21 Tuesday Jan 2020
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Aging, Courage, Death, Dying, Hope, Life, Loneliness, Loss, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Snow, Soul, Soul Poetry, Souls, Strength, Survival, Winter, Winter poem
Imagine
if someone covered you
in ice;
how would you feel
in a chill
blanket of snow?
What darkness have
you
known, the kind
that can kill you,
your voice
silenced
in wind-drifts,
the hissing whisper
of winter’s kiss?
21 Friday Jun 2019
Tags
clouds, Death, embrace, Flowers, Happiness, Hope, Life, Love, Love Poems, Manito Park, Petunias, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Soul Poetry, Souls, Spokane, summer
I’m writing today in response to a prompt about clouds that I found on the Manic Sylph’s blog.
My fifty-second first day of summer,
is cool and cloudy, the way I like my days,
a high of seventy, and I’ll stroll Manito Park,
while the flowers reprieve from scorchers,
and chaos; mild days are undervalued
in this world, everyone wants to run hot;
can I just sit here and dead-head my petunias
until I die of natural causes, hopefully,
in my sleep, when I’m past my eightieth
first day of summer, or ninetieth—
however old it is when I’m ready to go.
Are we ever ready to leave days like this?
There is always someone left to love,
to smile at, to hold in our just right embrace
while the sun comes up in their souls,
and they, too, long to celebrate
their first cloudy days of summer.
18 Saturday May 2019
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Bird Poem, Bird Poems, Bird Poetry, Birds, Death, Divorce, Eternity, Forgiveness, Freedom, Grace, Gratitude, Happiness, Hope, Infinite, Life, Longing, Love, Love Poems, Mercy, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Rain, Sacred, Soul, Soul Poetry, Souls, Spirit, Spirits, Spring, spring poem, Starting Over, Survival, The Universe, Unity, Women's Poems, Yearning
Even the stars are made of this:
sunshine & sweet petrichor.
What comes from above,
and we are made right,
our thirst, our life—
forgiveness,
after years of anger;
we finally feel love again.
The earth wreaks well of redemption,
grace permeates the dry ground.
And, the only sound we hear now,
birds,
who sing of starting over,
or, at least that’s what we hear,
like the smell of fresh water,
among grass, and clover:
sunshine & sweet petrichor.
01 Wednesday May 2019
Posted in Poetry
Tags
arrowleaf balsamroot, Bird Poems, Crows, Gratitude, Happiness, Hog Lake, Hog Lake Falls, Hope, Horse, Horse Poems, Horses, Life, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Ravens, Spirit, Spokane, spring poem, Waterfalls
The ground sounds hollow,
an echoing cadence of hoofbeats
follows among ponderosa, & a caw-caw
of wood raven, forest spies tattling
on our prattling happy chatter,
while hawks circle the pool
at the base of hog lake falls,
& balsamroot whispers
about the perfection of it all.
12 Friday Apr 2019
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Birth, Brook, Children, Courage, Fear of Death, First Born, Freedom, Gratitude, Happiness, Hope, Life, Love, Mothers, New Soul, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Son, Soul, Souls, Spirit, Spirits, Strength, Yearning
Some, come into the world as old souls,
like they’ve been here a hundred times,
a bit weary, wise, or jaded, made cautious
by pain & an understanding of human hearts.
But not my son, whose eyes saw the earth
as if he, and it, were just created.
Yes, from first breath he was a wanderer,
like his father in his lust for the world,
possibilities stretched out before him,
no person stranger, no place strange,
a modern day viking making his way
across an infinite, angry sea, with no map.
Unless, music is a map. Song after song,
his heart in waves of hard-plucked strings.
He sang loud, and I wondered how
he could pour himself out in front of crowds.
I see him, even now, upon the ocean,
his wooden ship, the waves, the sails.
