Random and Somewhat Incoherent Thoughts Regarding Autumn

The sun is a fairweather friend. 
We practice Thanksgiving as the nights lengthen to remind us that winter’s not forever,
Spring is damn near guaranteed (eventually),
and death is a beginning, not an end. 
But darkness enfolds us, encroaches further into the productive day.
We are tempted to rise and roost with the chickens,
but then the earth tilts just too far,
Day gets just too [...]

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Gaia Knocks

Gaia knocks at the window.
I sit at my desk and stare into a screen of
chicken scratch letters on a snowy field. 
The keys feel like river pebbles rubbed smooth from eons of erosion. 
Beside me is a maple bowl turned by a local craftsman which holds my crystals –
Tree agate, Bloodstone, Selenite, Snowflake Obsidian,
Labradorite, Carnelian, Sodalite –
the [...]

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Springing

First the daffodils.
Then the tulips.  Red, yellow, pink. 
Lettuce is crisping in the cool morning air.
The cucumber magnolia sends out tiny shoots at the end of each branch.
The sycamores will make a late grand entrance, but until then there are the oaks, hackberries, and redbuds getting back to business. 
The cedar and cyprus have held a green vigil through the [...]

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Meditation on a Rose

I watch you.
So long that I forget about time.
So intently that I forget about space.
I watch you until I forget what you are called.
 
Eventually, I am no longer watching you.  
A watcher is separate, and I have become
the suede of your petals,
the sinew of your stalk,
the sting of your thorn,
the essence of your fragrance,
the photosynthesis of your leaves.
 
For a [...]

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Seven Seconds of Stunned Silence

It’s a timeless moment,
a sharp intake of knowing, a breath of awareness.
The final word comes, either heard or read,
and with it the resolution of a thought
which resonates at a tone too deep for humans to hear –                                             
maybe heard only by sperm whales –
but which we can feel, and which we [...]

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Big Bang Theory (or Where We Begin)

I saw a picture of a friend as a toddler that was dated three years
Prior to my birth.  My mind said,
(not sure why, but it often talks to me)
“This was before you were even a twinkle in your father’s eye.”
 
Phrases I have heard all my life often seem forever
Saddled with the meaning I gave them [...]

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Thistle

I love to see a field of thistle
from a distance.  Get too close
and you will bleed.  But someone
has to chop it down before it
 
goes to seed and spreads its drifting,
downy, dangerous self into a
field of corn or beans or maybe
where the cattle feed.   It has not
 
many friends except the butterfies and
bees.  And I am not [...]

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Curriculum Vitae

My first job was selling shoes.
Sixteen years old.
Needed gas money.
Bought a cowboy hat with my first check.
Went to college.
Started part-time at a hotel.
Went to full-time when I quit college.
 
Thought I knew everything I needed to know.
 
Worked in fast food,
then as a bank teller,
then started waiting tables.
That lasted awhile.
Shifted into bartending.
More prestigious.
Did that through school.
(Realized I [...]

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Places Where I’ve Met God

This is day six in the Seven Solid Days of Smiling Salute To the Original Unsplit Atom for bursting forth into the Big Bang of Bounty that is this life.
Day 1 – Emily
Day 2 – Music
Day 3 – Magic
Day 4 – Cheese
Day 5 – Sleep
A late afternoon winter sky when the impending darkness could either [...]

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Poet At Work

Sunday morning sipping tea.
Different from past Sundays.
No newspaper. No black and white movie on t.v.
No coffee (too acidic, causes arthritis, gums up your joints).
 
Now I sit at the kitchen table
still in my robe at noon
laptop computer wirelessly surfing the net
from one website to the oddly connected next
like a cyber version of six degrees of Kevin [...]

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