Sweet Surprise

Sometimes you need
to renege on that alleged
destination, pull over
and park your car beside
a mountain road, dare
to leave the cell phone
and camera in the trunk,
side-step poison oak
and protruding roots as you
slip-slide down
a ravine of fern and rock
shaded by tribes
of towering Redwoods
where, at its bottom
steeped in ribbons
of dark and light,
a singing stream
and stillness beyond
words and maps
can find you.
And thriving amidst
what’s been richly given,
such a friendly silence
held within nature’s wholeness,
you finally find yourself
arriving where you’ve
belonged all along....

radical humility

himself finally
scoured clean
enough,

he lay face down
upon moist earth

(breath within
the breast of Love)

only to disappear....

Morning on the Couch

the body becomes

a curlicue

afloat

in a sea of quiet

where I calmly

wander,

a vagrant

without walking

tucked within
a wonder where

I tarry, yet forget

to ponder, count
or strive,

and in this peculiar

emptiness everything's
at rest--

opening up
within

a fragrant

homelike
nowhere.

like a weed
after rainfall

or a toddler
at the breast.

A Walk to the Lake

Today I heard the world,
like us, is wounded. She needs
our wonder and our tenderness.

Listen carefully and you will hear
her pleading for tending only you
and I can give.

Step outside and relish her.
Slowly. With open ears
and eyes. And soon.

Befriending her begets
A kind of birth,

A well-rooted bringing forth.

In turn, earth will ravish
and astonish us.

Lake rippling at dusk, green hills
punctuated by boulders big as hippos,

birds halfway to the moon,
clouds sprawling across sky's
pink belly--

all calling us into a way of being wild
and whole we've yearned for

in our sleep-walking state
before the other birth.

sublime physicality

delicious crunch crunch crunch
of cold apple, bare feet firm

and buzzing on this sturdy floor,
blue bathrobe wrapped so cozy,

i couldn't ask for more.

       

       Paradigm Lift                                                                                                                              

I prefer, instead of that afterlife

Idea espoused by some if not many,

or the equally believed article of faith

In a murky nothingness, to imagine

A very big room about the girth of Nebraska

That’s filled with the living, the dead

And the not-yet-born. This motley trinity

Sweetly shuffling together in stocking feet,

Sometimes raucously, at others' silently

Across a shimmering vast dance floor.

They’re telling corny jokes, laughing

And mostly beaming, feeling lighter

Having forgotten hurts and wrongs now past

Or those let-downs certain one day to transpire.

Even wallflowers blossom here.

Smells of freesia and alyssum swirl

With tendrils of night-blooming jasmine
Kissing pregnant air; my lips can feel

Babies kicking. When I’m quiet 

I hear their breathing softly wafting

As they spin and sashay round and round

Without perspiring to lift each other up

In tender spirals high and higher—

Beloved past, bright-eyed future

All embraced by those now present.

And everyone is gleaming….

What Is A Poem?

an arrival
between
two departures.

an appearance
among
several
vanishings.

an apparition
between
two bedevilments.

a stone
onto
a pool
of quiet.

a flame
between
two campsites.

an enchantment
between
two blizzards.

an epiphany
between
two forgettings.

a hawk
above
two griefs.

a river

between
two deserts.

a mercy

between

death row

and a volcano.

a stone
onto
a pond
of silence.

a root
between
two earthquakes.

a man
between
two chasms.

a moonlit meadow

between the inmate

and the warden.

a shout
between
two sleeps.

a dapple of light
between
two darknesses.