Dry Ridge Trail
The old man put aside his sadness to listen to the stories of the stones who told him of the joy below dark green water, of how trees feared earthquakes, of the tiny ant that bit his grandson, and to write her story as if it mattered… Because only two rivers meet and creeks are a mile […]
Voice Within All Things
Huge clouds cover the valley, light disguised behind a veil of gray; energy dropping ominously, the barometer of war and poverty for a once free creature whose invention will not overcome the truth. With no answer for Earth’s distress he picks up a stone on the beach, and listens for its story. Unable to stop […]
To Lift My Color
The plum tree fires pink fireworks into the gray skies of Febru’ry, lavish petals filling the gnarled trunk with no apology for color so audacious. Earth herself awakens below the broad swath of cement. I greet her across the open street, daring to lift my color with hers into the face of winter. […]
Our One Desire
Gaia sends her signals from deep within tremors of neglect shaking her wounded body, asking for help in so many ways, yet only drama compels attention in these days of Narcissus. She is not a mechanism for study nor a faulty watch we can replace. Is it possible the beauty she gives is intended for […]
Way of Water
The journey to their new world mired step by slogging step in the rain-soaked bog, feeding ground and sanctuary to countless birds and fish, to them a sucking pool of unforgiving mud. Remembering the defeat, they would later drain this memory of inadequacy, the empire of machines paving the water course to be rid of the […]
Hardened Cleft
Unhappy with immovable mass, he remembers water, how wind rises in the south. Recalling motion something moves in him, a breath where there was constriction a relief to the constant pressure. Those who stand and wait appear foolish but within there is treasure of stillness containing the soul, ready to sing out from the hardened […]
Lifting the Weight
Look into the morning sun during the first hour, when the brilliant fire turns light into awareness of origin, and the unexpected. As we join in rising the day is ours, incense lifting the weight on the inborn song of our hearts.
Looking Up She Rises
Old memories stir like the coal bed of a log fire, fierce heat of distant times when the circle was intact and joy unclouded. We knew we would forget but not how hard forgetting would become, yet the oil of awakened memory softens the wounding, easing our entry into this day, when only love will […]
Gravity of Belief
The wandering soul, one foot before another, moving yet not moved as if constant motion would avoid the imprint of something or someone to fear or simply avoid. Loneliness preferable to the imagined harness he sometimes notices, the loving he seeks. He fails to know the witness who touches his feet on the stone lined […]
Private Joy
Crows circle the predawn sky, their flock of dark wings making impossible turns, pivoting with the certainty of a thousand feathers, their delight a private joy before the city’s demand in the hour of descent.
Sculptress of Forgotten Form
During the winter season, I would travel with the Duhalar reindeer people and stay with an old shaman called Tsuyan. On odd days of the waxing moon, she would go into a trance and transform herself into a reindeer bull, flying off to a place she called the Dark Heavens: a twilight world full of […]
Years in Just One Place
The edge of the rock leads down from the inland hill, like a spiny tendril to the sea, tapering until the fingertip joins the rise and fall of wet tide and ocean. To receive the tender feeling of what once was and still may be, the rock more nerve than bone, surface coarse, but through […]
Born on the Tides of Forgiveness
A mass of logs swirl in the cove, the circling force of the tide carrying the raft out to the channel as effortlessly as brought in, the reciprocal flow balancing the doors of creation. Vast currents feeding and being fed, loving and being loved by the tenderness of Earth, when the debris, the waste strewn […]
As Near As Flesh Will Allow
Waves pile into the cove, wandering logs forced to the rocks, while across the channel white caps ride the wind driven tide in its winter high. Gulls and sea birds lie low as he is in his warm cabin, the poet in him at peace like nowhere else, close to her storm filled beauty. With […]
Starlight of Eden
We travel a magic vessel through night sky and ancient kiva, to inner earths of unseen beauty, closing our eyes and turning loose of the world we’ve accepted. Spiraling through apertures to places beyond dreaming, and where the source of water meets the nearest sun our healing touch begins the end of all that’s gone […]