Author: Megan

Gold

| Megan
Sunset. November. Image, my own.

Beethoven Era

Can you imagine?
Deafness where once was joyous
Sound
Blindness where once filtrations of color-filled light
Ricocheted
Can you imagine?
Losing everything?
If you are human, the guess is, yes
But why must pain catalyze all our understanding? Is it
Truly our only teacher? Isn’t the promise of
Death
Enough to cause us to cling to love, to
Life, to now, maybe not. So maybe we go deaf, blind,
Senseless
Into that good night, into the dark, waiting for
The dawn with breath so small we barely live, sore
Respiration
Reaction, all part of this existence when what we
Thought we wanted most is gone, dematerialized where
Reality is echoed and
Chambered
Oh heart, please, live, please drink the night and day as
A cup of bitter sweetness, lasting but a blink
A piano hammer in the abyss, hammer to string, string
bing, bing, ba-bing, go, boogie,
Be

Gold Nike Shoes. Oakland Museum of California. Image, my own.

Andante

It will never do to keep running
Into yourself if you can’t look up,
Ponder the path of the stars in
The night sky, gaze with longing
And new eyes, on the moon with
Rapture, take in the horizon each
Day and walk into a new lifetime

Light Bulb(s). Image, my own.

Honey

Honey, laughter and green curry are all the #soulfood
I need the joy of bright kaffir lime leaves charged into garlic
and simmered over vegetables, a meal to carry us
through the ages, a gale of fascist hail and bull shit, the
storm of the century is upon us, and all we can do is cook,
sing, and watch the moon as it rises high in the night,
silent observer of her earthly neighbors what a perplexity
what a tragedy, only for a moment, all mixed with joy and
delight, how will we last, how will we survive the fight
join it, gear up, only history knows on this very first calm
snowy night. We hunker in, we knit, we resist like life
depends on it because it does, resistance can be small
nearly silent until the way is clear and that same moon
swims overhead as the path is lit in the quiet dark

Moon. Image, my own.

Orb

In reality
In the body
Black and gray
White and blue
softest aura
Hazing purple
Bold broad
Moon the
Clouds opaled
All around
Stars and sky
Dappled through
and Through
Lord, Bless
Gratitude for
Ohs and glitters
Heavens and Earth
The glory of it
All that lone
Full Moon

Gold. Leaves. Fall. Trees. Image, my own.

November

| Megan
My Garden. November 2024. Image, my own.

Every

every Color
all part of all
unity upon Unity
breath After breath
sun Rising sun
moon setting mooN
high in the Wide
Blue bowl of the Sky
star birthing star
miracle joins miracle
death Brings death
life gives Life
bathed In
every Color

Timpanogos, through the window. November 2024. Image, my own.

In Memoriam: November

While the geese continue to fly south
Crying, cawing in the early white billows
And pillars of sky, the snow comes in
Little promises, licking the ground like a prayer
The branches in the woods become
More bare by day, raw and line-worked
Wiring out against the frozen landscape
In stands and thickets tromped and tread
By silent, fervent feet, over and over again
Now the waiting for winter to truly take
Hold, for snow to come and bind up
Scattered grasses, still the scratching leaves.
A memory of Novembers, a palace of dying,
Nostalgia of hearths and firesides of
Rooting, resting and acceptance

Neighborhood walk. Image, my own.

Palace

tides, ever shifting
ever flowing, ocean
wave upon wave
turning over universes
places of refuge

Midway Mercantile. November 2024. Image, my own.

She Burns

No one seems to like it, they
claim her strength is admirable
that it’s a protection to her
and to them, she’s not sure
she burns, like a kiln stoked
into an inferno, she burns like
molten earth just exited from
a magma chamber, bright she burns,
a dragon girl who never wanted
to hurt anyone, seventeen
hundred degree flames hiss at
who she is near, causing a
tremble, a stir, she burns because
she knows that women, for
centuries, have had to grow
small, small and insignificant,
accessory and accompaniment,
to receive life, she can’t ever
let on that she wants learning,
love, expression, voice, power
no those gifts are reserved for
others. She burns like the forge
meant to melt metal, meant to
make paper towel racks and
weapons, she can choose wedding
colors and a matching fascinator
she can choose rugs, mugs, décor,
clothing. She can choose the height
of her heels and the blaze of
her eyes as long as she stays
thin, “nice,” and modest
she complies, and writes it in a poem
where will she go with this fire?

November windows. 2024. Image, my own.

Refuge

From the moment everything broke we wished for a place of peace and refuge. Another person is never a home, only your own skin and bones can hold you. Another person is never a place except for you are your own place inside your sinews and blood streams and heartbeats. A house can be so much more than a home—a refuge, a covering, a landing, a carrying, a place, a palace. But it would be nothing without you and the warm, bright, dark burdened and unburdening beautiful people who surround you—in sorrow and joy, in tears and laughter, in silence and singing. What is a place? A person is always a place– a place for the heart, body, and mind to attend—a place of love and horror, a place of welcome and displacement, a place of empathy and disgust, a place to be thoughtfully alive, in, inside. The heart of the house is the person who beats inside, who braves the storm to return, who lies down on the floor to pray and bless the space because it is all that holds back the outside, all that protects from life.