02 Tuesday Apr 2019
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Canada Geese, Cowboy, Freedom, Hope, Horse, Horse Poem, Horse Poems, Horse poetry, Horses, Life, Love, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Ravens, River, Soul, Souls, Spirit, Spirits, Spokane, Spokane River, Spring, Survival
We rode dirt and mud,
through standing water,
like ponds, to verify
the sun, and life
of returning things:
Canada Geese, wood ravens,
mule deer, grazing at dusk,
and the river, surging
with the spring run off
of our souls, singing.
29 Friday Mar 2019
Posted in Poetry
Tags
aspen, Aspen Trees, Beauty, Courage, Death Poems, Dying, Hope, Life, Love, Love Poems, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Soul, Spirit, Spring, spring poem, Survival, Women's Poems, Yearning
early spring,
a cold aspen, clothed
in soft buds, robed in white,
like ash, born of snow;
to touch her is to quake
with the anticipation
of a thousand leaves
desperate to unfold;
a thousand leaves
desperate
to unfold you.
28 Thursday Mar 2019
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Aging, Death, Death Poems, Life, Memory, ocean, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Self, Soul, Soul Poetry, Spirit, Truth
Another day, I’ve collected
over eighteen thousand
now, but none like this:
the birds have returned,
and the clouds hang low,
like the mist of what is
unknown, and I don’t care
to know, because I gave up
predicting the future
when I realized
I was always wrong.
The only thing, now,
is this poem, and how
it pulls me toward confession.
You see, a life recedes;
place a bottle in the ocean
and watch it slowly
carried away by the waves;
that is me and you,
this moment,
and this poem.
09 Saturday Mar 2019
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Afterlife, Belief, Cedars, Death, Death Poems, Eternity, Flower Poetry, God, Hope, Infinite, Life, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Soul, Soul Poetry, Souls, Spirit, Spirits, Trillium, Truth, Unity, Women's Poems
O, Jamie, it’s beautiful—
everything is connected,
she said, before dying.
And Jamie thought of trillium
blossoming beneath musty cedar
at the edge of the sound,
the whole world epitomized
in heart of flowers,
and spirit of ancient,
mouldering trees.
08 Friday Mar 2019
Posted in Poetry
And there you lay,
on the hospital bed,
your long, liquid self,
blond tendrils–
even in dying
you were beautiful.
And your baby girl,
left behind,
forever suspended
in the golden
syrup of your soul
poured out—
frozen,
fossilized.
07 Thursday Mar 2019
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Afterlife, Aging, Alone, Courage, Death, Happiness, Hope, Life, Loneliness, Love Poems, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Soul, Survival, Tulip, Yearning
Like the yellow tulip,
who blooms every year
in the pit behind our house,
who was dumped, long ago,
after her blossoms were spent—
yet, she screams, I’m still alive!—
every spring, among garbage
and weeds; like that tulip,
you don’t belong here.
16 Saturday Feb 2019
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Belief, Confusion, Creativity, Crystal Ball, Death, Future, Holy Oil, Hope, Life, Mind, Palm Reading, Placebo, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Prophesy, Raven, Soul, Tarot Cards
1.
If I offered you a placebo,
would you take it and believe
in yourself, and finally trust
that what you have to write,
is what needs to be read?
You see failures like supreme
rulings, their many judgments
as self-imposed gag orders,
but there’s a pill for that;
it’s sweet, and round,
and goes down easy.
2.
You can open your eyes now,
and when I snap my fingers
you will not remember any of this,
but you will be as the raven
who flies against fog and snow,
the black outline of her body
hurtling toward the need:
truth, authenticity, love,
forgiveness.
3.
I anoint your head with holy oil
from an olive tree that grows
in Jerusalem, whose roots
extend thousands of feet
beneath the ground,
into hidden aquifers,
tears and blood
of your ancestors:
their unanswered prayers,
their cries from dark nights,
their suffering,
their death.
4.
The Three of Swords;
I see you have suffered,
but it’s time to face what rose
from the ashes.
Everything you said you hated,
what he did to you,
the lies, the infidelity,
the leaving.
Do you see it there,
in the tower?
That’s you,
tearing it down.
5.
So many lines, intersecting other lines,
your life is complicated, intertwined,
your heart, easily broken.
