Tree of Life
From here the pathway opens, forest thinning into meadow pond, gnarled pines sweetening the air; stillness steeping from the bedrock, weight carried from the trailhead dissolving in the dirt track, breaking down like memories under mountain sun. Wherever you are you are also here, easing the thorn caught suffering for a view of grass in […]
Thankfulness
Thankfulness like falling snow covers and quiets the furrowed fields and wintergreen moss. Ridges of desire wrapped within a silent cloak, grateful for breath and all that rises; the earth still, softly open to the blessing.
Spirit Wing
Crow flies by the window, his shadow tracing the pale yellow wall with a faint outline marking flight, calling for his spirit wing and passing presence to be remembered for just one moment.
Gift of Rain
When men from afar arrived on the broad river rain pushed them down, offended them in smoke filled lodges beneath strips of drying fish. They wanted what was from their past not this ocean deluge from the sky. To understand water is a gift, its softness lifting in cold air sweeping in waves along the […]
Secret Flower
Losing grip, not letting go, falling void yet holding chord woven in light to every mortal thing. Bend deeply not to break, supple flows, rigid softens, secret flower held within waiting to unfold.
Above the Ridge Line
Land sloped up from a dry creek bed where tumble down buildings faded in the sun; beneath the willows a story imagined long before the journey. Spike thorn tore our clothes, thin gruel the only food. Climbing broken ledges to draw what piñon rooted from the rock strewn scree, we followed clues, laboring to be […]
Cheap Bar Song
First there is the way she looks; ok, be all smart and mature but when you saw her the first time something in you changed and you know it. Then there’s what she is which if that doesn’t humble you down to your hairless shins you might as well go back to grazing with the […]
Winter Root
Rain settles like a wet glove, the air silver with fog, ground beginning to soften after the long summer drought. I finally sleep, my body waking with the gravity of stone, peace like an old friend come to visit with unspoken kindness. As leaves let go I begin the drop to winter root; no hurry […]
To What Wanders
“There’s always a place for an old horse Though it can take no more to the long road.” – Tu Fu, 768 Gunfights and gone lovers crowd into dreams wanting their stories retold, yearning to be remembered. I sort each night through their purgatory adrift except a dream, to give […]
Sidewalk Rose
What ails but thought of the big problem and right solution while morning slips away and the last scarlet drops from the climbing rose beside our door, a gift to the sidewalk and all who pass us by.
Yom Kippur, 2012
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 […]
Sound of Life
There’s light on the headboard from a break in the curtains and the sound of you stirring. Despite the list of tasks, and the burdens carried, the curtain is open, just a fraction, but open to the sunlight and sound of life from your sleeping body.
Gift to be Apart
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 […]
Here for an Hour
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 […]
Muttering of Crows
The crows had been gone for a couple of days. I noticed the bread crumbs hadn’t been eaten and thought they’d lost their taste for whole wheat but when a fresh salmon skin sat untouched I knew something was up, a crow convention or an earthquake coming. Thinking apocalyptic as the skin dried and the […]