Autumn walks. 2024. Image, my own.

Prayer

please, please, please
please, please

Water

| Megan
Pacific Ocean, Oregon Coast. Image, my own.

Creation

creation is like wielding the mystery for a moment
being given the chance to turn the nautilus over in
your hands and awe for a few precious flashes
its precise and perfect structure, wonder at being
given transubstantiational power, snippet of the
infinite, devotional on the unity of all the cosmos
unraveled, a glittering equilibirc instant

Driftwood, grass, trees, stones. Image, my own.

Shit That Makes Poets Laugh

a couplet of haiku
getting to write the word
Uranus
espousing astrology while
being an unbeliever
writing all the people
you know into poems
recording the natural
world and wishing for
more smell words—the
olfactory is important,
man, and so under
expressioned—playing with
all mediums of art– music,
history, science, language,
painting, sculpture, theater–
being a badass generalist
the fact that mostly poets
read your poems
realizing that everything
is art, and it’s easier
than you think to tell
someone to fuck off
trying to figure out
if anyone really has an
editor? (Maggie Smith,
in my dreams you’re
reading this and cutting
and slashing, and un en-
jambing to your heart’s
delight.) Hearing that
one of Mary Oliver’s
best poems, ‘Wild Geese’
was an exercise, and
experiment in end-
stopped lines performed
for another poet, a magic
trick (hear Krista Tippet’s
interview with Oliver
on her unparalleled podcast
*On Being*)
realizing that your fly is
down, thank you John
Craigie
trying to figure out the
infinite mystery while
trying to figure out
american politics while
simultaneously realizing
that life is built on water
looking up the word ‘word’
in a thesaurus
realizing that you
should have hidden an
easter egg in all of your
work and you’ve forgotten

Balance. Oregon Coast. Image, my own.

Libra Season

As Libra season concludes, I’d like to
invite all of us to love a lot of Libras
for the next few days. Like
my triple air massage therapist,
bless her. And my best friend of
all time, he could not be more elegant and
nuanced in his approach to the world, and people
who I don’t even know, and people I once knew
all air signs, maybe it is the open-hearted
pleasers, balancing their relationships, the “we”
that Libras present, it’s that fire in me that
always gets stirred up by the scale and measure,
skin and bones, maybe it is the quality of the
breeze this time of year that makes me
fall in love with Libras, a little more each
October, regardless, I breath the unruly whips
of Wind and Rain, the scatter of leaves,
the romance of dying with Libras in mind

Hunter’s Moon. Super Moon. Full Moon. October 2024. Image, my own.

Chap Book
best is the open
chap book on the soul leave it
vulnerable in air

Green things and fog. Image, my own.

Lovng Hard (no i)
Sussing and figuring
and preparing and
planning as to how
to love
difficult people:
Drive the Bus,
Like Mo Willems’
Pigeon, in the
front seat
Self-assured, ready
Without license, but
there is no playbook
to love these difficult,
purposeless individuals
NPCs, people who have,
a bit, burned out on life
Who see the end, but
seem to have no ideas
on wellness or whole
ness- are not willing or
able to take the reins
any longer, who are
Offensive and rude
Blunt without purpose
Unmeasured in their
Aimless wanderings
through Time and
Space, Pretentious in
their lack of attention
to others, Tough

Summer Triangle. Oregon, October. Image, my own.

Air

| Megan
Stairs to the Coast. Oregon. Image, my own.

October Bowery

when fall begins to crystalize, like any change,
the first real storm front moves in,
the leaves which scudded about yesterday
are frozen to the sidewalk, gathering in
browning-yellow scrolls, little edicts of
what is to come, they thaw and scatter
again across streams and gullies where
the thin water still wants to feed the living
thing before being silenced in ice, or
leave monochrome sepias on pavement,
the Hunter’s moon, high and bright illumines
the grass, reedy wisps along the midnight walk,
the dusty path where the air cools, snappy,
crisp, that breath of winter’s coming, flora seized
red in its death, clinging to branch and vine,
each day more dried and dead, ruffled and flurried
by immediate breezes, sounding like Japanese
paper fanfared by a round and excited toddler,
portents of the next season soon to fall
in golden droplets of summer’s dreams
the ocher aspen leaves, in sheets and
flakes of fiery autumn light dazzling and
freshly disconnected from their source right
before they meet the dust and decompose

Sun, Sky, Beach, Life. Oregon Coast. Image, my own.

Strength

Growing is a season of its own, one of loving kindness rooted in faith
one of far-seeing vastness, while standing in sacred spaces. For whatever waves,
winds, and ways that will ever-continue to toss and take their course, stand
in your gifts and rest in fullness, plentitude. Delight in bounty and abundance.
Move from ire to the rich roundness of the good in all living things–
circles of true compassion and empathy which connect all creation– human,
animal, plant, living, all animate with atoms as the entire universe speaks the
soundness of its existence, the tenor of being, the voice of living and the lived

Ocean, Tide, Tree, Coast. Oregon. Image, my own.