Look at your love line,
how it curves up here,
toward contentment,
then here, toward turmoil.
Your head line, see how long–
all the way to your pinky,
tells of much consideration,
your life line, such caution,
what you’d expect from a palm
of fire, and of earth:
a hand of many deaths,
a hand of many births.
6.
I see your future–
Ah, it is clear;
here is sadness,
and here is celebration,
here is hurt and confusion,
and here is clarity.
Here, a day of silence,
the whole world muted,
void of color, sound,
and the ground hard,
infertile, stubborn.
Yet, here is a day
so vibrant, your fears
are drowned out
from birdsong,
a chittering breeze,
and flowers so eager,
you can hear their spathes
bursting up toward the sun.
What more can I tell you
that you don’t already know,
but refuse to tell yourself:
you are sun and snow,
joy and sorrow,
selfish and fully poured out,
justified and guilty–
what more can I say
to make you believe
you are all
of what you’ve been
desperate to become,
desperate–
to make go away.
09 Saturday Feb 2019
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Aging, Azaleas, Children, Death, Flowers, hydrangeas, Life, Lilies, Love, Memory, Mothers, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Winter, Winter poem
Winter returned, unbroken,
and I bought azaleas, hydrangeas
and stems of lilies
to stand against white windows.
How like memories,
these flowers in winter:
smiles, laughter, love,
eyes, cheeks, toes, and fingers.
Mama, mama, mama,
I hear them calling,
as I cut their stems.
05 Tuesday Feb 2019
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Begonias, Childhood, Death, Hope, Life, Loss, Love, Magnolias, Memorial Day, Memory, Poem, Poems, Poetry
I said magnolias,
you said, peonies,
how you remember her hands
tending them, day after day.
I imagine a grandmother’s hands
reaching into a profusion of blooms,
wrinkled and wise and tender;
it’s a good place
for the mind to wander.
Memorial Day.
You were so young,
and your brothers, one older,
one younger, even than you,
would cut the luscious stems,
and place them in a wagon
alongside empty pickle jars,
mayonnaise and jelly jars.
The cemetery.
You’d sell your bouquets
for fifty cents,
three big blooms to a jar.
What a memory,
and I imagined families
pulling up in lonely cars.
It’s the sixties,
and there are waves of Chevy sedans
with heavy doors,
hoods, stretched out in lines,
like plots.
We sold them all, you said.
And I’m not surprised:
regret in empty hands,
is no small thing,
as they walk toward their loss,
tombstones, which remind them
of loss,
of lack.
And then, the relief
when they can fill those hands
with the heft and smooth skin
of a glass jar filled with water,
and a few fleshy blooms.
24 Thursday Jan 2019
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Gratitude, Hoarders, Joy, KonMari Method, Life, Marie Kondo, Organization, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Tidying Up
We are all, Tidying Up, materialists,
unabashed hoarders, newly abashed,
dwarfed by piles of clothes
we couldn’t sell for fifty cents
from our garages or yards,
yet clinging to them all, and cramming
them into closets and drawers,
because we might get skinny, or fat,
or finally be invited to a party.
Keep what brings you joy, she says,
but we can’t recognize that spark.
What is joy? What is joy?
And, where do we go
to find joy again?
23 Wednesday Jan 2019
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Appreciation, Beauty, Car Accident, Death, Gratitude, Hate, Hope, Life, Noise, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Snow
Beasts, bigots, build the wall:
the sound of lives
beating like a drum
in our face, a chant,
a cheer we hear
thousands of miles away.
Yet, you sing me a song louder
than the thunder of hate,
breath of bird and caress,
snow sound, breaking of twig,
and I must confess
I need to feel as fresh
as the five inches of snow
we nearly left the world to last night
when the light turned green,
but she couldn’t stop her car
from sliding. The beauty of brake lights
glowing off an infinity of snowflakes,
all seen through a fog-window.
And the sound of twisted metal,
sirens, the spark in my soul
when I realized
I’m still alive,
and still part of this loud,
hurting world.
The dead don’t know anything.
