In bed, waiting for sleep to touch my shoulder,
Trying to quiet thoughts running amok,
Restless, dodging an out of control boulder,
In order to avoid being struck.

How long before peace stills my soul,
How long before I start to dream,
How long before I give up control,
How long until the slow moving stream?

Where I skip upon puffy white clouds,
Leaving my burdens on the pillow,
Wondering how long before I am allowed,
To rest by the cool creek under the willow.

At last, I drift off into the quiet deep,
The Circus tent closes, at last to sleep.

MARCH 2025

Oh, an eastern sky —
Horizon balanced
In the rose-colored morning light
Marking a new day,
Welcoming the heart
To explore
To live
To smile
Upon the delicate
Pastel orange sand
And delight upon the shadows cast
As crayons and ridges
Form the landscape
Of the dance.

February 2025

Who keeps company with the stars?
On this cold not quite winter night
walk slowly on glass cobbled streets
Crips footfalls ring off narrow walls.

There is a sermon someplace.
Cover of silence suffocate
those free wheeling birds
darkening the sky at day’s end.

No one willing to read the fine print
will fence out the deer
while wolves slither in.

All the loud noises
scream for attention.
It occurs to me to be afraid.

I search the graffitied box cards
for meaning, like a lost recipe.

FEBRUARY 2025

this morning lifting
from mud in lilt
of flight the rise
and fall of feathers
ruddy notes of spring
intersecting the slant
of a late May
snow squall

myself lately divorced
from direction bowing
to aimlessness bound
now to spring and sparrows
their stuttered eagerness
to graze the margins
to scatter up in fear
or joy and down
across the green
meadow

JUNE 2025

I flew here on the wings of fringed sage,
fed by pollen of Pinyon trees.
I chose to jump, without preparation,
trusting the natural world to carry my weightless body.

From above, I saw painted canyons
carved by ancient streams,
swam in rivers through wildflower banks.
Laughing, that anything was ever taken so seriously.

I woke the next day with the scent of primrose
on my fingertips, dust of pollen under my nails.
A poet can tell a story so well you’re not sure
whether it’s real or not, but I have evidence.

MAY 2025

My mother sent me Easter Lilies,
it being Holy Week, and me so far from home —
two stalks raising from a plastic pot, trumpeting their bloom.

All week long, and silently, I meditated on the mysteries embodied in the flowers, who through long dormancy derive their power.

Their brilliance was the radiance of peace: my heart in bloom, increased.

But soon, vacation ended; and I returned again to other things. I set the lilies in their little pot beneath my window’s opened panes. They begam to wither. First gradually, as with disease.

I tried to give them water, but only seemed to drown the roots. I lit a lamp to dry the soil,, but still they withered, failed — until finally I could do nothing more but abandon them, cracked, half-open, to the sun, to mend the cultivation I’d undone.

The sun shed light upon the lilies. They wilted more, and still. Their dying was the slow untying of my peace, the heart consumed with grief — until leaving them along was all that I could bear.

This evening, all but two blossoms dangle lifeless, dry and brown. I search the last still supple stalks with tentative fingertips. I cut them at the roots.

And bring them — fragrant, yet in bloom — to you, my heart: to you, beloved.

APRIL 2025

Turning, I’m blinded by the sun
Knowing it was there
But turning, eyes wide, towards it anyways
I guess I needed the shock
The momentary pain
Before I could conclude
That the sun was in fact shining
I go days without the sun on my skin
Let alone in my eyes
But I know that’s not entirely true
The sun is there but I am not
I am lost in thought, in word, self absorbed
Unwilling to see the light
Only when I turn into it, unblinking
So sure it doesn’t exist
Am I put in my place.

MARCH 2025

Nature arrays herself to celebrate the
Solstice. Naked cottonwoods adorn
themselves down to the thinnest twig
with glittering hoarfrost, their slim
tracery now plump against the pale,
morning sky. Their fullness shimmers in
the slanting sun. Thick junipers
frost the tips of their tresses, silver
highlights shape-shifting them from
scraggly, green-haired hags to seductive
sirens of the hillside, like silver singles
on a mature dating site. This frigid
richness seduces me into joyous
laughter, happy I ventured into the
breaking day, my breath a cloud
that freezes white upon the foliage
of my face.

JANUARY 2025

I walk the upstream line of water stain,

tattooed on rock, in the empty wash.

The stream bed widens, opens its mouth to speak, knowing someone's here who listens.

A whispered song where river once flowed

splashing notes on banks of larkspur blooms.

If I follow this line long enough will I reach its Source?

NOVEMBER 2024

The coffee has been leavened.

Milk and cream to lighten

dark Columbian brown

in a way, that is not mine.

But some cups are

particularly

bitter black and belie.

the usual way

we walk down

worn tracks, one foot

almost on top of the other.