Point

when i am in my
brain and heart i realize this
is the goddamn point

Woods. Oregon Coast. Image, my own.

Conscious Living

What is it to be alive?
In the rich, abundant world
A sterling jay’s deeply
Decked sapphire feathers
crested head
nestled in the magnolia bush
outside my window
the air as thick as dew,
yet moving as if on an
unheard music suspended
by the wind’s unseen breath

and ocean spume, spurl, churn
TO be part of Earth’s respiration
tide, current, wave, flow, coast
where Earth’s breath meets
land-sand, rock, tree, stone
every piece of physical
particulate of the confirmation
of all alive and breathing
beings, being moved
smoothed, rocked, waved, rolled
over and over in the sea’s bosom

Stones and Seal Carcass. Oregon Coast. Image, my own.

Ocean

I used to think I wasn’t an ocean
person. But these rocky, cliffy,
craggy knobs of sea-shorn trees,
smooth stones and crusty conglomerates
crab shells, jelly-fish skeletons, strips of
kelp carcass, and clings of driftwood
really wrap me into the rhythm of
the tide

Magic. Foam, mist, spume, churl, splutter. Oregon, Coast. Image, my own.

Know

I know what I am
doing, I don’t know any
thing other than that

I don’t know what I’m
doing, I don’t know any
thing other than that

Rock, Tide, Rush. Oregon Coast. Image, my own.

Oregon

| Megan
Coastal Sunset, Falcon Cove, Oregon. Image, my own.

No Phone

All this connectivity
Search engines and
Social media, email
Severs and direct
Message platforms
Every app, it can
Certainly feel
Exhausting to be
so very connected
to each other, yet
Barely involved with
One another,
Bodily, physically,
Beyond productivity
Trackers and fitness
Bits what happens
When you are
Cabined away
In the ferns, Sitka
Spruce, magnolia, and
Dogwood of the

Oregon Coast
Magic as the mist
rolls in from
Cove Beach and you
Stretch out on a
Carnelian settee to
Watch the fog billow
In and congeal on the
Picture windows and
Back-bone of
Driftwood lying in the
Long grass
Gray-white skeletons
of the Ocean made
Manifest to
Remind that
Everything has
Source, spirit, purpose
You put some Peace
Piece, Bill Evans
On the record player,

But eventually let
Everything fall silent
Once again because
The treasure is the
Stillness, the disconnect
The quiet hum of the
Needle across vinyl
Being dampened by
Swelling waves perhaps
Yards away, the mighty
Roll of the Ocean speaking
that sometimes being
Whole means being
Havened away, un-
Reachable,
no phone,
SOS, airplane mode,
Out of service
Out-of-office
Elsewhere, gone

More sunset, i. Oregon, Coast. Image, my own.

Slow Dance

Slow dance with yourself on a Sunday morning
Take your hair down and grab one hand in your other
Life your spirit onto the raw wooden floor of the
Little house you call home, hickory scraped by thoughtful
Hands, where you live, sway to the beat of your heart, love
In time to the pulse of your quiet longings, smile
in self-solidarity, spin, circle, so that you see where
you are, grounded, so that your heart senses that
every part of you understands that you are the only one
who can inhabit your soul, your spirit, your life, your love
kiss your own vitality with a gentle nod, your body, your mind,
your essence, well, whole, perfectly safe. Let the music
take your shoulders and hips in the rhythm and stride
or two, of just you, slow dancing with yourself

Beija Flora, Cove Beach, Oregon. Image, my own.

Yes

Yes to me
Yes to life
Yes to ocean
Yes to mountain
Yes to lift
Yes to love
Yes to change
Yes to work
Yes to nobility
Yes to learning
Yes to risk

Sunset, Oregon Coast. Image, my own.

New Mythologies: Achilles

I’ve needed new mythologies
For a long while now, in fact,
I remember stating this bluntly
When heading out for a swim
Around the long arm of a lake
With a friend, and it turns
Out that the inception of these

Tales and tides save(d) me
from both pride and envy,
boredom and bliss, these
mythologies had already begun to
Take root in my life,
some of them recently, and some
Long, long ago

Achilles was the son of Thetis
And Peleus most strong and noble
Soldier of the Trojan War who was
Dipped in the River Styx by his ankle
His weakness, you know it,
Because it becomes the place of his
Death, pierced by Paris’s arrow

But my achilles is the only thing that
Was saved when I fell free
Climbing, ten feet, and my foot was torn from
My ankle nearly off, but for the
tendon, the achilles, which saved me–
my ability to walk, to run, to ambulate, to
Be in the woods and rivers, canyons
And valleys

How important then, that all that was
Holding my life together actually was
My hubris, my weakness, my ineptitude
The irony wasn’t lost on me, and how
Weakness is in us all, and thereby
A crucial part of every life
And maybe our downfall

But may actually become our very
Strength as I learned the gift of
Living, of understanding difference
And ability across many fractals
Was shown and learned to show
Others empathy in their need,
In their frailty

I was dipped back into mortality
By my wound, by my heel,
By my maiming
The weak point
The place of mortality
The pinch of imperfection
Made into strength

More sunset ii. Image, my own.