29 Wednesday Aug 2018
Posted in Uncategorized
Tags
Anxiety, Compassion, Conversations With Maggie, Faith, Fear, Healing, Love, Love Poems, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Sacrifice, Sacrificial Love
Fear rises up inside us, she said,
But love can go clear to the bone;
Take it as close as you can, without breaking.
Maybe it’s okay to break, I said,
After all, a bone will always yearn to heal.
26 Sunday Aug 2018
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Tags
Alone, Aspen Trees, choices, Conversations With Maggie, Crocus, decisions, Hope, Isolation, Life, Love, Poem, Poems, Poetry
Only you can answer the question,
for we’re alone in our decisions;
Can the aspen advise the crocus?
You and I are that different, she said.
Yet, their roots are intertwined, I said.
25 Saturday Aug 2018
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Tags
Afterlife, Conversations With Maggie, Death, Life, life after death, Loss, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Togetherness
Remember the years we couldn’t see
the mountains, obscured with smoke?
That’s what it will feel like,
when I’m no longer here, she said.
The mountains were still there, I said.
22 Wednesday Aug 2018
Posted in Uncategorized
Tags
Conversations With Maggie, Happiness, Joy, Love, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Spring, spring poem, Winter
3.
When winter is deepest, we long
For the warm days of spring–
the birds, the buds, the piercing of snow.
Yet, the warm days are inside us
like love, waiting to be resurrected with joy.
21 Tuesday Aug 2018
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Tags
Conversations With Maggie, Freedom, Happiness, Loss, Maggie, Poem, Poems, Poetry, The Universe, Unknown
2.
Wander the roads of your happiness,
She said, With no purpose,
Except to wander the roads.
In silence, I watched her walk away,
Wondering where she would go.
20 Monday Aug 2018
Posted in Uncategorized
29 Sunday Jul 2018
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Tags
Butterflies, Butterfly, Columbia River, Death, Life, mud swallows, Poem, Poems, Poetry, River, Rivers, Swallows, transformation
I am sun off water,
spirit, which takes form
Through transformation.
Metamorphosis:
Lowest belly creature,
To this fairytale life.
Yet, I am lost,
Somehow wandered
Between safe shores.
Water everywhere.
And the mud swallows,
Who make their nests
In the river banks,
Desperate for me.
You see, a pretty thing
Can suffer, too:
Frantic beating of wing.
In this short life,
I will both sing,
And cease to be.
24 Sunday Jun 2018
Posted in Uncategorized
Tags
Beauty, Bitterness, Forgiveness, Grace, Hate, Hurt, Life, Poem, Poems, Poetry
Hate, stealing our moments
And sometimes our lives,
Hanging on to grievance
As if it were a solid thing,
Like a rock, a sturdy branch.
Someone told me,
Bitterness is like drinking poison
And waiting for the other person to die.
Wisdom, like a real branch,
More solid than grief,
Sometimes, more solid
Than the hurt we carry
Like a bag of stones
Over our backs,
Always thinking our burden heavy,
Unable to set it down
And see the world opening
Like the blossoms of the Serviceberry,
Peeking from under pines,
Saying, come to me, I am free,
And, for a moment, we rest
In their waxy, white peace.
The world is a strange place,
How we look to its ugly spots,
So rare,
Compared to its lovely ripples:
The trembling leaves,
The musty smell of grass,
Blue lakes, like mirrors,
Waiting for us to jump free.
12 Tuesday Jun 2018
Posted in Uncategorized
I dreamed of a fence covered in roses,
Tendrils winding around rails,
Heavy with buds and blooms,
Roses as vibrant, and varied,
as our lives and its generations:
Orange, the color of fire,
White, the color of waiting,
Red, the color of blood,
And the only ones who survived.
28 Saturday Apr 2018
Posted in Uncategorized
The seasons and the days
framed between branches,
half moon passing over
a cycle of daffodils and day lilies,
last year’s leaves waiting
to be raked, or blown away.
17 Tuesday Apr 2018
Posted in Uncategorized
I crossed
That field, weeks before the first pass of the blade,
Through grass and briars, fog–the night itself
to my thighs, my skirt pulled up that high.
(Claudia Emerson, excerpt from Aftermath)
Today, I stood in the south pasture and looked back at the house,
as if it was another life I was seeing from the outside:
the gables, the stone facade, the windows, the aspen.
The palomino came to me there, and seemed of two worlds.
She crossed over the basalt outcroppings,
her hooves crushing the baby grass and buttercups,
like a bold spirit that moved between life and death
and made me wonder, for a moment, which I inhabited,
or what was real, the house, the horse, the wind, my body–
the words I searched for, to say how much I miss you.
14 Saturday Apr 2018
Posted in Uncategorized
Tags
Chaos, Death, Feeling Alive, Horse Poems, Horse poetry, Horses, Life, Loping, Poem, Poems, Poetry
To straddle that fundamental duality is to be balanced: to have one foot firmly planted in order and security, and the other in chaos…” Jordan Peterson, 12 Rules For Life
At first,
They may try to buck,
But give them the reins
And sit deep in the saddle.
