Wandering Off

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easy to get lost

in this beautifully honest

intricate world

by choice

Go, and Leave It There

Bear Run

healing deep in the laurel

healing in pure water

in tall oaks and slick stones

healing in the veins of cooler air

coursing through the crowns

healing in the late calls of birds

and in the stars appearing

healing in the strength of those

who love us back tenfold

Going to the Center

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we pause upon the little dramas of the day

and we are filled

we sense the spinning center of our lives

and it is shared

Bounded

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we seek the divine in our own way

just now i find it in an unsprayed fenceline

and in the sky behind it bordering the road

 that leads me home

no one lives my life but me

boundaries imagined

River and Valley

for a long time i stand in light rain looking across the valley

listening to the sound of the river deep in the valley

rushing over stones smoothed by the river

rushing through the valley for a long time


the river flows on without returning

this is the one river of night and day

and i am an apparition of light

unable to resist looking across the valley for a long time


evening folds into itself and night rises behind me

spreading its cloak over the valley

where for a long time the river rushes over smooth stones

and even a long time is not long enough

—with 3.5 lines by W.S. Merwin

A Deepening

deep enough now to hide in

the field awaits

clouds slide by in mutation

the sun in its arc rises and falls

a thousand creatures

go about their business

all within reach

hear what i'm saying

all within reach

Grand Coincidence

to be alive with you

on this same place

hurtling through space

is so startling

it leaves time for little else

hold fast

—adapted from a line by emily

Instinctive

Fireflies and stars. Please enlarge by clicking.

the forked river of heaven connects us

tonight it flows around me in the field

i hold my breath

One to the Other

thank goodness

thoreau wrote

they have not

learned how

to cut down

the clouds

meet you there

Solstice with Fireflies

night at its ebb

but longer nights to come

day at its peak

but shorter days to come

all of life is cycles and balance

this i knew apart from myself

in the diffused light of the solstice

a silver day with sky on the ground

a calming quiet steadfast haze

pulsing now with a galaxy of fireflies

under the weaker stars

brave because i said i would be

on the cusp of a new phase