Noise
Singular and aware I go within to the place of silence, dropping like a seal into cold dark water.
Window of Opportunity
I saw you on the sabbath through the window of opportunity, queen of illumination holding the world beneath a flowing green mantle, the radiance of your light brightening these many years the room of my heart.
Awakening Wind
What stirs the soul moves the forest, guides the moon and trembles the valleys, flows in rivers and travels the broad sea speaking to birds, fishes, hawks in the high mountains and the great herds of Africa. The altars of pride are dust to this wind blessing the poorest with the touch of awakening, a […]
Yearning of the Night
We need the night with all its darkness wrapping us warm in the theater of dreams, our memory washed and hung on the lines of time to dry and brighten in an underground wind. Taking us back, leading us forward while the arc of stars turns and wheels and we come alive to the yearning […]
Spoken By the Sea
Before waves and wind the light slanted across the sea silver and shimmering, with clouds painted in the sky like a Roman chapel. Birds move silently through the air, seals bob in the flooding tide. I sit like the old rocks quiet and unmoving, waiting upon the sound of water and the truth revealed again […]
Big Drop Rain
First the wind rising, a whoosh in the tree tops then buckets of big drop rain soaking us with joy from the wide arms of grace.
Mountains of Ireland
I saw you once in the mountains of Ireland a narrow stream dropping like a ribbon of ice. Once in a broad leaf trunk smooth and silver, spreading your arms to birds in their flight; on the ridge lines of Oregon green trees forever, in vines crowding the street like kids at a fair. I […]
New Story
What will rise and what will follow, what will fall into the yawning deep? In the earth the sound of water and rush of stones. It is the time of the ancient and the time of soil. Veins open with silver and the round moon shines luminescent gold. Great fish break surface, grasslands thrum with […]
Plum Tree
No one told the plum tree about the end of the world, or the fat layered seal about oceans passing. Changes come, but a pup still cries and salmon rush strong when the last of the snow melts down to the sea. I tell myself of a far reach where her truth pours down like […]