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?
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.
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.
17 Sunday Mar 2019
Tags
Afterlife, Beauty, Chaos, Courage, Death, Death Poems, Division, Dying, Fear, Freedom, Hate, Loss, Poem, Poems, Poetry, politics, Sadness. Sorrow, Soul, Spirit, Suffering
Can you be in awe
of how much some
are expected to suffer
in this lifetime—
we are often given
more than we can—
I saw a moth
with a broken wing,
and though it struggled,
I could not crush it—
but placed him, instead,
among the leaves of jasmine,
and walked away.
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.
04 Monday Mar 2019
Posted in Poetry
for my brother, Danny, on his birthday
Have we improvised too much,
lost sight of our true selves, surviving;
the world is a tough audience.
And now I remember,
when you said you wanted to be a candle,
and we laughed until we cried, and cried,
then we’d ask you again,
and again, laugh and cry,
strange, how life, with time, has changed,
and I think it’s worth a try
to be a candle.
What better man to be a light,
than one who brightens,
and who thought being a candle
was possible, and right?
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.
28 Friday Dec 2018
Posted in Uncategorized
Tags
Afterlife, Bird Poem, Bird Poems, Birds, Conversations With Maggie, Death, Death Poems, Dreams, Freedom, God, Happiness, Heaven, Hope, Infinite, Life, Love, Maggie, Memory, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Reality, Soul, Soul Poetry, Souls, Spirit, Spirits
it was a dream, and hard to tell
where borders and countries began,
but there was a dirt path,
and only I knew the way.
The dirt was soft, and the day
beautiful, I was barefoot
and running freer than ever I have
in wakened-life. It felt good
running in a warm sunshine,
ducking under the Velvet Mesquite,
with their canopies, their shade,
their branches, like open doors
to some better, magical place.
I liked the dream very much,
and could have kept running,
but I came to a lone house,
stark in the barren desert.
A blonde girl stood outside a fence,
scared and holding a gun,
and just like that,
I was shot in the arm.
I said it was a dream, didn’t I?
So, you won’t be surprised
I was impressed with her aim,
rather than the pain of being shot,
and I had to go pee.
I looked for a bathroom,
but had to wake to find one.
What is memory, I asked
later over coffee,
a little box in our brain,
a string of pictures?
How do we get there?
Memory is what we tell ourselves,
he said, about what we see
and what we feel.
You see, when Maggie died,
she passed into a prairie falcon,
she banged against windows,
day after day after day,
then left a last gift of quail,
and traveled the road of her happiness
to some place better than here.
Months later, the sun smiled,
and I ran on dirt, soft as baby powder,
passed through door after door,
on long, liquid legs, more of wing
than bone, and only I knew—
only I knew the way.
19 Wednesday Dec 2018
Posted in Uncategorized
Tags
Falcon, Horses, Irish Wolfhound, Jobs, Life, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Priorities, Ravens, Soul, Spirit, Work
The crippling desk, for six years,
granite topped, and bright
with the computer’s glare,
the tapping of keys,
the winding path of a mouse,
the click, click, clicking,
a sickening tick-tock of life.
Today, I say goodbye,
trade you in for a beautiful chaos,
throw myself to the world,
the raven, the falcon who tried to enter
through the upstairs window,
the horses and wolfhounds,
with their joyful lope and pounding
of the ground, the music, the words,
the gray, but wide-open sky.
15 Tuesday Jul 2014
Posted in Uncategorized
Tags
Bird Poem, God, Hummingbird, Hummingbird Poem, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Sacred, Soul, Soul Poetry, Spirit
Once, and only once,
I felt a swift beauty–
A flutter, a whisper of wing
Against my bare arm.
I sat alone, encircled
By sunshine and cigar,
The beating of wing upon skin
And the bird, no bigger
Than a honey bee, a butterfly–
A hummingbird mistaken of me,
As I of him.
He danced, suspended,
Hovered over white petunias
Like spirit, or all of spirit
I wanted to know:
No maxims, no morals,
Only something as profound
As God, as miraculous,
As if he’d spoken,
Or moved the pencil
I’d dared him to move.
I sat for a while, still,
Hoping he would come again.
He didn’t.
Because that’s life, isn’t it?
An eternal flight of song–
A brief touch of this or that thing,
Sacred moments–
Out of our control.
