Absaroka Mountains, Paradise Valley, Montana. May 2025.
On Wednesdays
And sometimes, on Wednesdays, you feel altogether less than. Less than creative. Less than bright; less than enough. Still there is this desire to burst some
seal in the universe to say what you feel. And you determine to send the man you love a letter because you are also reminded by your intro to writing classes
how powerful our interactions, entanglements with the natural world really are. Reliving our gorgeous weekend in Montana. Wide skies, iridescent light. The river,
carving out its channel, hosting bobbing rafts of geese, the swift water constantly breathing, caressing, quick-tickling its banks. Feet, pinked, cold and smoothed
by silt and stones. The mule ears sunshining in bunches on the low slope of each sky-grazing mountain range– Absaroka, Crazy, Gallatin, Tobacco Root– still white-
tipped with winter, now green- black with pines, avalanche lines and juicy jade undergrowth all silently worshiping Spring, new whorls of love made daily
Yellowstone River, Paradise Valley, Montana. May 2025.
Deluge
Spring, you may wander through my soul in infinite spectacles of rebirth, interrobangs of golden mule ears apostrophes of purple monkshood, little ellipsis of mountain service berries punctuating each hillside and long top-frothing grasses, mountain oceans in growing breezes, a cloudy sky meant to cast angles and halos, one moment warm and the next a whipping rain, a deluge, steady then soft, pelting then gauze, a corporeal mist clinging to river beds, mountain roots and renewal
Peets Hill, Bozeman, Montana. May 2025.
Skin shedding morphing, learning, lose, grow, shift, change a year for becoming strong and centered snake
“Astronomy for the use of schools and academies.” Joseph A. Gillett (1882)
Oceanus Procellarum
His eyes the hue of all Earth’s oceans tossed In tumult (spume, spray) churn infinitely Her heart, the oceans of the moon, ensconced In basalt magma mares laid anciently He senses love and feels it coursing through Her ever-present depth, the seat of grief Conditions both are now accustomed to By life’s relentless quest to find relief Yet, love and laughter fill their atmosphere A world where they alone can live and be It saves them from an epoch of disaster– A home, a space, a place—this you and me New woven in this moment learning how Their love gives import to the here and now
Sunset over Utah Lake. (February 2025)
Sea of Scorpio
Darling, I haven’t yet told you How beautiful your eyes are Like the ocean’s depth, a sea Moved by primordial currents, dark, Yes, below the surface, but there Beautiful, almost infinitesimal Flecks of ochre, golden troves, In the rippling rich blue that Remind me of the entire universe Contained in that chasm, which Is to say soul, kelp ribbons Amber stones, acorn barnacles, Brittle stars brought to surface by Maelstrom. Sign that all the Depths you’ve fathomed where You learned through excruciating Joy and wracking gladness, an Abyss rife with life and pain, Eternal you, there laid bare Inside your beautiful eyes
Aquarius Timpanogos. Sun, cattails, and clouds. January 2025.
The First Universe was You (Maybe one day it will all make sense. This is probably just my hubris talking.)
You were the first person I saw —visually—as a Universe
I had been feeling it for a while– this idea of the infinite
In the love I watched women Give to everything, everyone
Around them, the spiraling arms of Stars– known, each in their own sphere
I heard it in my head, when you Explained: I am trying to love myself
In essence, “I contain multitudes,” and I Chalked that line up to some god from
Our shared past-religion, but it turns Out it was Walt Whitman
Describing women, of course, he was Describing himself and thereby all
Humans, alike in our vastness, and then A friend’s husband died, and I felt
It all over again, this idea that we Are these very fragile, very short-lived
Phenomena, and yet, somehow infinite, And don’t forget that must explain
How your trip was my trip, or I took A part of your trip as my own trip
Like a feather in my mushroom cap Like a rose in my funerary lapel
Because I am enough was what your Psyche told you, and I am here to
Infinite down on that memo, that factor: I am enough. You are enough. Multitudes.
You contain multitudes which is why Making decisions out of temporary
Information must feel so hard. So, Take my hand. Grab my spiral arm
Arm in arm. Here we go. Forever Into the Unknown. Universe.