OCTOBER 2024

A lone coyote

Sojourns across the

Pristine snow, drifting

Like grains of sand

Rippling water,

Making steady headway

Toward a narrow creek

As a wolf song

Echoes across the valley.

Enduring howls

Ricocheting

Through pine-covered hills

Followed by a long silence-

Reveals

A single wolf.

OCTOBER 2024

“Not now'' hits me. like a gong

with every see-through window I run into,

every voice that doesn't sound right,

inside and out.

Yet, I hold onto "keep going" momentum,

captured by the power of infinite “right now" choruses ...

echoes in my head of “You give up your right if you don't meet this

deadline",

pressing me against terms like a bug in a book,

with guts spilling out silent screams.

“I have given up my life, not just my right",

to this pumping, pushing force that says "right now".

I am trapped by its siren calls,

with no reverse wind to pull me back.

In the life of splat,

when will “not now" ever be enough.

SEPTEMBER 2024

I wait patiently for that perfect instance,

That nano second, when time stands still,

Capturing a frame by stubborn persistence,

Sometimes the process, a battle of will.

Maybe a humming bird with buzzing wings,

Or graceful landing of a flamboyant drake,

A honeybee on a sweet nectar fling,

Or mountains mirrored on a placid lake.

A fox leaps in the air, after her prey,

Stranded in space, awaiting the applause,

Swallows dart about, in an acrobatic ballet,

A bear with a trout dangling from it's jaws.

Through my lens, a moment comes to life,

Forever captured, in color or black and white.

SEPTEMBER 2024

The house lights dim

behind the horizon

and I take my seat

in the mezzanine folding chair.

The nightly show:

Cicadas

and Spring Peepers and

the soft breeze that plays

Magnolia leaves.

AUGUST 2024

Last week I sat at your shore

And thought you had drowned

The trees on your banks

I was saddened to think

Your waters would carry such sorrow

But today, I realized I was mistaken

And those branches I lamented

Have grown to trees with your recession

New leaflets adorn their outstretched arms

Announcing 'I have survived'

Even those trees whose entirety

Was submerged just last week

Have tiny buds of life

Reaching upwards to the sun

Tenacious and strong

AUGUST 2024

You are free to flow.

To follow the land's body as it flattens and slows, to splash as you dive over slopes of ground.

Your seasons form cut-banks and sandbars where trees lie skinned to the bone,

victims of the run-off Spring.

My mind, knows this back and forth, ebb and flow, and too has found eddies

where water stills in a holding place.

Where meadows of rose scent each breath

and colonies of nymphs wait on river stones,

to be born into flight.

JULY 2024

A flash of red yellow black

crosses my window. Gladness

lightens my heart where gloom

had reigned, this tanager the poem

I could not write.

JULY 2024

Right now it seems,

blinded by a fear

introduced by suggestion,

the masses of people

inhabiting life

are running in circles

wearing a blindfold

obscuring their vision of calmness. They are spinning

in a vast circle of insanity unaware of a reality

taking place beyond the boundaries of this crazed halo

of hysteric delirium.

JUNE/JULY 2024

Have you ever stared at a barren tree in the winter

and wondered if it would ever bloom again?

I have. May I send note on sparrow wings to

Tell you of this coming spring?

I have seen it before. The blossoms.

I have seen the buds poke out and I wish.

I wish them into existence. I wish them to be beautiful. Like you. I see them and send love on fairy dust to them. To grow and be happy and strong and everlasting.

Now. Can I ask for the same. For this tree to become anew. And have others send prayers on the wind my way?

MAY/JUNE 2024

Snowflakes and flurries fall in patterns of wind forming crystals on powder banks.

Diamond dust glitters in sun-lit skies.

And hoar frost decorates willows by river beds.

Sleet and slop is the wetness of snow.

As moisture and wind sing together in a duet of changing form as temperatures rise and fall.

I name it adagio snow, as it slowly falls.

Hold a single flake that melts on my palm.

Each moist kiss of snow on my face, a reflection of the One, in many names, many forms

MARCH 2024

Seemingly calm and serene

In a warm summer breeze

A field of lush lavender

Twas always the cure

Wildflowers don’t heal the pangs

Feel the bite of her wolfs fangs

FEBRUARY 2024

Your subble is seared into my right cheekbone, sweat sparkling on raw skin; you are mostly careful not to

hurt me and I mostly say I do not want to be hurt, and still:

I turn each drop of pain over and over in my palm

a fistful of fierce animal beauty

FEBRUARY 2024

As far back as I can remember,

In her presence I felt unsafe.

I was at a loss as to how to be right.

How I spoke, how I acted, how I looked ...

In her eyes, all of me was wrong.

She accused me of hiding the inedible overcooked peas. She dismissed me; labeled me a liar.

I was five.

I asked her if she'd ever lied to me.

"No." She said.

I knew it was a lie.

JANUARY 2024