But I know
I walked away from the dead
to the sound of your poems,
songs written from the cries
of your heart,
siren calls begging us all
to look the other way,
for a moment,
look, look, look the other way.
13 Sunday Jan 2019
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Authenticity, Brew, Goddess, Life, Love, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Real, Strength, Truth, Witch, Woman
A good witch, I think, as her voice rises
in story: their affair, his testosterone levels,
her childhood, and its want of love,
the gratitude for her lover’s love.
She seems about six foot two,
jaw etched of marble,
arms of steel, hands of iron,
and she fills the air around us
with tremor, something ominous,
yet vulnerable, as if she is saying,
I’ll tell you my secrets, like this gift of oil.
I take it, of course, I take it,
unscrew the top of the repurposed
wine bottle, smell deeply the lavender
and the garlic, her special brew.
I will tell you how I made it, she says,
because she holds no detail back.
She is the woman you’ve heard about,
or seen in movies, the one
who doesn’t give two shits,
the one who walks into a room
and steals it, and fills it
with laughter, and warning.
The woman whose tremor speaks
and says two things: come closer,
and I will tell you of love, of loss,
of picking oneself back up,
while at the same time you hear,
if you betray me, I will kill you.
And it all seems perfectly normal,
like the moment you always knew,
now unfolding. How what’s inside of you
was already unloosed in this goddess
of olive oil brewery, truth-teller,
all eyes on her, a wild, dangerous
animal uncaged, everyone nervous,
and eager to see what she will do.
10 Thursday Jan 2019
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Cult, Fate, Ian Astbury, Life, Love, Muse, Music, Music Poems, Poem, Poems, Poetry, song, Spokane, Tambourine Man
Anointed: his one raised arm, in a throng
of arms, desperate to catch a tambourine
hucked into the body-universe by Ian Astbury,
before singing Big Neon Glitter,
Peace Dog, and Wild-Hearted Son,
and like some freak of fate
carnival game he played as a kid,
it landed like a ring on a bottle’s neck,
and throttled his arm down to his bare,
hairy, super-sweat-soaked pit.
For years, he mashed to the rhythm,
the beat, the swelling under-swell of song,
self-employed, stoned, and fully devoted,
as in, everything for the voice
that prophesized from the burning bush
of heavy metal, Shake it! Shake it!
What else could he do
except shake the damn thing
for twenty years, the entire downtown,
as kids made out, drank beer, and danced,
and someone in the crowd shouted,
Hey, everyone, the Tambourine Man is here!–
08 Tuesday Jan 2019
Posted in Poetry
Forgive me for wishing
life was more like a fairytale,
a place where once upon a time
we all struggled, our hearts
torn apart, put together again,
as we desperately journeyed
toward our happiest moments.
When we finally reached them,
and got a taste of what we knew
was out there for a few rare lucky souls,
some benevolent hand would write:
they lived happily ever after:
On my son’s twenty-ninth birthday,
He spun the big wheel at Fast Eddies,
it tink-tink-tinked past the free beer,
five dollars, and hamburgers,
to stop at the fifty dollar jackpot.
He danced with his hands in the air,
he smiled, that rare smile,
his lover kissed his cheek.
07 Monday Jan 2019
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Afterlife, aspen, Aspen Trees, Conversations With Maggie, Death, Death Poems, Dying, Eternity, Happiness, Heaven, Hope, Infinite, Life, Loss, Love, Maggie, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Souls, Spirit, Winter, Winter poem
Looking back, I see you
looking back, smiling,
I say your name,
as if to summon
the dead to life,
and it works,
for a moment.
It’s winter,
and the earth feels
like your absence,
the once living things,
here, but not here.
How many times
did you sit
next to me looking
out at the aspen?
And now, here it is
bare again, waving
its naked branches again.
Today, it looks like
it’s doing The Twist,
and, I think, it hears
a song I don’t, no,
a song I can’t, hear.
Looking back, I see you
looking back, smiling,
your secrets, a dance,
a song that plays
while the world listens,
and twists to a secret melody,
it cannot hear.
