Beguiled Eyes

Don’t complain to me about

your famous spiritual

deficiencies

when this hummingbird

at this ancient

pepper tree assaults

your upturned

face with peripatetic

love like a teenager’s

obsessive crush.

No, I don’t want

to hear about

that gnawing in

your gut,

nor your romantic
insufficiences,

but after the bird
dissolves,

lift your eyes

from the hypnotic

cell phone screen

to gaze through these

playful breezes

into blue-swaying

skies above. They have

waited your whole life

in silence and in storms

for these hazel orbs
to soften and shimmer

through every kind
of wildness,

and yes, to finally mourn.

Out of this blue
emptiness
streaks a hawk,
golden underbelly
sparking across
the smiling sky.

Elements of a Sunday Morning

Three birds, their heads

Tiny white flowers,

Paint a line brief
As our lives 

Across still water 

As a single jet above

Streaks silver ink

Through endless skies.

Cradled within a quiescent

Quivering beneath the day’s

Clutter and clatter

Is the unnameable jewel

Of our innate wholeness,

Our splendid soul, that inner earth.

Can you feel into this spacious quiet

And descend the ladder of simple presence

To creation’s cave where trust is birthed?

         January

Sometimes a Sunday in Winter

Hinges upon a red bundle

Of berries in the breeze,

Blazing.

             Faith

A friend calls offering kind words,

Two hummingbirds flit among orange flowers

In the small backyard, a rainbow appears

Out of nowhere on a desert highway

As day by day we receive this light and then,

Ensconced underneath a blanket of darkness

Often in a vigil of excruciating stillness,

We wait and wait while being secretly

Nourished cell by cell

By that which has apparently vanished

As we are transformed into our truer selves,

These sturdy ones who have stood patiently

Here in darkness and in light with open arms

Welcoming everyone's arrival,

Trusting this blossoming promise all along….

Avalanched

Disappointment reigns like an uncrossable chasm.

Across acres of rocks he leaps and limps, missing
the mark time and again. Scraped, bruised and bent,
the tired man stands next to a twisted pine

where avalanched under blizzards of failure,
vultures circling become his closest friends.