Like everything in life,
No guarantees,
We’re all on the bottom peg,
Really,
When it comes to living,
Or dying,
Or even breaking a leg.
Loping a green horse
Isn’t much different
Than falling in love,
Or growing old.
We like to feel alive,
Sometimes,
We like to fly
On the back of a horse
Learning to run,
With chaos on her back.
08 Sunday Apr 2018
Posted in Uncategorized
Tags
Courage, Eastern Washington, Fishtrap Lake, I-90, Moses Lake, Nobility, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Raven, Ravens, Seattle, Spokane, Strength, Washington
Imagine this: an arid countryside
In early spring, wild grasses
Still brown and dormant
From the autumn before,
Cumulus clouds, dark, heavy,
Make it seem like night,
Though your watch says otherwise.
There’s a lake reflecting the clouds,
Known for its rainbow trout,
Which attracts fishermen and birds,
And a BNSF train breaking westward
Toward Moses Lake and Seattle.
Imagine a raven soaring
Over the train, and with it:
The train, with its many orange cars,
The raven, ripping, racing, winning,
And reducing everything to backdrops
and props, objects bowed
By a single, scrappy black bird.
05 Thursday Apr 2018
Posted in Uncategorized
Tags
Death, Fear, Freedom, Happiness, Heaven, Horses, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Togetherness, Tom Dorrance, Unity
“Try to figure out some way to understand this thing the horse is so full of, and that he has such a strong desire to get from the person in return. It has to be togetherness. Mind, Body and Spirit is what we’re talking about here.” Tom Dorrance, True Unity
Our shared emotion,
Seventeen of twenty-seven:
Happiness, worry, fear.
What is it, rising up
Like spirit, from your eyes,
Like heaven. An open field,
Where all that matters is love
And connection, knowing
We are safe from what chases,
Knowing we are strong,
mistakes forgotten, and free.
02 Monday Apr 2018
Posted in Mozart, Uncategorized
01 Sunday Apr 2018
Posted in Uncategorized
Spring arrives like forgiveness,
A plump bluebird bouncing
Along the railing of our deck,
The cry of killdeer nesting
Among buttercups and grass widow.
The earth is full of robins
And toad sound, dormant lawns
Starting to green and grow,
And something like wonder
Taking root in this wide-open world.
25 Sunday Mar 2018
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Tags
aspen, Aspen Buds, Aspen Trees, Balm of Gilead, Healing, Olive oil, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Poplar Buds, poplar trees, Spring, Toads
We acclimate to early spring,
Wind, rain, and fifty degrees,
Chopin’s Nocturne in C sharp minor,
Because the world is opening to us,
Like the gentlest of heavens.
Poplar buds, sticky with resin,
Ready to be picked from their branches,
Mixed, and set aside to ferment in oil.
A balm for brokenness:
Stir together early spring toad-sound,
Coming to us from a darkened pasture
Where it overflowed with melted snow
And rain, a pair of killdeer nesting
Out by the north fence among the dry grasses,
And the aspen, still bare, but breaking in buds.
24 Saturday Mar 2018
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Tags
aspen, Aspen Colonies, Aspen Trees, Forgiveness, Horses, Love, Love Poems, Poem, Poems, Poetry
The sweeping of our horses’ manes
Showed us the wind, and which way it blew,
But it was the aspens that gave it voice.
Swirling leaves,
Like erratic wings of butterflies,
Shimmered, shook, slapped,
Simultaneously clapping as we passed.
Grace in the grove, the ticking,
whispering clatter of the breeze,
Passing, back and forth, between worlds.
23 Friday Mar 2018
Posted in Uncategorized
What a strange thing to own,
A view of Mt Spokane,
Windows, frame this home,
And look out toward its peak,
Covered in snow, and tinged
Orange by the sun rising in the East.
No wind, the sky is blue and brilliant,
With a few stray, stratus clouds
And a meandering sparrow.
It’s the kind of day that smiles,
Like I remember you smile,
And your eyes, always trying
To be kind, and painfully respectful,
Even when you should not be.
22 Thursday Mar 2018
Posted in Uncategorized
Tags
aspen, Brook, Chimes, Death, Early Spring, Fear, Night Terror, Nightmares, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Roses, Spring, spring poem, Unknown, Willow, Wind
I’ll describe early spring,
because it’s easier
than describing fear:
waking at one a.m.
in a terrible dream.
Where are you?
Why don’t you answer?
It’s forty degrees,
and the wind is rattling
the darkness and the chimes.
Everything is touched:
the willow, the aspen, and the roses
just beginning to break
into the tiniest buds.
Yet, still bare, still silent,
still waving their branches,
like I see you, waving your arms.
Bits of Poetry 