Glass Greenhouse. Neighborhood. January 2025.
Arms
To have the arms of the Universe flung out before You. I’ve seen it with my own eyes—one arm rolling Sushi with her son, another arm filled to the infinite with stars Held comfortably under her daughter’s climbing shoes. You are made of Everything—darkness and light– the stuff
Jeweled into the eternity of now, this moment. Universe, can you hear her? Like listening to nuclear fusion With a stethoscope—the breath, the pulse, the beat, the Mother-heart giving life to all existent things, and even things That may no longer be. But that act, the fusion at the
Core of the Universe—every opal clouded nebula, a nursery Every blazing Azure star, a new creation, can you imagine if she Knew she needed to become something new, and altogether Different entirely. What if she knew that her core was burned Out, her fuel exhausted and all of the stars, all of the
Beings that rested in her consciousness would once again Become so much dust, so she died. She gave up her Old form, her life, her arms spinning off into the horizon She simply couldn’t go on fusing life together in that way Explosion/Implosion it wouldn’t matter which way the
Translation took place, but the Matter of it all would always, Always remain. The actual physical atoms of all she gave, all She shaped, all she sacrificed, forever encoded in the stuff of Galaxies, dwarf stars, and solar systems we’ll never lay eyes on She knew it. Yet, she wept anyway, despite her knowing
each stalk of grass is hollow and barren this time of year skeletons of viridescent pasts like raw leafless trees memories of living and of dying the pulling back the cocooning of life in silent night, darkness chambers, interiors of many plants and animals teaches us all about the death and the rebirth of life, light so that we won’t fully despair
Deer Creek. Image, my own.
The Return
the light returns this morning with the owls they call from tree to branch, as sun
pinks surely over the charcoaled horizon kilned through night, and sealed in the new, cold light
of this winter morning where I’m aghast at the magic, memory magnificence, majesty transitive verb
of the whole thing where I am present when the light is seven minutes old and each
photon graces my retina with the reminder that the light always returns until it doesn’t
until the whole sky is bathed in numinous halogenic possibility the presence of the now
as the light returns may we remember the power of the darkness the importance
of slow, intentional rest, the rejuvenating properties of sleep for a world that simply needs to listen to
the magic of the intransitive verbs of owls
Christmas Windmill. Image, my own.
Dark
Enfold me in your blackness, I don’t want to be afraid of the dark In fact, I want to embrace my shadow Shadows of all that I thought would Suck the marrow out of me, but instead Offered me a respite, a resting place A hallowed breath of solace and silence Dark, the thing that so much incandescent Luminosity is meant to fight, to ward off, as Humanity wilts under all this light
Tamarisk and Gray Skies. Image, my own.
Space
Maybe the most surprising thing about poems is that they take a fair amount of space and time The words are often all there, waiting on the lip, the tip of consciousness, but flow takes room Takes open-ended realities, wide skies like altars in the arcing air, vast closenesses and distances Which the heart contemplates, the healing place, the hell, the compassionate lengths to which a Human will go to tell a truth, a peace, a playful nothing, a love, a life, a poem
The Road. Image, my own.
Don’t Die
when it began, I’m not quite sure, but as of late my son has a new post script for nearly every exchange, “don’t die” he tells me as I start the engine of the car, “don’t die” he encourages as I head off to work “don’t die” when the rain is falling in sheets that darken each atom of exposed earth, he must understand something about the nature of life
Beloved and Time. Image, Aubreigh Parks.
Celebration
sometimes the celebration will be the growing of the light minute by minute over the horizon, moment by moment in our children’s eyes. Sometimes the celebration will be the sleep, the forgetting, the separation and the longing which brings deeper communion with the divine, the place, the way, unsure, the path, the journey, one precious step at a time. Sometimes the celebration will be the growing of the self, the yearning, expanding, nearly cracking open of your sternum with the enlarging, ever-beating heart, the lungs full-burdened with life giving nitrogen plus oxygen, exhale the heaviness and grief, inhale, close your eyes and let go
Refined + Rugged 