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 […]
Path of Stones
Foresters blazed a wide trail up the steep grade to Angel’s Rest. Along the swath two bodies wide, a narrow path intersects the broad way, a thread that was the natives’ track before the roads of industry. The trail barely visible to the place of power they knew, of vision quest and high plateau, snow […]
Crossroads
At the crossroads a weathered pilgrim receives alms from those who stop, pondering which path to take. Their worn maps change as they look into his eyes, knowing the choice is now always now, which future to create, leaving small gifts for the old one as they travel on, their hearts renewed by the fierce […]
One Who Walks Within
The old track to the ridge line begins where two rivers meet, aquamarine water pulsing with oxygen, original path cut along the lines of power up the steep mountain from tree to ancient tree. Roots form a network from sun to inner Earth, an energetic grid alight and flowing across the long switchbacks to the […]
As if the Sun Would Not Return
Light streams in our eastern windows, a soft winter brightness warming the frost covered sidewalks and Christmas morning in our old home. Ancients celebrated this gift in temples with rituals dedicated to the solstice, to the changing arc of dawn, as sign of how our lives could evolve beyond the maddening hive, gently lifting our […]
Upon the Sacred Earth
When men gather in the strong rain of the forest, the sound of the drum echoes with the music of the river, the bald scree and forested slopes sending back the message there is room for you here, as you return in the good way, bringing the sharp truth of your tears, the golden wounds […]